OKLAHOMA CITY — Alberto Morejon, dressed for business in a white button-up shirt and red tie, stood near the steps of the Oklahoma Capitol, surveying what he had started. Around him, several thousand teachers, many who knew him by name, chanted: “One day longer, one day stronger!”

It had been almost two months since Morejon watched news coverage of teachers in West Virginia, who hadn’t had a raise since 2014, as they embarked on a nearly two-week long strike that forced the state’s Republican Legislature to approve a 5-percent salary boost. Teacher salaries in Oklahoma, as Morejon knew well, were not much better than West Virginia — both states have been ranked among the five worst in the nation. Morejon, a 25-year-old social studies teacher and baseball coach at Stillwater Junior High in Stillwater, Oklahoma, saw the price it was taking on his colleagues. One fellow teacher, nearing retirement age, had to mow dozens of lawns after school every week to afford his daughter’s college tuition.


So, while West Virginia teachers were still on the picket lines, Morejon decided it was time for his state to follow suit. He created a Facebook group called, “Oklahoma Teacher Walkout—The Time Is Now!” In just three days, the group swelled to 30,000 members. On March 8, the union laid out a list of demands—like a $10,000 raise for teachers and $200 million to make up for education funding cuts—threatening a massive school walkout on April 2 if they weren’t met. On March 31, the Legislature approved a $6,100 raise, but it wasn’t enough and the walkout was called. On the third day of the walkout, I stood next to Morejon near the Capitol steps, where grateful teachers took selfies with him, and asked him how long this could last.

“If they think they’re going to wait us out, they’re crazy,” Morejon told me. “This thing is going to last as long as they want it to last.”

That was a week ago and the teachers are still at it. The demands have shifted away from a bigger raise and toward more funding to alleviate deep education cuts over the years. Teachers have decided that they would rather risk a public backlash than settle for outdated textbooks, dilapidated classrooms and four-day weeks in nearly a fifth of Oklahoma’s school districts. Morejon’s Facebook group now has more than 76,000 members—some 34,000 more people than there are teachers in the state, a strong indication the Oklahoma strike is having a strong influence on restive and underpaid teachers in other Republican-leaning states like Kentucky and Arizona, where tax-cutting legislators have throttled education budgets over the past decade.

Morejon is a key player in a surprising grass-roots labor movement that has ignited in less than two months. So far, fed-up teachers have found unexpectedly sturdy support among voting populaces that otherwise have tended to favor low to non-existent taxes. As the brush fire has swept west, government officials most responsible for those budget-austerity measures seem almost surprised by how difficult it has been to hold the political high ground. In the early days of the walkout, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin tried to knock the teachers as spoiled ingrates, likening them to “a teenager wanting a better car.” The ad hominem approach hasn’t gone over well. The teachers, many of them women, are redefining attitudes about organized labor, replacing negative stereotypes of overpaid and underperforming blue-collar workers with a more sympathetic face: overworked and underappreciated nurturers who say they’re fighting for their students as much as they’re fighting for themselves.

The festive scene outside the state Capitol last week—part political rally, part concert and part tailgate party—didn’t look like a typically grim picket line. Teachers, students and parents and with little ones in tow danced to the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Local school bands played Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Entire families set up tents and lawn chairs, handing out free food and snacks. People marched in circles around the building, wielding and waving signs, many of which slammed the governor. One, which bore Fallin's face, read, “If ignorance is bliss, then this must be the happiest woman on Earth.”

Inside the Capitol, the atmosphere felt more tense. People gathered around the center dome on the first four floors of the building, chanting, “We’re still here!” and “We’re not leaving!” Teachers fanned themselves in crowded hallways, demanding to meet with their state lawmakers.

Oklahoma is the hottest teacher battle in the country right now, but Kentucky and Arizona aren’t far behind. In Kentucky, the statewide teachers union is urging teachers to march on the Capitol in Frankfort on Friday after Republican Governor Matt Bevin vetoed a bill this week that would boost per-pupil funding in the state. He also signed a pension reform bill that was quickly passed by the state Legislature last month. That pension reform bill, wildly unpopular with teachers, would make pensions more like 401(k) plans. The bill’s passage sparked a massive “sickout” last month, with teachers storming the Capitol.

