The Erudite Eduvengers!
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That didn’t work for the 11,000 air traffic controls Reagan fired in 1981. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but there precedent for this not ending well.
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Wasn’t TABOR that evil robot from a 1950s movie? /s
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Another generation. A whole whack of a lot of people either don’t remember that event at all (I still had a serious relationship with the Tooth Fairy when that happened…) or have no direct emotional exposure to it. The AT strike has been used for almost 40 years as the boogeyman to shut down labor organization. Now it’s time to see if the boogeyman has real claws or not.
The other side is that middle class parents rely on school for childcare, and other employers rely on schools so they have employees. So basically everyone is far more motivated to get to a deal now than in the early 80s when air travel wasn’t nearly as common as it is now. This has potential if the teachers can make it stick.
Which isn’t certain. AZ has a high percentage of charter schools and so far, the public school strike orgs are not viewing the charter teachers as allies and colleagues, and nobody is organizing the charters. Which is a huge mistake - the charters are easier to organize, being smaller, and the charter corps are easier to break than the giant public school districts.
I get it - public school teachers don’t like charters. But when 30% of the student seats in the state are in charter seats, the only position of strength is to bring the charter teachers along.
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we don’t need no ehduhcashn
So, the plan is to turn Colorado into a sub-standard fascist shithole, yes?
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from the Right to Work party, huh? More like the Blow with the Wind party.
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Kansas running a good race for that honor:
Still, Colorado is trying awfully hard:
Colorado has reduced its support for higher education by nearly
69.4 percent, from $10.52 in fiscal 1980 (and a peak of $13.85 in fiscal
1971) to $3.22 by fiscal 2011. At this rate of decline Colorado
appropriations will reach zero in 2022, 11 years from now. Projections
using more recent data find that Colorado could hit zero as soon as
2019.
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Arbeit macht frei.
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While arresting and firing people for striking seems shockingly illegal and unethical to my socialist Scandinavian self, I’m surprised that they feel the need to specify not paying striking workers. Of course you don’t get a salary while striking. That’s what union dues are for.
Edited for typo
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Remember the Ludlow Massacre!
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On the other hand, why do teachers have to pay for supplies out of their salary?
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Not sure I see the connection, other than shitty treatment of schools and teachers.
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They did this in Michigan over a decade ago. I don’t get how it is constitutional–doesn’t jibe with my understanding of freedom, anyway.
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True, but teachers are 1) not critical infrastructure in the immediate public safety sense, 2) well known and respected in their communities, and 3) way more numerous. Like @Czanne said, just about everyone has motivation to keep schools functioning.
It took years to re-hire enough air traffic controllers to get back to normal staffing levels. The US has 3.6 million teachers (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372, though only ~52k in Colorado, https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/coeducationfactsandfigures).
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It doesn’t matter if it’s constitutional, because the strike will be over by the time Colorado has appealed it up to the supreme court 
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Technically, it’s a 1st Amendment violation, and is not constitutional. No one has had standing to challenge the Michigan law yet. With this current wave of teacher strikes, it’s possible the corrupt morons in Lansing will either smell what’s on the wind and send more money to schools, or a lot of someones will have standing to sue the state.
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I thought tax revenue from pot sales were going to schools. Is it literally only going to schools and not the teachers?
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After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out…
attributed to Jack London
I can only assume there were still some leftovers that were too bad to put in a scab, so they were used to make the modern Republican.
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In support of your position, I would add that the pain of ATC understaffing wasn’t felt directly by the public. There were delays in flights and an increase in ticket fares, but people didn’t immediately make a connection between “my flight costs 15% more and is generally 2 hrs late” and “maybe there’s not enough ATC working to arrange flights in and out of the airport efficiently”. But when Little Johnny’s class changes from 20 kids per teacher to 90, mama’s going to notice.
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Definitely. Plus, let’s all remember that standing for something intuitively good while forcing your opposition to openly and visibly cause harm is a central component of effective civil disobedience. Teachers, of all people, probably remember and understand that.
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