Free Republic

The head of the L.A. teachers’ union is ambitious, audacious, and uncompromising. But critics blast her as a demagogue whose gamesmanship during the pandemic took a toll on the kids she claims to fight for. Cecily Myart-Cruz rarely sits for interviews. When she wants to communicate with the media, which is infrequently, she usually does so through a press release or, if the situation demands, a prerecorded video. For the most part, the famously contentious head of L.A.’s most powerful union—United Teachers Los Angeles—remains unapproachable, ensconced inside UTLA’s Wilshire Center headquarters where she controls the levers and dials of the...

Educators unions in Massachusetts are urging officials to change course on mask-wearing in schools after state officials on Friday said the prevention effort will be encouraged but not required. In guidance released Friday, the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education strongly encouraged, but did not require, unvaccinated students in grades K-12 or school staff to wear masks when inside school buildings this fall. Massachusetts Teachers Association President Merrie Najimy called it a “reckless decision.” “The guidance issued today by Governor Charlie Baker’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is no guidance at all. Rather than adopt a plan in...

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten was ripped after hedging on whether or not U.S. schools would reopen in the fall during a Wednesday interview on MSNBC. While having previously recommended that fully vaccinated individuals are not required to wear masks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed guidance following the spread of the new Delta variant of the virus, announcing that vaccinated people should return to wearing masks indoors and suggesting universal masking in schools. Weingarten called the guidance a "curveball," before suggesting that school reopenings this fall are not a done deal. TEACHER SLAMS ‘DEMORALIZING’...

The Columbia, Missouri, school board voted Monday to accept $5,000 to create lesson plans based on the widely discredited “1619 Project.” The Nikole Hannah-Jones work has been disputed for its theory that the founding of America was 1619, not 1776, and is inherently racist. Nevertheless, the mid-Missouri district is taking the cash to push the theories on students. KMIZ reported: The Columbia Board of Education consented to an agreement on Monday night with the Pulitzer Center for a grant that will pay teachers to develop a lesson plan using resources from The 1619 Project. No members of the school board...

The corrupt way in which California Governor Gavin Newsom rigged his recall election once again confirms why 1.7 million state voters signed the recall petition against him. Newsom and his fellow Democrats reduced the state to the Banana Republic of California with their shameful moves leading to the September 14 recall date. Ballots will begin flooding to Californians’ mail boxes — whether they asked for them or not under COVID-19 “emergency” rules — in mid-August because Newsom and his cronies changed the rules to move up the election by 30 days. ... Changing the date of the election to a...

If a child doesn't have to die to save grandma from coronavirus, why would we ever let that child die? A heartbreaking longread from ProPublica challenges the nation.One year ago, when lockdowns began, Americans were told we had to make a terrible choice akin to the climax of the superhero movies in which a villain threatens two things the hero loves, forcing him to choose which to save and which to sacrifice. We were told that millions of Americans were going to die from a Chinese supervirus, and the only way to reduce that death toll from inflating even higher...

Schools have been closed for the better part of a year now, for the putative reason that COVID-19 makes them unsafe. Only distance learning and Zoom and other online classes are safe enough for both teachers and kids, we’re told. Even though the science says otherwise, powerful teachers unions keep schools closed anyway. But why? Let’s start with a blunt fact: The teachers unions — including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), along with a host of radicalized local unions — don’t have your kids’ best interests at heart, despite their well-funded, slick propaganda...

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...

California Teachers Association (CTA), the most powerful public-sector union in the Golden State, issued a statement asserting that, due to coronavirus concerns, state schools should not open .. The following day, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) released a 17-page “research paper” in which concerns about coronavirus were secondary to sweeping political demands — including Medicare for All, guaranteed housing, a wealth tax, a millionaire’s tax, defunding the police, financial support for illegal immigrants, and a moratorium on charter schools. ... The Los Angeles Unified School District fell into line ... The circle was completed on July 17, when...

The Los Angeles Teachers Union says its schools can’t open in the fall unless charter schools are closed and the police are defunded.These are the Marxist loons teaching your kids. Oh, and they want more money.83% of teachers voted to not reopen in the fall.But they still expect to get paid.Just the News reported: United Teachers Los Angeles, a 35,000-strong union in the Los Angeles Unified School District, made those demands in a policy paper it released this week. The organization called on local authorities to “keep school campuses closed when the semester begins on Aug. 18.”The union outlined numerous major provisions it says...

Charter schools, homeschooling coming under heavy fire from teacher unions March 4, 2019 (American Thinker) — For the first time in a generation, there is labor unrest in America's public schools. Strikes in Los Angeles, Denver, Oakland, and West Virginia as well as threatened strikes in other localities are more than teacher unions flexing their muscles to get more pay and benefits for their members. At issue everywhere is the success of charter schools and the perceived threat they pose to the nation's public schools. Indeed, Ray Domanico of the Manhattan Institute points out that the increased activism of the...

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...

Teachers' unions are changing their tactics to maintain 'political clout' and salvage potential losses...Their new message? Anyone can join the union. A new membership category called “Community Allies,” open to “any person who demonstrates support in advancing the cause of public education.” It is of dubious legality, as unions are created to represent employees in a certain field, not to wield political influence. Yet, if this plan succeeds, the National Educators Association will be able to solicit these new “members” for PAC donations, a fact that could extend their political reach even further beyond where it is now. The National...

In Douglas County, Colorado, the front line of the fight for school choice and vouchers on the SCOTUS level, Republican voters outnumber Democrats about two to one. Yet until recently, Republican taxpayers .. paying about $1.25 million a year to fund Democrats’ political campaigns. How so? Most of the district’s 4,300 plus teachers belonged to the local American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, to which they paid about $1.25 million in dues annually, according to the union’s IRS filings. Since teachers’ salaries are paid by the county’s property tax payers, their dues come out of those salaries. So the $1.25...

What do the three pictured flags have in common? The first is the flag of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Estimates are that 40,000,000 to 60,000,000 people lost their lives under the rule of Stalin's iron fist. The third is the Chinese flag. Everyday hard-working people did not fare well in Mao's China either. Anywhere from 49,000,000 to 78,000,000 died under Mao's communist society. In the middle is the flyer that teachers' unions distributed to Colorado teachers with their Walk-Ins tool-kit encouraging Englewood's teachers to protest and walk out of class recently. Additionally, the teachers' unions are organizing...

In a tizzy after Betsy DeVos was confirmed as President Trump’s Sec. of Education, liberals on Twitter started considering the merits of homeschooling for the first time. The irony of invoking the freedom to choose where their kids go to school as a way to protest a pro-school choice Sec. of Education seemed lost on them. {..snip..}

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...

Chcago Public Schools officials told principals on Wednesday that the district is "short of the necessary cash for the remainder of the school year" partly because of a pension payment of nearly $700 million due this summer. ... Last month, principals had to absorb $26 million in midyear budget cuts to district-operated schools. Principals tapped internal accounts, cut planned technology and textbook purchases and didn't fill vacant positions to avert layoffs. On Wednesday, principals were told to hold off on $45 million budgeted for "non-personnel" expenses. The district said it wants to save another $10 million through a limit on...