Tag: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

So far in 2019 strikes have broken out in Los Angeles and Oakland in California, Denver in Colorado and in Virginia and West Virginia, notching up notable wins in terms of pay raises and better working conditions. Kappier explained classrooms in Oakland’s school district are too large, her history textbooks are outdated, schools in the district don’t have nurses, adequate staffing of counselors, no librarians, and music and art programs are non-existent at some schools in the district. The issues facing public schools in Oakland are similar to other school districts across America where teachers led a 30-year high in strikes in 2018. A common theme of these walkouts is drastic declines in public funding schools, where many states have not replenished cuts made to public education during the 2008 economic recession. Leachman co-authored a November 2017 report that found 29 states were funding less per student in 2015 than they were in 2008. Last week, teachers in West Virginia went out on strike again for two days to protest a bill being pushed in the state senate that would tie teacher pay raises to funding for charter schools. “The issue last year was mainly over benefits. “At the school I’m at, the students are lucky enough to have one parent. “That translates to a classroom where kids don’t have a lot of prospects, they don’t have a lot of hope and it’s very difficult in terms of teaching them because a lot of their basic needs are not met.” Around 31,000 teachers in Los Angeles started off 2019’s strike wave in the nation’s second largest school district, walking out for seven days before settling on an agreement that included a pay raise, increase of support staff, and a plan to reduce class sizes to mandated caps. So the only reason to allow a strike is to test the strength of the union.

Tom Brenner for The New York Times WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would seek to put in place more stringent work requirements for adults who rely on food stamps, even as the president signed a sweeping farm bill in which lawmakers had rejected stricter rules. By moving to limit the ability of states to issue waivers to people who say they cannot make ends meet under the requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Agriculture Department found another route to create restrictions, bypassing Congress and drawing immediate criticism that the proposed rule was sure to harm Americans below the poverty line. The administration, which along with conservatives had fought to include stricter work requirements in the farm bill, continued to argue that food stamps were never meant to be a way of life and that able-bodied adults should be able to find jobs in a healthy economy. “Long-term reliance on government assistance has never been part of the American dream,” Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, said in a statement. The Trump administration is planning to make it harder for some food stamp recipients to obtain waivers of the program’s work requirements. “I think a fresh view from the Department of Agriculture at that process and at that data is a healthy and good thing,” he said. “Was it a partisan move when the Obama administration expanded the waivers?” Representative K. Michael Conaway, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, praised the department’s move. In campaign rallies, Mr. Trump has used exaggerated terms to describe the reduction, which began before he took office. In September, individuals with SNAP benefits received an average benefit of $123 a month, compared with $245 for families, according to the most recently available government data. With the new rules, the Agriculture Department is focusing on able-bodied adults without dependents, who can access SNAP for only three months in a three-year period unless they are working at least 80 hours a month.