Teacher Walk-Out

Oklahoma is ranked 50th in the nation for teacher pay. Education funding has been cut year after year, and teachers haven't gotten a raise in a decade. It all came to a head at the beginning of April when the Oklahoma Educators Association called for a teacher walk-out starting on April 2nd if the legislature didn't meet their demands of pay raises and increased funding.


The legislature failed, and schools all over the state shut down. We had no school on April 2nd, 5th, 6th, 9th and 10th due to the walk-out. Some schools were closed for almost 2 weeks straight. It was frustrating for us because we didn't find out until late the night before if school was cancelled, and the walk-out was in the middle of standardized testing for our boys. There was so much stress, chaos and uncertainty.

Teachers deserve the pay increase, and our kids need more funding. But, the walk-out ended before much of anything changed (the teachers did get a raise but basically no additional funding). Our governer (Mary Fallin) called the teachers a bunch of teenagers who wanted new cars.

On April 5th, I took the kids up to the capitol so they could see what their teachers were walking for, and be part of this piece of history. We got up and drove to Norman so we could follow Dana and her kids since they had been up there several days.

We made signs there and walked around the capitol several times. Most of the day we sat in our group, and the sheer number of people was astounding. There were tens of thousands of teachers, parents, students and others who want more for our kids.

It was exhausting and stressful for me keeping track of 4 kids, but I'm so glad we went. I can only hope that this generation of kids remembers how frustrated they were at our government and grow up to make sure education matters to the legislature. Elections are in November, and there will be many men and women who will not be re-elected, and hopefully we will finally start to see the change we need here.