A Midsummer Day’s Rage: WV Teachers Duke it Out with the Legislature, Again
By Uncle Hank
Charleston, like any West Virginia City, is perpetually under construction. In the summertime, orange cones blossom from the pavement like lilacs. Bearded men in yellow vests scrape hot asphalt across the lanes — an older man sits atop of a grater, clenching a cigarette in between his teeth. It’s a scene found in Huntington, in Martinsburg, in Wheeling.
On June 1, 2019, the construction wasn’t just relegated to the roadways — the golden rotunda capitol was surrounded by scaffolding and draped with a white tarp. The $13 million project began in January 2018, after some contractors discovered the damn dome sprung a leak — and like any proper construction project, once they tore into it, they discovered it was worse than they thought.
Kind of like the bills that come out of that joint, if you ask the 2,000 plus teachers who descended on the Capitol that day.
June 1st was a Saturday, the first day of summer break for a lot of these teachers. Queuing up outside the building, they waited patiently as security waved them through the metal detectors. A man in his 60s poured coffee out of a cardboard carafe, telling them to keep up the good fight.
By the looks in their red eyes, these teachers were ragged, and no amount of free coffee was going to fix it. They’d been fighting ever since the roof sprung a leak, and a year and a half on, West Virginia teachers were plum worn out.
Back in 2018, the GOP-controlled legislature proposed changes to the Public Employee Insurance Agency, raising healthcare costs for teachers and other public employees to such a degree that it resulted in a pay cut. Years of low pay and stressful workloads culminated in 20,000 teachers, service personnel, and bus drivers walking out. They stayed out nine days — four of those days wildcat — on the picket lines, until Gov. Jimbo Justice signed a 5 percent pay increase and agreed to freeze rates on PEIA.
In February of this year, Senate President Mitch “Mad Dog” Carmichael tried to jam through an educational reform bill, ominously called “The Omnibus” containing all sorts of goodies: educational savings accounts and charter schools most notably. Unions called bullshit and teachers took to the picket lines again. The House of Delegates — the legislature’s lower body — tabled the bill after teachers spent one day on strike. The teachers stayed out one more day, to ensure the monstrosity wasn’t resurrected through some parliamentary voodoo.
Much has been written about these strikes — the 2018 stoppage became the proverbial “shot heard round the world.” Other red state teachers — most notably in Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma — also took the lines. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018 saw the highest number of workers on strike since 1986, and the most work stoppages since 2007.
When Carmichael announced a special one-day session in late May, teachers were ready for a fight. They donned their red shirts and dusted off the picket signs in their closets.
Inside the lobby outside the Senate Lobby, teacher Adam Culver riled up the crowd with chants. Dressed in a banana suit, Culver and a co-worker pumped their fists as they roused the red t-shirt wearing teachers into off-key renditions of Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It and the state anthem, Country Roads. The only way to describe this moment is like a rave — a sober, pissed-off rave. No ecstasy — sheer rage. The cacophony of chants reverberated off the walls, vibrating through your chest cavity.
The banana suit started as an off-hand comment during the 2018 strike. Talking with some buddies, Culver said he wished there was something he could do to grab some eyeballs. Maybe wearing a banana suit would do the trick. It so happened that a fellow teacher had a left-over banana suit her son wore for Halloween. A protest icon was born.
The idea behind the turn out isn’t to change the politicians’ minds, according to Culver. Sure, hundreds of angry people outside the door might put the pressure on them — especially the delegates who live in the same town as a teacher in the crowd — but the theatrics aren’t for them, Culver said.
“It gets eyeballs watching,” Culver said. “The people who’ve been up there for a while (in the legislature) are so used to nobody paying attention to anything that goes on there. That’s why the rallies bother them.”
The Charleston Gazette-Mail and Metro News have been reporting on the deals in the legislature for years, but nobody gave a shit, Culver said. Now, when the teachers head to the capitol, they’ve got friends and family reading the news to see what happened. More people are actually following the workings under the dome.
“Hell, they see a dumbass in a banana suit and they say, ‘What the hell is that?’ They stop and they end up picking up at least a little bit of information.”
Agitating, so to speak, runs in Culver’s blood. His father is a retired United Mine Worker and a member of the planning committee for the Battle of Blair Mountain Centennial in 2021. 16 Tons was a nursery rhyme to him.
To Culver, the education battle is just a continuation of the same old fight that led miners to take up arms back in ’21. It’s outside interests raping the state for more cash.
“They got the coal, they got the gas, it’s starting to run low,” Culver said. “They’re looking for other resources to pull from our people. All the tax money that goes into schools is a cash cow…they sold our souls to coal, now they want to sell our kids.”
