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: to hold state taxes steady and at the same time make Florida "first in the nation in education." State educators dismissed the incompatible promises as idle oratory—only to discover that Kirk was not kidding—at least about the tax lid. He vetoed $130 million worth of special appropriations for the schools voted by the 1967 legislature.
The teachers had some reason to complain that this was the wrong time to pull tight the purse strings. The average teacher salary in Florida is $6,660, which is $660 below the national norm. And while Florida is growing rapidly in population and wealth, it is actually slipping in the share of state revenue devoted to education. It ranks tenth among the states in per-capita income, but at $523 per pupil, ranks 37th in what it spends on the schools. Ten years ago the state contributed 59% of the cost of the schools; last year this had shrunk to 42%—and many counties have been hard pressed to make up the difference.
Kirk's frugality caused the N.E.A. to warn its nationwide membership of 1,000,000 that working conditions for teachers were substandard in the state and that it could be considered "unethical" for them to take a job there. Leaders of the Florida association even urged businesses to open no new branches in the state, unsuccessfully opposed Miami's effort to bring the 1968 Republican National Convention there. An N.E.A. task force toured six of Florida's largest cities, urging civic and business leaders to lobby for a special legislative session devoted to school problems.
Tempers grew short. The F.E.A., Kirk charged, was "attacking our state, our children, our parents." The Governor, countered F.E.A. Executive Secretary Phil Constans, is "a charlatan." At a rally of 30,000 teachers in Orlando last August, Constans urged them to submit their resignations, which F.E.A. leaders could use if Kirk and legislators did not meet their demands, including smaller classes, more modern textbooks as well as pay hikes.