In Arizona, teachers are wearing red this week and holding “walk-ins,” where they stand outside the school and talk to parents and anyone who will listen about the state of their classrooms, the need for a 20 percent raise and more education funding. Like Oklahoma, Arizona has watched many of its teachers flee the state for better-paying jobs in neighboring Nevada, where a massive education reform bill promoted by Republican Governor Brian Sandoval pumped $500 million into the education budget. Arizona educators are expected to announce a date for their own massive walkout in the coming days.

“You all are really inspiring us right now. West Virginia woke us up, but you all reaffirmed everything,” said Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association during a remote discussion on April 3 with Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, that was posted on Facebook.

“If this is the only language that politicians will listen to,” Thomas said, “then we'll speak this language if we have to.”

Lara Brown, director of the Graduate School of Political Management at the George Washington University and a former Education Department official during the Clinton administration, has been critical of teachers unions, which she thinks have in the past have been a barrier to improvement and reform.

But she said teachers in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona and West Virginia could push other red states—where education funding cuts plague schools and slash salaries—to have broader conversations about what public education should look like and how it should be funded.

“Teachers are a huge constituency,” Brown said. “There are thousands and thousands of teachers in every state and what that really means at the practical level is that teachers absolutely can organize and turn out the vote … but whether they can dominate the national conversation is still a big question mark.”

On Monday, on the Facebook page that started it all, Morejon wrote: “When talking to West Virginia teachers, they told me the most important day of the walkout was the 2nd Monday.” Monday was the “second Monday” and many observers estimated the crowd at the Capitol was the largest yet.

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Among Oklahoma’s biggest problems is that it can’t keep its teachers. They get trained at Oklahoma’s best universities and then they drive south to Texas, where schools promise thousands of additional dollars to attract top talent. The average salary for a teacher in Texas is $52,575, compared with $45,245 in Oklahoma, according to federal data. The Sooner State has had to issue emergency certifications to thousands of people in recent years to staff classrooms, raising concerns about qualifications. Even Oklahoma’s 2016 Teacher of the Year left the state for Texas after he led a failed ballot initiative to give teachers in the state a $5,000 raise.

That exasperation is felt by aspiring educators who have only just begun their careers. Kristen Holland, Leah Chambers and Hallie Ball—all student teachers and seniors at Oklahoma State University— told me they want to continue teaching in state, even though they know they can make more money in Texas as first-year teachers. “The Texas schools jump out at us, saying that we can make more money, but I want to stay here,” Chambers, 22, said.

Outside, four elementary school teachers from Norman, Oklahoma, waited for a friend near a row of portable toilets. “You can go anywhere else and make $15,000 more as a first-year teacher,” said Brenda Frieling. “Teachers are done.”

“I’ve had superintendents in Texas thank us because they hired our teachers,” said Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist, who spoke over the phone on her first day of marching to Oklahoma City from Tulsa, 110 miles away. “It creates an extraordinarily unstable situation.”

The education cuts also weigh on teachers, Gist said. About one-fifth of Oklahoma’s 513 public school districts operate on a four-day schedule, forced to find a way to cut costs in the wake of state education funding cuts. Since 2008, about 28 percent of state per pupil funding, adjusted for inflation, has been cut, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank. Protesting teachers have complained about outdated textbooks held together by duct tape and ramshackle desks. A 7-year-old discovered she had inherited the same textbook once used by country singer Blake Shelton—in 1982.

But charts and statistical arguments don’t always win the battle for public support.

The teachers know they are playing a public relations game, which explains why Gist and about 150 of her colleagues are sleeping in school gymnasiums along their trek from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. They measure goodwill in the willingness of people to bring them food and drinks, but that won’t be the measure of the durability of their cause. That will be decided in the chambers of the state Legislature.