Charter schools have long been lauded as the test lab for educational innovation. The basic premise is, a school can open and run without the regulations and unions found in traditional public schools. However, they still get to dip into the public pot to bankroll it. As long as they meet testing and educational standards, they can stay open. Besides signing off, most school boards don’t have a say in how charter schools are run.
In many locales, charters are non-profit. However, they can bring in for-profit management groups to develop curriculum, prepare lunches, and provide transportation. When Culver talks about “selling our kids,” he might not be speaking literally, but he’s pretty fucking close.
See, it’s not like there’s an appetite for the charter schools in West Virginia.
The difference between the 2018 strike and the 2019 strike isn’t just length, but the sparks setting them off. The original omnibus had built-in pay-raises. Why the hell would teachers fight a bill that gave them a raise?
The main concern is charter schools siphoning off public money from an already cash-strapped system.
Sanya Ashby is a librarian from Wood County, located along the Ohio River in the central portion of the state. With 18 years’ experience, she’s seen the pushes for reforms in public education — 2019 isn’t the first time charters have been brought up. But this push actually had a shot at passing, which turned her out to the Capitol on her first day of summer vacation.
“This has been going on for years. The politicians have passed laws telling us what to teach, how we can teach it. Scripted curriculum. Teachers don’t want to do these things because we know what’s best for the kids,” Ashby said.
She continued: “When politicians don’t get the results they want, they say, ‘Look at how bad the teachers are,’ then they say, ‘Hmm, maybe we need to do something else.’”
That something else being charter schools, come hell or high water. Even in the face of opposition from educators, students, and parents.
Between the 2019 regular session and the summer special sessions, the WV Department of Education held a series of forums around the state to gauge support for GOP educational reform with the system’s stakeholders — teachers, parents, students, and plain old members of the public. The 2019 West Virginia’s Voice report was released in May, just before Carmichael announced Omnibus Reloaded.
The report reflected a truth the GOP would sooner put their heads in the sand over — nobody wanted their stinking bill.
Eighty-eight percent of forum respondents were against creating charter schools. However, they were in favor of increased flexibility for public schools and more local control. The report ultimately recommended a limited number of charter schools with more oversight than traditionally found in charters in other states. The idea would be to see what charters are doing right, then shift some of that flexibility to public schools.
Educational Savings Accounts, another sticky issue during the 2019 regular session, were universally condemned as well. The plan proposed in the legislature would give parents of non-public school students $3,200 a year for educational costs — private school tuition, transportation to school, textbooks, tutoring, etc. According to the report, respondents weren’t having it; at worst, they feared outright fraud from the system. At best, they figured it would be a handout for the rich.
The report recommended ESAs be taken off the table. Instead, Carmichael and company opted to try to pass ESAs in a separate bill during the summer session.
Surveying 20,000 people — either through forum comment cards or online questionnaires — the report acknowledges it’s only a small sampling of public opinion. Reading the comments on the local news Facebook pages, many a 50-year-old man taking a selfie inside his Chevy Silverado is quick to bring it up: “They only surveyed the crybabies.” Consider this — many polls tracking political opinion in the state only survey 400–500 registered voters.
As recently as September 2019, public opinion is split on charters — 40 percent are against, 35 percent are for, and 25 percent couldn’t care less, according to a poll conducted on behalf of WV Metro News. That same poll found when it came to the teachers’ struggles for better pay and conditions, 69 percent said they would support another strike.
The poll failed to ask whether or not they’d accept a strike over education reform.
By noon June 1, Carmichael didn’t get his single-day session. Going in, he needed a few Democrats to cross the line to suspend the rules on having the bill read over three days before passage. Teachers flocked to the capitol steps as union leaders and Senate Democrats hob-knobbed on the steps.
For a moment, the teachers had another victory. They whooped and hollered as Sen. John Unger — a staunch opponent to the legislation — approached the stairs. They cheered as service personnel union leader Joe White whipped the crowd into a frenzy, calling the bill “bullshit.”
The respite was temporary.
The bill was ramrodded through within the week.
Senate Bill 1039 would allow the creation of an unspecified amount of charter schools, as well as teacher pay raises and funding increases for mental health services. A last-minute provision supported by Morgan County Senator Charles Trump — no relation to the Orange Man — would terminate teachers for striking and prevent county superintendents from closing schools in anticipation of a strike. The bill also established an academy for school principals.
Educational Savings Accounts were left out of the bill, instead rolled over into a separate piece of legislation.
Nobody knew what to expect on June 17, the first day of the House of Delegates session. Opposition Facebook pages posted memes about the House adjourning Sine Die, effectively killing the bill and the rest of the session. That didn’t look too promising, especially after Governor Justice tossed some spending bills on the agenda three days prior to convening.
