Hello again, I'm Orrin Alney.

When public school teachers in West Virginia threatened to strike, the Republican governor

Jim Justice called them dumb bunnies. He offered a 1% annual raise for the next five years.

But with inflation, likely at 2% every year,

that would have been a pay cut. The New York Times says the teachers were mad as hell. They walked out.

Nine days later, they came back after the governor signed a one-time raise of 5% effective this year.

Teachers in other states have been paying attention. In Arizona, they walked out for five days.

Christine Marsh teaches English at Cactus Shadows High School. Two years ago, she was Arizona's teacher of the year. Welcome to our program.

Thank you very much for having me. Tell us why you went out and what you got.

Well, the teachers took a statewide vote and 78% of the teachers voted to walk out.

So we walked out because I think we are tired of seeing our students and ourselves,

but mostly our students face the consequences of underfunded schools, underfunded public schools.

We got $260-ish per student added to the base funding out of it. So we did not get

all of our, what we wanted met, but we definitely moved the needle here in Arizona in the

right direction for the first time really since the recession.

Were you motivated in part by what happened in West Virginia?

Yes, I think we all were. I think it was a wake-up call for teachers here in Arizona to recognize

that we could indeed do something about it, even though I think all of us considered

a walkout to be quite drastic.

We saw that, you know, we saw it happening there and then also in Oklahoma, and I think that

was probably the final catalyst that motivated teachers to do what we did.

We heard that in West Virginia, part of it had to do with salaries.

...