Our state was shaken to its core last year when our teachers decided to rebel against the unfair PEIA pricing and earnings that the teachers in our state face. After nine days of protesting around the state, the government finally relented and agreed to a pay raise and a fix to the PEIA system. This demonstration of standing firm with the unions set in motion a plethora of teachers from a wide range of school systems who demanded workable conditions. While these new strikes were taking hold of 2018 there was a shift in the attitude of the Senate. They began to slide in backhanded deals by adding damaging provisions, those of which were not agreed to in previous talks. The Senate attempted to add two major things to the pay raise bill; charter schools and a larger student to teacher ratio. When the general assembly began early in this year the teachers began to argue that these provisions were more damaging than helpful. Beginning the 19th of February the teacher unions announced that a work stoppage would occur until the bill was fixed. The peace talks from the 2018 strikes gave the unions sole power to call the schools out of session even though one county attempted to stay open (Putnam). By the end of the first day of striking the government offices had successfully proposed that they kill the bill but the unions resisted for one more day to make sure that the bill was not revived during talks the next day. On Wednesday night of that week, the unions announced that schools would be reopened the next day due to the cooperation of both the House & Senate. Shortly after, the previous bill was killed a new pay raise bill was proposed allowing for increased salaries for teachers, school service workers, and State Police was passed.