Then House leadership tightened the reins — any GOP member supporting a motion to adjourn would lose their committee assignments, they threatened. In the end, most rank and file fell into line. But some did not.
Del. Patrick McGeehan represents the first district in the state’s Northern Panhandle. Pro-life, pro-gun, and a proponent of limited government, McGeehan rode the 2014 wave that put the GOP in the legislative saddle for the first time in more than 80 years.
McGeehan was one of the delegates who crossed party lines in February. When Omnibus 2: Electric Boogaloo entered House chambers, McGeehan was dead set against it, on constitutional grounds.
“Anyone with half a brain can see this is a violation of the single object rule,” McGeehan said, taking a break from a jog to knock out a phone interview.
“When I look at a law, the first thing I look at is if it’s constitutional. If it’s not, that’s an automatic no in my book,” McGeehan said. “Leadership tried to argue since this 150-page bill was all about education, it fits into the single object rule. There’s no gray area here. By that definition, you can change half the state code and call it ‘legal reform.’”
Ahead of June 17, Speaker Robert Hanshaw announced four subcommittees would create individual bills containing many of the issues raised in the senate Omnibus. Many teachers at the time expected the newest omnibus to die quickly in committee, its clauses and provisions harvested for a litany of single-issue bills.
In retrospect, the composition of the committees slightly tipped Hanshaw’s hand.
Take Subcommittee D:
At first blush, it looked like any of the other subcommittee — 13 Republicans and nine Democrats. However, eight of those Republicans broke ranks and tabled the first omnibus during the regular session. No one expected D to be assigned any notable legislation, according to Democratic member Sammi Brown of Jefferson County.
“They were trying to get this (the omnibus) through. So they shoved all the hell raisers into one committee,” Brown recalled. “They knew they had the numbers, but they had to make sure it didn’t die in committee.”
“To me, the bill that ended up coming out of all this and the way they did it was a total disrespect to the people of West Virginia and public employees. I mean, there were folks of similar mindsets on both sides of the aisle offering great ideas and they were just getting shot down left and right.”
Walking through the Capitol complex halls, you’d swear Jessica Salfia is a minor celebrity. Before making it down a single corridor, the gregarious and outspoken Berkeley County English teacher stopped and spoke to three different people. Usually she starts with an embrace, then she either caught up with an old friend, or discussed the rumors swirling around Charleston about what the House of Delegates was fixing to do.
Smartly, yet comfortably, dressed in a red shirt and jeans, Salfia was just in town June 17 for the morning as part of a summer jaunt — half-business, half-recreation. Three days before she stayed the night with friends in Hurricane, about half an hour west of the capital by I-64. Then she zoomed up to the North Central part of the state for some time with her mother and her kids; they tracked down a black bear lurking the property. Then it was off to Clarksburg to stay the night at her in-laws.
That morning, when she arose to make the two-hour trek to Charleston, she picked up a Mary B. from Tudor’s Biscuit World. Perhaps the bologna filled Politician would’ve been more apropos. The failed motion to adjourn Sine Die that morning would show just how cutthroat the politicos could be — Del. McGeehan and Del. Mark Dean of Mingo would end up losing their committees over breaking ranks and voting with the Democrats.
Which for McGeehan, didn’t make much of a difference.
“It isn’t the first time this has happened,” he said. “I was on three minor committees, so all this is doing is making a statement. This just gives me more time to take things to the floor, like the pavement we need up in the Northern Panhandle.”
The developments were nothing new to Salfia either.
During the 2018 strike, she hustled the hallways trying to flag down anyone who would listen. Through a relative who serves in the legislature, she got audiences with delegates and senators, being sneered at by some and fervently listened to by others. And when she wasn’t at the Capitol, she was standing at the picket lines.
By this time, fatigue was setting in.
“Everybody is just tired. It’s fight or flight all the time. It’s unsustainable,” Salfia said. “I want it to stop. I want to sit in my back yard and write speculative fiction and drink coffee.”
That morning, Salfia found herself, along with Adam Culver, at Subcommittee B. A $3,000 tax credit for families putting their kids through private school or homeschooling came out of committee, but didn’t make it too far after that. The real action would be in Committee C, where a nearly identical omnibus bill passed. Like Ali in The Rumble in The Jungle, the House was playing a game of rope-a-dope, according to Culver and Salfia.
Room numbers were changed around at the last minute, bills flip-flopped between committees. For anyone in the Capitol that day, it took some doing to keep up with where the action would be. And of course, the breaks — 15, 20 minutes of discussion followed by a half-hour lull.
Pointing at Moore Captio, son of the Senator Shelly Moore Capito, Culver did predict one thing that day: the guys with the undercut hair styles usually don’t vote for the teachers.
“Usually they don’t have hair, but if they’re young they look like Tucker Carlson over there,” Culver said. “You know which way he’s voting.”
