Nearly a year after walking off the job, teachers in West Virginia are going on strike again.
Last year, teachers in the state went on strike for nine school days, fighting for higher pay. This year, they’re protesting an education reform bill that would bring charter schools to the state and create education savings accounts parents could use for homeschooling, private schools and other educational costs.
Unions are calling it retaliation.
"We are taking action,” said Fred Albert, with the West Virginia American Federation of Teachers. “We are left with no other choice.”
Tuesday’s strike is just the latest of several strikes nationwide in recent months.
Teachers in Denver, Colorado recently went on strike for three days. In Los Angeles, 30,000 teachers went on strike for six days. Teachers in Oakland are set to strike Thursday.
At the heart of the strikes are better school funding and higher pay.
Experts say the strikes will likely continue.
“Once you have educators seeing that when they come together in collective action and they raise their voices together, they're looking around and they're seeing it's not just them,” says Becky Pringle, vice president of the National Education Association.
Pringle believes education is a shared responsibility and everybody’s business.