“We can’t walk away from this moment and think we reached success,” Gist said.

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Defining success weighs on union officials like Ed Allen. Allen is president of the Oklahoma City American Federation of Teachers, a local teachers union affiliate, and while he is excited at the prospect of translating the energy of the walkout to the polls in November, he is worried about an exit strategy and what the lack of one will do to a grass-roots labor movement that has broad public support—at least for now.

“The further you get away from Oklahoma City, the less passion you have,” he told me. “If your kids are out of school for a couple weeks, those folks who were supporting you at some point are going to start saying, ‘Yeah, I get it, I’m with you, but take the win and move on down the road.’ But when you walk in the crowd out there [at the Capitol], people are pumped and they’re not ready to hear, ‘Let’s go home.’ And we’re not ready to say it yet. So I don’t know.”

Some of that frustration is emerging from state lawmakers and parents in more rural parts of the state. Allen said he spoke with a representative in one of those less populous districts. “And he said, ‘You know, when I talk to my constituents they say, someone’s unhappy with a $6,000 raise? We’re not quite getting that.’”

In a video that went viral this week and has since been deleted, state Rep. Kevin McDugle, a freshman Republican, said he wouldn’t vote “for another stinking measure when (teachers) are acting the way they are acting.” Soon after, an Oklahoma second grade teacher announced that she would run for his seat. (She was not the only teacher who decided to run for office when the registration window opened this week.)

One afternoon, as teachers in Oklahoma City continued to rattle state lawmakers, I decided to see if I could take the temperature outside the capital. I drove to the small town of Guthrie, about a half an hour from Oklahoma City, where a fine red dust coats many of the cars. Schools closed for the week due to the walkouts.

“It’s hard to find stuff to do around here,” said Jason Smith, a high school junior, while eating lunch at McDonald’s with his grandmother, Tamara Smith. He said he supports his teachers and their cause but wants to go back to school because he spends his days sitting around watching YouTube.

His grandmother said, “I support them trying to get better education funding, but I mean, enough is enough, isn’t it?”

Across the street at Walmart, a mother who home-schools her children and who said she wasn’t comfortable being identified by name said the walkouts can put a strain on an already struggling community. More than 60 percent of Guthrie’s students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, according to federal data. Churches in the area are handing out lunches to students who aren’t in school and working to keep the kids entertained, sometimes driving them to Oklahoma City to see a movie.

Back at the state Capitol, teachers chanted, “2, 4, 6, 8, we want you to legislate!” Inside, state lawmakers debated several bills that could boost education revenue for Oklahoma by tens of millions of dollars, but it’s unclear which bills or what amount of money will ultimately end the walkouts.

“It would really probably take close to $1.5 billion to make up for 10, 11 years of education cuts in Oklahoma,” said Allen of the Oklahoma City American Federation of Teachers. “Now if someone thinks you’re going to do that all in one year, in one bill, it really can’t be done.”

While Oklahoma state lawmakers have acceded to some of the teachers’ demands, they’ve refused to budge on others.

Governor Fallin signed a bill this week, repealing a proposed lodging tax that would have raised about $50 million for education. It also appears there’s no appetite to end a tax break that benefits thousands of wealthy Oklahomans, known as the state’s capital gains deduction. The Oklahoma Education Association has pointed to ending that tax break as a major priority, saying it could provide about $120 million a year in new money for public education. Teachers are still hopeful as state lawmakers consider changes to tax credits for wind energy companies, which could funnel more money into public education.

After a blockbuster turnout on the second Monday of the walkout, the crowds of protesters thinned a bit on Wednesday as some teachers felt the pull back to school. In what some saw as a signal of the beginning of the end, the Oklahoma Education Association began stressing the wins that teachers have secured so far, like an estimated $22 million in additional education revenue from “ball and dice” gambling. The walkout isn’t over yet. More than two dozen school districts—all but two of the largest ones, serving almost half the state’s public school students—announced that they would be closed Thursday, some through Friday.