How Denver Teachers Explain Looming Walk-Out To Students

DENVER, CO – By Alex Burness for The Colorado Independent. Rebecca Basgal, who’d been up the night before battling anxiety, promised herself she wouldn’t let her students see how worried she was about the impending teachers strike.

“So, of course, as soon I walked in on Monday, the kids said, ‘Ms. Basgal, What’s wrong with you?’” she said.

Basgal is a freshman-level math teacher at South High School who voted this week in favor of a strike, the start date of which is unclear for now. Union leaders say 93 percent of their members approved the strike against Denver Public Schools.

Basgal explained to her students, through tears, why she and many of the other roughly 6,000 DPS staffers voted to strike.

“I told them, ‘When I think of striking, I don’t think of myself. I think of you,’” she said. “I told my kids that I worry about them on the weekends, that that’s how I’ll feel during the strike, and that’s how I’ll feel when I eventually have to leave Denver because I can’t afford to live here.”

READ MORE at The Colorado Independent.

Teachers at Denver's South High School, all of whom voted to strike, posed outside the school on Wednesday. (Photo by Alex Burness)