A teachers' protest entered its second day in Oklahoma Tuesday as US state lawmakers faced a spreading schoolhouse revolt against a decade of deep cuts to public education.
On Monday, tens of thousands of teachers and their supporters mobbed the steps of the state capitol in Oklahoma City while protesters in Kentucky simultaneously besieged that state's legislature in the city of Frankfort. "We're back today," said Doug Folks, spokesman for the Oklahoma Education Association, the teachers union.
Turnout was expected to be lighter - "but just as passionate," he told AFP. The protests are part of a wave sweeping Republican-dominated states where teachers have had to cope with low pay and cuts to public schools as lawmakers slashed spending. Oklahoma teachers vowed to continue protests until their demands for more funding and better pay are met.
Their counterparts in Kentucky did not plan to protest Tuesday, because the state legislature was no longer in session, the Kentucky Education Association told AFP. Demonstrators were inspired by their counterparts in West Virginia and Arizona, who also have protested. A nine-day strike last month won West Virginia's teachers their first pay raise in four years.