Free Republic

Shouldn’t Chicago just get it over with now and make Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey the mayor? He’s already the boss. And he’s the one acting like the mayor of Chicago. He dictates terms. And Mayor Lori Lightfoot? She’s that kid being bullied in the schoolyard by Sharkey and his pals. But there is no school, is there? There’s been almost no in-person learning for about a year. And remote instruction really isn’t school. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say it’s safe to open public schools, that children are being hurt by not being in class. And...

Chicago’s teacher’s union voted on Sunday to defy Chicago Public Schools administration and refuse to return to in-person teaching even though pupils are due back in classrooms on February 1st. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has been locked in a power struggle with the union for some time, with teachers and union brass insisting that it is not safe for teachers to return to classrooms, even though Chicago’s private schools have been in-person for months. At one point, the Chicago Teachers Union, or CTU, suggested that any plan to return to in-classroom teaching would be both racist and sexist. As the...

A Democrat bureaucrat finally said what we all have known to be the truth: the Wuhan virus limitations that Democrat politicians and bureaucrats have imposed on Americans will go away after the election because that was the plan all along. As 2019 ended, the Democrats knew that Trump was cruising to re-election. He'd kept his base because he kept his promises about the wall, trade deals, the military, abortion, and our Second Amendment rights. Best of all, he'd supercharged the economy with tax and regulation cuts. The surging economy enticed other Americans who had not voted for Trump in 2016...

With a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Janus v. AFCSME case expected any day, Connecticut’s public sector unions are trying to convince members not to opt-out of membership if the Supreme Court decides in favor of Mark Janus. The Connecticut State Employees Association and the American Federation of Teachers informed their members of a Freedom of Information request for union members’ contact information that originated out of Illinois. Leaders say this information could be used for an opt-out campaign in the wake of a positive Janus decision. ... A decision in favor of Janus would essentially make Connecticut a...

The father of a sixth-grade student from Paulo Intermediate School in Staten Island was outraged to see his 11-year-old daughter's assignment turned political. The student's English teacher is under fire after slipping an anti-Trump question into the girl's homework. The homework sheet contained a fill-in-the-blank portion where students were asked to provide vocabulary terms from a box of words for sentences about Donald Trump and Barack Obama. The lines read: 'President Trump speaks in a very superior and _________ manner insulting many people. He needs to be more __________ so that the American people respect and admire him.' The correct...

Ohio Senate candidate Ted Strickland joked about the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Monday, saying it came "at a good time" for union workers since he was unable to cast the deciding vote in a March case that ended up in a 4-4 deadlock. ... Strickland made the remarks in Cleveland, telling AFL-CIO members that Scalia's death "saved labor" from a terrible decision in the case, which could have dealt a blow to the ability of public-sector unions to collect fees from those who decide against joining the union and pay for collective bargaining activities. ... the...

Illinois' public school districts are roughly $20 billion in debt, a staggering figure fueled in part by decades of special deals in Springfield that have given districts exemptions so they can keep borrowing beyond limits set by law. Today, that debt exceeds long-term school borrowing in most other states. It equates to about $10,000 for every Pre-K to 12th-grade public school student in Illinois... All the borrowing is a drain on taxpayers who have to repay the debt, as well as school budgets that must steer billions of dollars annually to principal and interest payments — money that could be...

Illinois' 859 local school districts consume nearly two-thirds of the $27 billion in local property taxes collected across the state each year. Illinois has nearly 7,000 units of local government. That’s the highest count of any state in the nation, and the runner-up is not even close. One of those units of government is the Naperville Township Road District, where seven employees maintain less than 20 miles of road at a cost of $116,000 per mile. City officials have said they could maintain the same distance at half the cost, and have moved to take over the road district’s duties...

BOSTON, March 14, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - A bill that would allow adult biological males to shower or change alongside young girls has earned the endorsement of two prominent teachers unions in Massachusetts. State legislators are considering a bill that would specifically open all public restrooms, shower facilities, and locker rooms to transgender people. "An Act Relative to Gender Identity and Non-Discrimination" (H.B. 1577) would add "gender identity" to the state's protected classes able to access all public facilities, such as private changing areas. Lawmakers specifically exempted "lawfully sex-segregated facilities" when it passed a 2011 ordinance granting transgender people protected legal...

