Organizing and Mobilizing - How Teachers and Communities Are Winning the Fight to Revitalize Public Education

Oct 15, 2026

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Examining the early-2018 crisis in West Virginia public education, the text details how teacher pay stagnation, healthcare cost shifting, and chronic underfunding drove educators and education workers to organize. It traces resistance from coal-mining counties through planning meetings, a February 2 one-day strike, and coordinated protests that united multiple statewide unions. The narrative also explains how media coverage, social platforms, and rapid county walkouts created momentum, while state and national union affiliates mobilized resources to support a statewide action.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Organizing and Mobilizing

West Virginia teacher conditions at the start of 2018

Coal-mining counties and early resistance planning

February 2 strike and union coordination

Spread of walkouts and statewide mobilization

Organizing and Mobilizing How Teachers and Communities Are Winning the Fight to Revitalize Public Education PHOTOS BY THE AFT By Leo Casey A s winter swept across the United States atthe outset of 2018, ushering in the bitterest and bleakest days of the year, American teachers and their unions had little to celebrate. The first eight years of the decade had exacted a heavy toll, and still more trouble was lurking on the horizon. In the wake of the Great Recession, funding for public education had been slashed across the country, with particularly deep cuts in the red states, many of which were granting massive tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations and thus reducing state revenues. A growing portion of the funds that remained were diverted from public schools to voucher programs for private schools and to charter schools. For American teachers, the 2010shad been a long, dark night. And atthe start of 2018, there had been very few signs that it would end. But, in the words of the old Irish peasant saying, it is always darkest before the dawn. In those early months of 2018, West Virginia teachers, education workers, and their unions found themselves grappling with one of the state governments that had acquired a deep red political hue over the decade. Leo Casey is the executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute, a think tank affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, and is a member of the editorial board of Dissent magazine. Previously, Casey served asa vicepresident of the United Federation of Teachers; worked with teacher unionsand teachers in Russia, Tanzania, and China on civics education; and taught civics, African American studies, political science, and more in Brooklyn. For 10 years in a row, his classes—entirely students of color, largely immigrant and largely female—won the New York City championship of the national We the People civics competition; they also won the state championshipfour times and placedfourth in the nation twice. This article is excerptedfrom The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective by Leo Casey, November 2020, published by Harvard Education Press. For more information, [please visit hepg.org/hep-home/books/the-teacher-insurgency](please visit hepg.org/hep-home/books/the-teacher-insurgency). As 2018 began, the salaries of West Virginia teachers were near the bottom nationally, and lagged well behind the surrounding states of Kentucky, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia.1 The salaries, health insurance, and pensions of West Virginia teachers and education workers were decided by the state, and for a number of years the government had been shifting the costs of health insurance onto teachers and other public workers through increased copays and premiums. These changes cut into real income, as the increased health insurance costs ate away at stagnant salaries. In early 2018, the governor had proposed a token 1 percent raise in teacher salaries in his State of the State address, and another round of cost shifting in healthcare threatened to further plunder teachers’ take-home pay. Four southern counties of West Virginia—Logan, McDowell, Mingo, and Wyoming—had been the center of its coal mining industry and the heartland of the United Mine Workers. It was in these counties, where teachers were often the children and grandchildren of coal miners who had lived and breathed union, that the first rumblings of resistance to the state government’s plans were heard.2 In January, teachers and education workers from these counties organized meetings to discuss what was happening in the state capital—the inadequate salary proposal, the detrimental changes in health insurance, and the underfunding of public education—and what todoin response. In keeping with their rich labor heritage, they made plans for one-day county walkoutsin defiance of the law. On February 2, they conducted a one-day strike and held a protest atthe state Capitol. For th

FAQs

What pressures on West Virginia teachers helped spark the 2018 walkouts?

Teachers faced near-bottom national salaries and worsening take-home pay due to healthcare cost shifting through higher copays and premiums, alongside broader underfunding of public education.

How did teachers and unions organize their resistance in early 2018?

In key coal-mining counties, teachers and education workers held meetings to review the state government’s plans and prepared one-day county walkouts, culminating in a strike and protest on February 2.

Why was the February 2 action significant for statewide union unity?

For the first time in West Virginia history, members of three statewide education unions came together—AFT West Virginia, the West Virginia Education Association, and the independent West Virginia School Service Personnel Association.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by McQueen