The tentative agreement was reached after three days of striking by 3700 Denver teachers, who set up picket lines and went on marches all over Denver. The strike activities ended yesterday with a large rally and subsequent march by teachers and supporters to the Denver school board headquarters. The purpose of the march was to make valentines for the school board superintendent Susana Cordova and ask her “to show some love” for Denver’s teachers.

The proposed contract is generally viewed as being favorable to the DCTA members, who have been concerned about the failure of Denver Public Schools to retain qualified teachers due to low pay. “This victory is a victory for Denver’s kids and their parents and our teachers,” said Rob Gould, a lead DCTA negotiator and teacher.

The three-year tentative contract includes a 11.7% base salary increase in the first year with full cost of living increases in the second and third years. There is a transparent 20-step salary schedule topping out at $100,000 for teachers with 20 years of experience and a doctorate.

The use of bonuses, instead of base pay increases, is decreased under the terms of the new contract. There are still bonuses for teachers who work in hard-to-staff positions and Title I schools [schools with a primarily low-income population], among other incentives, but there is an agreement to later review the use of these bonuses with an opportunity to revise the use of this type of compensation. This agreement is seen as a rebuff to the Denver School Board, which has shown a preference for encouraging the privatization of public education through the use of charter schools and also attacking the living standards of public school teachers by the use of haphazard incentive pay rather than base pay.

This contract has inspired the local labor movement. Over the last two years the DCTA, through better communication and the militant pursuit of its members interests, increased its membership from 50.1% to 76% of Denver’s teachers. This organizing work was key to the victory for Denver’s teachers and shows that, even in the age of Trump, unions can increase their membership and win.

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The DCTA and the Denver School Board have been negotiating the union’s demand for an increase in base pay, as opposed to the school board offer to give a small increase in the budget of its haphazard system of bonuses. When the district offered less than1% of its budget as ‘an increase in base pay’ the talks broke down and the union called a strike vote. DCTA members voted 93% in favor of a strike.

Since the talks started, the school district has been taking actions to try to deter and undermine any strike. The district very publicly stated that they would pay double the normal pay to any substitute teachers who worked during the strike, to encourage strike-breaking. The district threatened administrative staff, who are not part of the DCTA, with dismissal if they refused to cross DCTA picket lines. The district also asked the State of Colorado to intervene in the negotiations, which would mean a delay of six months in any strike.

DCTA wrote a response opposing the school board’s request for state intervention, asking the state to allow the strike to go forward. In the last two weeks the union has rallied in front of the state capitol opposing state intervention and has organized its members and the public to write letters to the governor asking him to not intervene in the strike. On February 6, the state of Colorado announced that it would not intervene in the bargaining process between DCTA and the school board, allowing the strike to go forward.

DCTA has decided that the strike will begin on February 11, if no agreement is reached. Denver teachers believe that the strike is necessary to reverse the trend of high turnover of teachers due to low pay. They also believe that the strike is ultimately to the benefit of Denver’s children, who now suffer from the failure to retain qualified teachers, because of the low pay.

“No teacher wants to strike, we would rather be teaching students in our classrooms. But when the strike starts, we will be walking for our students,” said Denver teacher and DCTA President Henry Roman.

The Denver teachers’ action is part of a recent upsurge of teacher militancy around the country, as teachers have been taking their demands to the streets for fair pay and conditions. There have recently been strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Washington state, Pueblo, Colorado and Los Angeles. Denver teachers will join this list if the school board refuses to meet their demands.

#DenverCO #PeoplesStruggles #strike #Strikes #TeachersUnions #Colorado