On January 1, California residents will have to accustom themselves to a number of new laws that will be implemented in the state. These are some the laws that will likely have the most profound effect: SB 172: High school seniors will receive their diploma whether or not they pass or even take an exit exam; the law also applies retroactively to students who have graduated since 2004; ... SB 707: Bans concealed firearms from college campuses and K-12 school grounds

The backers of the Jeffco recall effort (read: Teachers Union) campaigned on the lie that the Jeffco School Board was lacking in transparency. That is why yesterday's ruling that Jeffco United, the nonprofit engaged in the recall effort, violated campaign finance laws is so, so delicious. The organization made a $90,000 donation to the recall effort without disclosing its donors. According to an administrative law judge, that is verboten. Its punishment is not so simple. The organization must pay $1,000, register as a political committee, and (here is the delightful part) disclose its donors. While nonprofits are not typically required...

Over the past three school years, I unintentionally participated in a tragic educational case study on the west side of Harlem. I worked in the same building as the Wadleigh Secondary School, at which 0% of students in grades six through eight met state standards in math or English. That isn’t a typo: Not a single one of the 33 students passed either exam, though many of the questions are as straightforward as “What is 15% of 60?” Two floors above Wadleigh, I taught math at Success Academy Harlem West, a public charter school. The students there eat in the...

The 2015 American Federation of Teachers annual report shows a left-wing political machine humming on all cylinders — with teachers buying the gas. For the fiscal year ending June 30, the union reported $37.6 million in political activity and lobbying expenditures, a $12.7 million increase from the previous year. Even more political spending was tucked away elsewhere in AFT’s annual U.S. Department of Labor filing, reported as “Contributions, Gifts and Grants,” “General Overhead” or “Representational Activities.” AFT paid union president Randi Weingarten, one of the nation’s most prominent “progressive” activists, a total of $497,118. The union reported only 2 percent...

Emails released by the State Department Monday night show that the leader of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation's top unions, had direct access to the office of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Several emails show that requests from Tina Flournoy, union President Randi Weingarten's assistant at the time, for private meetings or phone calls were given priority by Clinton. For example, in a July 20, 2010, message to Clinton's private account "HDR22@clintonemail.com," Flournoy, using her American Federation of Teachers address, said: "Have a little issue I would like to discuss with you over the phone. Not...

The principal of an innovative West Harlem public school killed herself the day after her students took the state Common Core exams — which were later tossed out because she cheated ... Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, 49, of Teachers College Community School, jumped in front of a B train in the 135th Street station ... She was pulled out from under the train and taken to Harlem Hospital, where she died eight days later. The city Medical Examiner’s Office ruled it a suicide. The leap came at 9:20 a.m., less than 24 hours after her 47 third-graders wrapped up three days sweating...

City officials are pushing property-tax hikes, sales-tax hikes, and even a commuter tax and financial-transaction tax. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s wish for a $474 million sales-tax increase to help pay for the county’s growing pension debt has been granted. The hike pushes the sales-tax rate back up to 10.25 percent in Chicago – the same as it was when Preckwinkle took office in 2010. And that’s not the only new tax residents have to face. Preckwinkle is just the latest local leader to usher in a tax increase. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel created a new tax earlier this...

The state Education Department has rejected all 15 applications for new charter schools, including 12 in New York City, claiming they failed to meet academic standards. “We always look for quality and these applications didn’t measure up,” Education Department spokesman Dennis Tompkins said Wednesday. “We invited several of the applicants to reapply in June and we gave them suggestions on how to improve their applications.” But charter-school advocates weren’t buying it, saying the rejection of all the applicants reeked of pro-teacher-union politics. “The timing and nature of these blanket rejections should raise serious concerns for New Yorkers ... Mayor de...

A literature professor at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater has offered students in her courses extra credit for attending a Thursday evening rally against budget cuts to the University of Wisconsin System proposed by Gov. Scott Walker. The professor is Beth Lueck. On Wednesday, Lueck notified students in her freshman English class about the exciting extra-credit assignment. “UWW students have organized a non-partisan [sic] rally with students, faculty, and community members on the UW Whitewater campus against Gov. Walker’s proposed $300 million cut to the UW system, along with speaking out against attacks on shared governance and faculty,” Lueck wrote. Protest...

Taxpayers on hook for millions in retirement benefits unrelated to teaching . Thanks to a loophole created by the Illinois legislature, retired teacher union leaders are getting pension credit for the years they did union work after leaving the classroom. The arrangement has put taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in retirement benefits unrelated to teaching, and further drained an already overburdened state pension fund. ... The union bosses collecting the payouts had jobs at the National Education Association (NEA), the Illinois Education Association (IEA) and the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) after their teaching careers. Most got...