As many teachers explained, flooding the Capitol halls put pressure on the delegates. It’s hard to vote for something skeezy if your neighbor is looking you in the eye, Culver said. But without the ability to shut down schools, it seemed like the pressure was off the legislature.
The omnibus would move from Subcommittee C onto the floor with relatively few alterations to the senate bill, despite Speaker Hanshaw’s claims about “painting a new picture.” Besides capping the number of charter schools throughout the state at 10, eliminating the principal’s academy, and removing the anti-strike provisions, it was the same shit sandwich in a different wrapper.
In the three days following, the delegates worked around the clock to get amendments in — some shot down, others included grudgingly, such as additional counselors and social workers employed in the school system. A clean pay raise ended up making it out of Subcommittee D and passed, as well.
The Senate passed the bill on June 24, under dark clouds and a tornado warning. Two Republicans crossed party lines to vote with the Democrats.
Though Governor Jimbo Justice had a hell of a time finding a school to sign the bill at and ultimately ended up opting for his desk in Charleston, the sky didn’t fall when the ink dried on Omnibus 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold.
The final product was like a lot of legislation in West Virginia: born of rage and trembling on the legislature floor, gestated in Charleston’s backrooms and parlors, and showered on newspaper editorials all over the state — something nobody could be happy about.
Instead of capping charter schools at 10 statewide, the latest iteration allows three charter schools to be established during the 2020–2021 school year, then three more every year. County school boards would have to sign off on them. The law also allows for an increase in funding for social and mental health services for students.
ESAs died in the House, and a pay raise made its way to the governor’s desk.
So a little good, a little bad.
Which leaves WV teachers in a helluva predicament, according to Jessica Salfia. With additional resources going into schools — at the price of charters entering the state — it’s a tough sell to keep up the struggle. Especially when the struggle has been going on so long.
“There’s a lot of good stuff in this bill, a lot of funding for classroom supplies and wrap around services for the kids. The way it’s written right now, charters would have a hell of a time getting set up in the state,” Salfia said.
“But it’s a Trojan horse. It paves the way for more aggressive legislation down the road,” Salfia added.
From what she’s seeing on the ground in the Eastern Panhandle, some teachers are staying engaged, diligently attending school board meetings and keeping up with their legislators. Many are focusing on the ATF and WVEA drive to get more teacher-friendly legislators elected in 2020, according to Salfia. Others, including herself, are focused on organizing to keep the fight going.
“There’s a fierce urgency of now. We have to focus on what we are doing now to fight charter schools and any changes to PEIA,” Salfia said.
One such organization tackling “the urgency of now” is the WV United Caucus. A cross section of 50 to 60 teachers holding cards in the WVEA and the ATF, the caucus is taking a proactive, grassroots approach to labor organizing in education, according to steering committee member Brendan Muckian-Bates.
“Right now, we’re focusing on building connections on the school level in order to get more responsive, more engaged members into positions within the WVEA elections and eventually the ATF,” Muckian-Bates said.
“What we’d like to see within the unions is a more transparent system for endorsing political candidates and make sure that it’s a democratic process.”
In addition to activity within the unions, Muckian-Bates said the caucus is also focusing on putting pressure on school boards to keep charters from sprouting up. The way to do that is to organize with the “schools as our locals.”
“Right now, teacher unions are organized on the county level,” he said. “That doesn’t make for a good chain of command when the shit hits the fan. The idea is to make the base of organizing with the people we see day-to-day on the school level.”
For instance, during the 2019 strike 54 out of 55 counties were closed by the superintendents. For teachers in the lone holdout — Putnam County — there was confusion over what to do. Picket or go in? By having the base of power at the school level rather than the county, it would’ve made all of that easier to sort out, according to Muckian-Bates.
Teachers are taking a breather. Soon after the conclusion of the summer session, a cursory look on Facebook would show folks enjoying taking their kids out to the lake, holding bass by the lip, and donning sunburns. Coming into the school year, teachers just looked forward to getting back to work, despite the loss.
But one thing could cause all holy hell to erupt in Charleston.
“PEIA,” Adam Culver said. “If PEIA is on the block, that is guaranteed to set it off again.”
Remember, PEIA was what set all this off in the first place. The PEIA freeze put in place in 2018 has expired. As of this writing, the commission has announced they intend no rate hikes for the 2020–2021 fiscal year. But any tweak could spark some shit.
It’s hard to say where the saga will go — will the Republicans take their win and go on to something else? Sammi Brown said tax reform appears to be on the table. Or will they loosen up restrictions on charters? Or piss on the third rail of public health-insurance?
Stay tuned for January.
Hopefully, they’ll fix the goddamn roof by then.
