What is going on
Currently, the teachers in Colorado are fed up with the way the government treats them. It is now official that they are coming out in their thousands to storm the state capital this week. They want the state administration to deliver the billions of dollars they owe in funding the education sector.
While their move is commendable, and adopted from the success stories of teachers in other states like West Virginia and Oklahoma, the lawmakers of Colorado are having none of that civil disobedience. As gathered, the legislature is looking forward to enacting a law that finds protesters guilty of their civil right and liable to serve a jail term.
The Proposed Law
The law under consideration, regarding the ability for educators to carry on with their strike actions in the state, got pitched by Senator Bob Gardner and Representative, Paul Lundeen. The bill, when enacted, will ensure that any teacher found participating, approving, empowering, instigating, or encouraging the move for a civil disobedience action, be it indirectly or directly, would be guilty and subjected to serve behind bars.
The law will ensure that each teacher found guilty, will stay in a cell for six months. While this is a big blow for the public sector, the private sector remains unaffected as the law states that these teachers become guilty when they carry out a stay-at-home order against public employers.
What People Have to Say about the move
While the lawmakers are trying to silence the education system and the rights of its citizen, people like Kerrie Dallman, the president of the Education Association in Colorado, are disappointed and infuriated by the stand of those they elected into the office.
Dallman said that the move by the two Colorado lawgivers is a vivid attempt to rob teachers of their right to speak out. She further stated that all the educators need is a chance to speak with the representatives they elected. However, the move by these Republicans is an outright attack against the public education system and the pillars that keep it going which is the teachers.
While the government of the state might think that this option is the right way, the teachers of the region are ready for any difficulty they will face to ensure the education system gets the care that it needs. As Dallman went on to express, come Thursday and Friday, the educators of the public schools will be lobbying at Denver, and about a dozen or more schools in the district will be notified to halt in their duty.
The Protest Strategy
While the move by the teachers in Colorado is perceived as a strike action, Dallman revealed that it is more than that. The issue at hand is personal to each educator in the state, and as such most of them will not be using a lecture day for the civil disobedience.
Instead of that, they will be exercising their rights on the annual two personal days for leave. Dallman says, this move to utilize their rest days to call the attention of the government to the deteriorating state of things in the education system, goes a long way to show how focused and prepared they are to get their goal achieved.
Senator Rob Gardner’s Response
To defend himself and his partner, Gardner expressed that the proposed law was in no way trying to infringe the rights of the teachers to express themselves. According to him, the bill focuses on strike actions that go against a court order and not the type the educators of Colorado are engaging into.
He further expressed that the teachers of the state still have the rights to demonstrate, assemble, associate, and protest about anything that worries them. To buttress his point, the senator stressed that if the teachers speak out on any wrongdoing, he will back them completely.
He made it known that the purpose of his bill has been widely misperceived by the general public and the education sphere. According to him the only time an educator or Education Union will be liable to jail time is if the proposed strike has been ruled off by the court.
However, the lawmaker explained that when the bill becomes law, teachers will no longer be permitted to step out of their responsibility to educate students to stage protests,
Gardner said that the reason behind his legislation is the experience of teachers strike in West Virginia and the fruit it bore in other states where the governor and officials are Republicans. However, Colorado is the only exception, its Governor and majority lawmakers are Democrats.
