Nationwide Teacher Strike April 13, 2020

Nationwide teacher strike. Shut America Down until our demands are met! It’s time to wake America up and make changes in our public school systems.

What are we asking for?

1. Smaller class sizes. Use the budget more wisely. If in the past tax funds could cover 20 kids per class, with more students there should be enough money to continue. We are requesting 19 students grades k-2 and 25 3-12 grades. Student success depends on this.

2. Behavior support for students with violent or extremely disruptive behaviors. Guaranteed support from behavior interventionists, behavior rooms (immediate, not months or years of fighting for this), stronger counselor support, administrative support to help remove and reform these students to return to the classroom. Teachers and students do should not be hurt by violent behaviors.

3. Reformed professional development and staff meetings that occur during half or full day PD ONLY! No before/after school meetings. The only exceptions will be IEP meetings and after school events. Meetings should be done during work hours and should not exceed the limit set by the state forcing schools to focus on relevant PD. PD that doesn’t always focus on data, but instruction and behavior management. Data won’t go up if teachers aren’t focusing on how to teach and get students engaged.

4. No more annual curriculum changes forcing teachers to constantly change what and how they are teaching. Stick with a curriculum and trust teachers to get students where they need to be.

5. Trust. Less, stressful evaluations and observations. 2-3 observations for teachers with less than 5 years of experience. 1 scheduled observation per year for teachers with more than 5 years of experience.

6. Better Pay. Experienced educators with Masters degrees should not be make an average of 40k per year. That’s about half of what other occupations pay with experience and a masters degree.

7. No summer PD.

8. Teacher buy in. Teachers are experts in education and need to be afforded the right to vote on all central office decisions. Teachers in the classroom know what their students need and do not want money wasted on more programs that were desperately purchased to increase data results. Data will increase if teachers have the supplies they need and support they need. Teachers will be afforded the right to vote on decisions including budget.

9. Less testing. Teachers know their students capabilities without 4 different tests to prove what they already know.

10. Age appropriate curriculum. Kindergarten students need a play based curriculum and less push to be on a 2nd grade level in K.

11. More plan time. Guaranteed 1.5 hours of uninterrupted plan time per day and an uninterrupted 30 minutes for lunch where teachers are not required to do lunch duties.