W. Va. Teacher Defends Striking for the Second Year in a Row: We Oppose Funds Going to Charter Schools

EXCERPT:

SANDOVAL: “You're a part of it again today. What’s the -- what's changed, what hasn’t changed and what's different?"
VAUGHAN: “Well, last year we were focusing more on getting the funding for our P.I., for insurance. This year we’re focusing more on trying to get rid of this education bill that we feel would hurt education more than trying to actually elevate it and make it better for our students.”
SANDOVAL: “Last year was about funding your insurance program, now it’s about not funding charter schools. And that's really the crack at this issue here for you and so many other teachers. Why would charter schools in West Virginia be a bad thing?”
VAUGHAN: “Well, part of the problem is with the charter schools they were wanting to make them public. So students that went to the charter schools they would be pulling funding from our public education to help pay for those schools. And as we lose funding in our public schools, you know, you have less students so we’d have to lower the amount of teachers and things like that. And the question then becomes, you know, we still have classes that are too large. You know, we still don’t have enough special ed counselors and the things like that. And the bill did have some money put aside for like the special ed counselors but it just wasn’t enough to counteract the ESAs and the charter schools and the money we would be losing.”