We recognize that teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions. When schools are chronically underfunded, understaffed, and under threat of being privatized into the charter school system students suffer. When teachers have to deal with the financial stress of low wages, student debt and classrooms without the necessary resources and learning tools students suffer. 

For too long manufactured budget crises have put our children's education on the chopping block while business interests and the wealthy reap the rewards of huge tax breaks and the selling off of a generation's access to quality education.

We call for a massive reinvestment in our public school system and the return of democratic control of our schools to the community at large, its teachers and students.

When the workers rise, we win.

All signatories stand in solidarity with the striking teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky, the teachers in West Virginia and all teachers in this country and in the state of Missouri.

Teachers in Missouri, as you work to organize in your schools and local communities for better working and learning conditions, know that if you decide to take a stand, we will stand with you.

"In the wake of West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kentucky are now striking, sicking out, rallying, and Facebooking to push officials to raise their salaries and defend their benefits. Photo: WVEA. Source: Labor Notes, "Teacher Strike Fever Spreads," http://www.labornotes.org/2018/03/teacher-strike-fever-spreads"

Sign this petition to show teachers in Missouri that community members, workers, fellow teachers and students are willing to stand in solidarity and organize for education.