Teachers’ Strike in Columbus About Students, Says Union, Not Wages

For the first time in 47 years, teachers and support staff in Columbus—Ohio’s largest school district—went on strike Monday to demand better working and learning conditions, exemplifying mounting discontent over the sustained and intensifying attacks on public education that have led to increasingly understaffed and ill-equipped classrooms.

The Columbus Education Association (CEA) announced Sunday night that more than 94% of its nearly 4,500 members had voted to reject the last offer from Columbus City Schools, bringing about the union’s first work stoppage since 1975.

“It is with a full understanding of the sacrifices that students, parents, and teachers will make together to win the schools Columbus students deserve that CEA members overwhelmingly rejected the board’s last, best, and final offer tonight and intend to strike,” CEA spokesperson Regina Fuentes said at the time.

With no negotiations currently scheduled between the two sides, the district’s 47,000-plus students may start the school year online Wednesday.

Their teachers, librarians, counselors, and other staff, meanwhile, plan to keep picketing for improved learning environments and expanded opportunities for art, music, and physical education—something they began to do Monday morning at school buildings across the city.

National Education Association (NEA) vice president Princess Moss joined a picket line, walking alongside others calling for “schools our students deserve.”

“We will continue fighting until we have safe, properly maintained, and fully resourced schools in every neighborhood,” Fuentes said at a Monday news conference, suggesting the possibility of a long fight similar to the one that occurred last year in Minneapolis.

With no quick resolution in sight, “free school lunches, and breakfasts for the next day, will cause disturbance in grab-and-go containers each school day at 25 locations,” The Columbus Dispatch reported.

The CEA’s notice of intent to strike cited “disagreement over learning conditions such as smaller class sizes, full-time art, music, and P.E. teachers at the elementary level, and functional heating and air-conditioning in classrooms, as well as adequate planning time, a cap on the number of class periods during the school day, outsourcing positions to private-for-profit corporations from outside the community, and recruiting and retaining the best educators for Columbus students.”

CEA member Courtney Johnson, a 21-year veteran of Columbus City Schools, told CNN on Tuesday that improved pay is not the union’s focus.

“This strike is about our students,” said Johnson. “Our Columbus City School students deserve a commitment to modern schools with properly working heating and air-conditioning, and smaller class sizes, and art, music, and P.E.”

According to CNN, “The school board wants to ask voters for more money. The union wants the board to use federal money.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.