Teachers work set hours to protest cuts

Teachers across Delaware aren’t happy with Governor Jack Markell’s proposed 8 percent salary cut for all state employees. But Delaware teachers are showing their disapproval by symbolically working only the hours required by contract.

Teachers across Delaware aren’t happy with Governor Jack Markell’s proposed 8 percent salary cut for all state employees. Markell says the pay cuts are necessary to close a budget deficit of at least 600 million dollars this year. But Delaware teachers are showing their disapproval by symbolically working only the hours required by contract.

Listen:
[audio: 090520lfteacher.mp3]

Delaware State Education Association President Diane Donohue says the “Bell to Bell” demonstration is a way for educators across the state to show solidarity around their disapproval of the salary cut.

Donohue: Teachers are gathering together in the morning and all other school employees as well. They’re gathering together in the front of their schools, they’re going in to school at the beginning of the day and then they’re leaving together at the end of the day. It’s a way to show the general public and to show the general assembly that our educators and our school employees are working far and above their contractual day.

Donohue says a salary cut might lead younger Delaware teachers to take higher paying jobs in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.