This past October, television cameramen gathered at the gates of Miami Edison Senior High, a Zone school in hard-pressed Little Haiti. The news crews trained their lenses on Shawn Beightol, a slender, bearded man waving a piece of paper and wiping sweat from his brow. A veteran chemistry teacher at Michael Krop Senior High School in North Miami-Dade, Beightol was agitating for increased education funding, including a more substantive pay raise for teachers; he was also campaigning to become the next leader of the county's teachers' union. (The election will take place next month.) The contract then under negotiation — ratified two months later —... More >>>