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Common Dreams reports
Colorado's teachers' union expects more than 400 teachers at a rally that's planned for Monday at the state's Capitol in Denver.
[...] Englewood School District, outside the capital city, announced on Sunday that schools would be closed the following day as 70 percent of its teachers had indicated they wouldn't be working Monday. It was unclear on Sunday whether more school districts would be closing.
"We are calling Monday, April 16th a day of action", Kerrie Dallman, president of the Colorado Education Association (CEA), told KDVR in Denver.
[...] According to[1] KMGH in Denver, "The CEA estimates that teachers spend on average $656 of their own money for school supplies for students." The state's teacher salaries rank 46th out of 50, with educators making an average of $46,000 per year.
Public schools are underfunded by $828 million this year, Dallman told the Post, and lawmakers have said they could inject at least $100 million more into schools--but they have yet to do so.
[...] The planned protest follows a trend that was seen in West Virginia and Kentucky before moving west this month to Oklahoma and Arizona as well as Colorado. In all the states where teachers have walked out and rallied at their Capitols, teachers have reported paying for school supplies out of pocket, working second and third jobs to make ends meet, and coping with funding shortages while their legislators hand out tax cuts to corporations.
[1] For a laugh (or perhaps a deep sigh), check out all the whitespace in the source code of the page.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @08:41PM (1 child)
Sorry, no.
First, you're assuming that people are all buying instead of renting. In many places, renting is more cost-effective than buying, especially if you aren't sure you're going to be there for 8+ years. Property taxes and maintenance costs go away when you're renting.
For lawns, parking in the street, inoperable vehicles, etc., these are only problems if you have a single-family house. People in apartments (which describes many lower-income people) don't have these problems. And there's nothing requiring you to keep inoperable vehicles around. If you can't fix it, sell it on Craigslist. It's only dumb rural people who have some kind of obsession with making their home a salvage yard. Urban poor people don't have this problem.
Automatic garage door openers are a problem in your mind? Huh? Those things are extremely reliable these days, generally. I haven't had trouble with one of those since I was a teenager. And poorer people generally don't have garages anyway.
Bed frames? Where is it required that you have a bed frame? If you don't want one, don't get one. No one's going to fine you because you don't have a bed frame. Lots of people don't. People usually like them because they like being able to sit on the bed at times, and also because older people would have trouble using a bed that's too low. And what's the problem anyway? It's a simple piece of steel. If you're having maintenance problems with a bed frame, then you have some other issues.
For the shower faucet, that's why you get a modern low-flow shower head for $10 or whatever. Shower heads are only supposed to use 2.5 gallons per minute by federal law. You can put restrictors in there as well to cut it down more if you want.
Anyway, again, most of your complaints come with owning a home. Rent a home and you can push all the problems onto your landlord. This isn't a perfect system, but renters do not have to deal with paying for leaky roofs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @10:39PM
> Property taxes and maintenance costs go away when you're renting.
Property taxes and maintenance costs are baked into the rental cost, along with profit to the owner & management company (if one is involved).
FTFY
In certain markets I've heard of cheap rental prices relative to the cost to operate the unit. This might be due to rent control (NY City?) or a market where the appreciation on the property makes up for the lack of rental income.