Public Schools: Walkout in Florida

It was the nation’s first statewide walkout of public schoolteachers. As nearly half of Florida’s 58,000 teachers stayed away from their classrooms, about one-third of the state’s 1,800 schools were closed and 500,000 children went untaught. The strike culminated an angry year-long dispute over school finances between flamboyant Governor Claude Kirk and militant members of the Florida Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association. The root of the trouble goes back to Kirk’s 1966 election campaign, in which he promised to produce something of a political miracle: to hold state taxes steady and at the same time make Florida “first in the nation in education.” State educators dismissed the incompatible promises as idle oratory—only to discover that Kirk was not kidding—at least about the tax lid. He vetoed $130 million worth of special appropriations for the schools voted by the 1967 legislature.

The teachers had some reason to complain that this was the wrong time to pull tight the purse strings. The average teacher salary in Florida is $6,660, which is $660 below the national norm. And while Florida is growing rapidly in population and wealth, it is actually slipping in the share of state revenue devoted to education. It ranks tenth among the states in per-capita income, but at $523 per pupil, ranks 37th in what it spends on the schools. Ten years ago the state contributed 59% of the cost of the schools; last year this had shrunk to 42%—and many counties have been hard pressed to make up the difference.

Kirk’s frugality caused the N.E.A. to warn its nationwide membership of 1,000,000 that working conditions for teachers were substandard in the state and that it could be considered “unethical” for them to take a job there. Leaders of the Florida association even urged businesses to open no new branches in the state, unsuccessfully opposed Miami’s effort to bring the 1968 Republican National Convention there. An N.E.A. task force toured six of Florida’s largest cities, urging civic and business leaders to lobby for a special legislative session devoted to school problems.

Tempers grew short. The F.E.A., Kirk charged, was “attacking our state, our children, our parents.” The Governor, countered F.E.A. Executive Secretary Phil Constans, is “a charlatan.” At a rally of 30,000 teachers in Orlando last August, Constans urged them to submit their resignations, which F.E.A. leaders could use if Kirk and legislators did not meet their demands, including smaller classes, more modern textbooks as well as pay hikes.

Faced with the clear threat of a state wide walkout in October, Kirk agreed to call a special session of the legislature. That session began Jan. 29 and ended two weeks ago, after passing a bill providing for about $250 million in new taxes (on beer, liquor, cigarettes and other sales). State officials argued that the new appropriations would provide teachers with an average increase of $1,340 per year. Despite this generous offer, the F.E.A. insisted that the funds would not provide any real improvement in classroom conditions; too much of the new tax money, the association says, was earmarked for noneducational expenses. The argument is probably academic, since Kirk has threatened to veto the bill because it calls for the new taxes without any provision for approval by voters. As expected, the teachers walked out.

Breaking Backs. The teachers insist that they are technically not striking, which they are forbidden to do by Florida law. Instead they have resigned—a maneuver that happens to violate the terms of their contract. At midweek, Kirk abandoned a politicking junket in the West, flew home to try to resolve the crisis. His first effort—a pleading back-to-work speech addressed to teachers assembled in Miami’s Marine Stadium—ended in failure. Irked by the crowd’s hostility, Kirk urged them to “get together with one good rousing boo” for the Governor—and drew only an icy silence. F.E.A. members were angered by his statement to out-of-state reporters that he was “going to break the back of the teachers” and that “it is un-American to turn education processes over to a union.”

The situation was complicated by issues that had little to do with students, classrooms, or educational quality. Kirk, Florida’s first Republican Governor of this century and an aspirant to the G.O.P. vice-presidential nomination, is engaged in a political struggle with the Democratic-controlled legislature. The N.E.A. is locked in combat with the American Federation of Teachers for the loyalty of the nation’s restive teachers. Its fight is well-organized and well-financed. Association officers traveled by hydrofoil to a meeting in Miami’s Marine Stadium; a Lear Jet was chartered for two days for more than $2,000.

The N.E.A. ‘s new president, Braulio Alonso, who is principal of Tampa’s King High School, obviously finds Florida a choice battlefield on which his organization can display its militancy.