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Teachers & Students Unite For Decent Education

By VVAW

The beginning of this fall's school term has seen one of the largest waves of teachers' strikes to hit the US in years. All across the country, teachers with the support of millions of students have gone out on strike for higher wages and better working conditions, and against attacks on the standard of education in the US. Just as all other areas of social services in this country have come under attack--unemployment compensation, welfare, veterans' benefits--so too the educational system in the US is under attack. But just as hard as the rich try to palm off their economic crisis on us, people are uniting and fighting back against them.

In Chicago, over 27,000 public school teachers went out on strike for 11 days for higher wages, smaller class sizes and better working conditions. The strike affected over 530,000 school children. In New York City, 65,000 teachers shut down public schools for the city's 1.1 million students. There, the issue was not salary increases but school board attempts to enlarge classes, reduce or eliminate teachers' preparation time and cut out a number of school programs. While the NYC Board of Education had initially asked for a $500 million increase for the impoverished school system, the city of New York instead demanded a $132 million CUT in the school budget. Similar school strikes occurred in hundreds of communities across the US.

The struggle teachers have been waging for better education and a higher standard of living is only the tip of the iceberg. In fact the entire educational system is under attack by the ruling class. Facing a desperate economic crisis, these fat cats are frantically scrambling about seeking more and more profits so they won't go under. In doing so they are forced to try to find ways of cutting back on budgets for those social services that do exist but which don't bring in profits. So they try to make us foot their bills for the economic crisis. Cutbacks or complete elimination of educational programs are coming down, tuition costs for many schools are soaring, cuts in financial aid are being made, and the number of teachers is being reduced while they try to cram ever larger numbers of students into already crowded classrooms. The State of Illinois alone has slashed the state budget for education by $52 million this year.

All of this stands in direct conflict with the fact that we need MORE education of decent quality, not less. We all want to do something with our lives, to have a decent future for us and our families. For this, we need education. While we will still have to compete for the few available jobs, an education is a prerequisite for getting many good jobs. It's one way of improving the quality of our lives. But to get an education for us and our families, just like anything else under this system, we have to fight to get it and then fight like hell to keep it. That's why these attacks on education are being met by students, parents and teachers throughout the country. The ruling class and their government spokesmen throw up their hands whimpering, ?But we just don't have the money? when we jam them. But the response of students and teachers alike has been to unite and fight back against all the cuts.

One good example of this had been the struggle in the city college system in Chicago. There, some 1400 teachers went out on strike, affecting over 95,000 students, for a 16% pay increase, no increase in class size (currently pegged at a maximum of 29 students for day classes and 35 for night classes), and no firings or layoffs of teachers. The administrators of the city college system had been trying to fire 80-100 teachers, put them on a semester rather than an annual or two-year contract basis and increase class size to 40 students for day classes and 44 for night classes.

Students from a number of the city colleges in Chicago joined to form the Committee To Fight for A Decent Education to take up the struggle for a decent education and support the teachers' strike. At one point in the struggle, members of the Committee marched into the City College Board meeting to jam the administrators. When these bureaucrats ran out of their meeting 2 minutes later, the students then marched into the office of the head of the city colleges to show support for the teachers' strike and demand no cuts in education. Through actions such as this, the students gave invaluable support to the teachers. In the face of the growing unity and militancy of the strike, the College Board finally was forced to cave in to most of the teachers' demands.

With millions of other people, vets have a big stake in the fight for a decent education. Our children are directly affected by the attacks and cutbacks in the educational system in the US. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of vets are enrolled in GED school, city colleges, junior colleges, trade schools--all of which feel the crunch of education cutbacks even before other schools. Rising tuition costs and cutbacks in programs and services hit us hard. At one school in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Area Technical College, tuition was recently almost doubled. Initially, the school directors had tried to triple the tuition payments, but had to back down.

A decent education, and all the potential that education can open up for all of us, is a right as well as a need for all. A good education can't become a privilege of only the wealthy as it once was. Veterans who are parents or students join with other parents and students to support the fight of teachers to improve conditions in schools to make a better education possible. And we join with millions of Americans to fight for a decent education for all.