Tag Archives: Teachers Unions

When The Grass Roots Wakes Up

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The mama and papa bears who have children in public schools are rapidly waking up. The warped history of America being taught, the push toward creating transgender students, and the sexual assaults that have occurred due to ridiculous bathroom policies have awakened parents. The lockdowns of last year opened parents’ eyes to what their children were being taught. Now parents are standing up for their children’s right to a good education.

The New York Sun posted an article today about the backlash against the garbage being taught to our children in public schools.

The article reports:

Parents who never imagined running for office battled to win seats on local school boards last week. They won some but lost many. Their fiercest opponents were the teachers unions. Where outside national groups, such as the 1776 Project PAC, stepped in with funding to help offset union power, the odds shifted and challengers did well.

The press portrayed these school board races as culture wars, but that’s only part of the truth. They were also struggles by parents to wrest control of the boards from self-serving unions. For decades, the unions have maintained a tight grip on who gets elected. No wonder school district decisions — about budgets, masking, COVID closures, curriculum, and teacher contracts — protect teachers first. Never mind what’s best for pupils.

That needs to change. In Albuquerque, the winning candidate, Courtney Jackson, told a local newspaper, “the board of education should be the kids’ union,” not a puppet of the teachers’ union. Jackson decided to run after watching the board discuss when to end lockdowns. The discussion focused entirely on what teachers wanted, never addressing the childrens’ needs. “Their interests were not brought up once.”

In Guilford, Connecticut, a small seacoast town, the Guilford Education Association, representing teachers, ran the show. In a questionnaire for school board candidates, the union’s number one question asked candidates to pledge support for “collective bargaining rights.”

The article concludes:

Why the explosion in parental engagement this year? Parents sitting at the kitchen table listening to Zoom school saw what their children were being taught — and not taught. That’s what happened in Montclair, NJ.

In Montclair, the mayor, Sean Spiller, serves as president of the state’s largest teachers union but also appointed the school board — a blatant conflict of interest. The board negotiates the teachers’ contract. Last Tuesday, the town voted 70% to replace mayoral control with an elected board.

That’s an improvement, but electing the board won’t guarantee students become the priority. Not while teachers unions outgun local parents groups. Organizations like Moms for Liberty, now with chapters in 32 states, will make the difference.

Many school districts will elect board members sometime in the spring, instead of on Election Day. That’s by design to keep the public in the dark that an election is even happening and discourage turnout.

Parents and other concerned citizens have roughly half a year to gird for these upcoming contests. Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, told a news outlet that “Parents are going to right this ship, and this election was only the beginning.”

It’s dangerous to wake a mama bear.

How Things Actually Work

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On November 5th, The Daily Signal posted an article about the proposed child care subsidies and universal pre-kindergarten.

The article reports:

Proposed federal spending on these two early-childhood programs add up to $400 billion through 2028, a large chunk of the newest framework of the so-called Build Back Better legislative package released by the Biden administration totaling about $1.75 trillion.

The universal preschool provision would fund and regulate government-approved pre-K available for all 3- and 4-year-old children in states that apply for the funding. The child care subsidies cap the amount that families would pay at no more than 7% of their income on day care by giving families certificates to pay for government-approved providers.

While these policies are undesirable for all parents and children for many reasons, one of the arguments from those who favor universal pre-K and child care programs is that the costs will be more than offset by the tax dollars paid by mothers who will then be able to join the formal labor force and who otherwise would not have.

Note that only government-approved providers will be subsidized.
I wonder if that will include church-related daycare. The argument that these programs would pay for themselves does not take into account the fact that many mothers would prefer to stay home with their children. Unless the program provided for that option, it could be considered discriminatory against stay-at-home mothers. The obvious question is, “Why does the government want to be the one to raise our children?”

The article concludes:

Gallup polling shows that half of mothers with a child under the age of 18 would prefer to stay home with their children if they could. And 57% of families prefer for a parent or relative to be the main source of child care.

These new programs stack the deck against those preferred options.

Speaking of what parents want, families of about 1.5 million school-aged kids decided they want more control of K-12 education and less government interference in schooling.

The recent winning gubernatorial campaign of Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia pressed hard on the pain point parents have with their government-run schools. All of the evidence points to a desire for less government intervention in the lives of their children, not more.

Of course, any talk of child care programs should center around children. And the same 2008 Quebec study that government child care proponents tout for finding positive effects on the maternal labor force also finds significant negative health and behavioral outcomes for the participating children.

The notion that central planners have found a “free lunch” in child care and pre-K is not supported by the evidence. Universal pre-K and child care subsidies would be bad for children, families, and taxpayers.

The main beneficiary would be the teachers unions, who would have a steady new supply of union members, thanks to what would effectively amount to the K-12 system becoming a P3-12 system.

This is another example of follow the money. The teachers’ union funnels a lot of money into Democrat campaign coffers. They are looking for a return on that investment.

 

The Long-Term Cost Of The Covid School Shutdown

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Om Wednesday The Daily Wire posted an article about the long-term cost of the Covid school shutdown. Keep in mind that the science shows that children are less at risk from Covid than they are from the regular flu.

The article reports:

A group of leading economists is predicting that American economic productivity will be reduced by 3.6% over the next three decades as a result of COVID-induced school closures.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model — a nonpartisan public policy research initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School — found that a lack of workforce development due to the school closures will severely limit long-term economic growth in the United States.

According to the PWBM model, an extra month of schooling added on to the end of this year would offer a 16-to-1 return for the United States economy:

PWBM estimates that the learning loss from school closures reduced GDP by 3.6 percent in 2050. Extending the 2021-22 school year by one month would cost about $75 billion nationally but would limit the reduction in GDP to 3.1 percent. This smaller reduction in GDP produces a net present value gain of $1.2 trillion over the next three decades, equal to about a $16 return for each $1 invested in extending the 2021-22 school year.

Because labor productivity is “an integral component of the production of goods, services, and wealth in an economy,” students affected by “reduced education and lower productivity” will be a “drag on the future GDP of the United States for decades in the future.”

The article concludes:

The economists also found that the effects of school closures are more pronounced upon low-income students. By 2050, disadvantaged primary and secondary schoolers will see their wealth reduced by 15.2% and 11.2%; for non-disadvantaged primary and secondary schoolers, the drops in wealth are 14.4% and 10.7%.

The analysts point out that extending the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school year would soften the impact of school closures; with the extensions, long-term GDP would be lessened by 2.7% instead of 3.6%.

Many teachers unions — particularly in large urban areas — are a leading force in delaying state education officials’ school reopening plans.

In January, a Chicago Teachers Union leader told educators to refrain from returning to work over concerns about school buildings’ air filtration. 

In March, United Teachers Los Angeles told members of a private Facebook group to avoid posting spring break pictures online, as “it is hard to argue that it is unsafe for in-person instruction, if parents and the public see vacation photos and international travel.”

Note that low-income students were more impacted by the shut-downs. One side effect of the school closures was to widen the gap between the lower-income students and the higher-income students. Widening that gap and eliminating the middle class is one tool Marxists use to destabilize a country. We need to look very carefully at the events of the past 18 months and the people behind the decisions that were made as we attempt to move forward as a country.