Quote Originally Posted by CoGirl303 View Post
If a bunch of millionaire asshole sports players can strike for MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL...so can teachers. It's a direct violation of their 1st Amendment rights to demonstrate, protest, assemble and their right to redress for grievances against the government.

It's not just about their pay. It's also about their pensions and the school budgets. Many teachers have to pay for their own supplies for their classes.

Even further adding to the argument, when marijuana was legalized here, Education, schools and teachers were supposed to be seeing a lot of that money...they aren't getting anywhere near what they were promised, but that's no surprise really! So was our infrastructure (roads, road repairs, improved utilities, etc) but that's a topic for another discussion. Just another example of big government promising things and failing to follow through as usual and the teachers are the ones paying the price.
Are you okay with any public employee striking? Say law enforcement, fire personnel or health care? Just walk off the job claiming 1st Amendment Rights?

The school division of PERA is the most underwater of all the divisions due to having more retirees and less current employees paying into the system. People are living longer and drawing more money than the actuaries initially calculated. As such, it isn't out of the realm of reality that teachers will need to increase their portion of their retirement from 8% to 11% and not expect the school districts to increase their share as well as increasing their age of retirement to 60 from 55-58 in order to attempt to provide some solvency in their division of PERA. We state employees had to do have changes made in order to make our division of PERA more solvent and they are talking about adding more changes. As for their personal spending, most all people I know spend their personal money for equipment and supplies for their respective jobs. I do. I buy a number of pieces of rather expensive equipment in order to do my job better and safer and I deduct that from my annual taxes.

They weren't promised anything from the government; Amendment 64's wording provided the fiscal numbers, but the pro pot ads just said money to schools. Here is the language of the Amendment that no one bothered to read prior to voting for it: "Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning marijuana, and, in connection therewith, providing for the regulation of marijuana; permitting a person twenty-one years of age or older to consume or possess limited amounts of marijuana; providing for the licensing of cultivation facilities, product manufacturing facilities, testing facilities, and retail stores; permitting local governments to regulate or prohibit such facilities; requiring the general assembly to enact an excise tax to be levied upon wholesale sales of marijuana; requiring that the first $40 million in revenue raised annually by such
tax be credited to the public school capital construction assistance fund; and requiring the general assembly to enact legislation governing the cultivation, processing, and sale of industrial hemp?"