It was the nation's first statewide walkout of public schoolteachers. As nearly half of Florida's 58,000 teachers stayed away from their classrooms, about one-third of the state's 1,800 schools were closed and 500,000 children went untaught. The strike culminated an angry year-long dispute over school finances between flamboyant Governor Claude Kirk and militant members of the Florida Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association. The root of the trouble goes back to Kirk's 1966 election campaign, in which he promised to produce something of a political miracle:...
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