Tuesday, February 19, 2019
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — This time the teachers' strike was only hours old when lawmakers acted.
Just as the strike began today, the West Virginia House of Delegates effectively killed a complex education bill that sent state teachers to the picket lines nearly a year after a nine-day strike closed schools.
The Republican-led House voted 53-45 to approve the motion to table the bill indefinitely. It means the bill won't go to the next step: a committee of Senate and House members who would try to come up with a compromise.
Cheers erupted from the House galleries where hundreds of teachers were in attendance.
It wasn't immediately known whether the vote would end the strike, but teachers started leaving the Capitol afterward.
Before the vote, teachers and school support workers lined streets outside schools with picket signs and packed the state Capitol during the walkout over the bill, which they view as lacking their input and as retaliation for last year's strike.
The 2018 walkout launched the national movement that included strikes in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Washington state, and more recently, Los Angeles and Denver. Teachers in Oakland, California, have authorized a strike starting Thursday.
Now the movement has come full circle.
Nearly all of West Virginia's 55 counties called off public school classes today. The only county where classrooms were open was in Putnam County, where school parking lots were nearly empty anyway. A few cars trickled in to drop students off but no buses were seen.