'They're Marxist': Oklahoma's top education official wages war against teachers unions

Fox News ^ | 5/21/23 | Kendall Tietz

[Libloather]

Oklahoma's top education official is waging a war on teachers unions that he said will completely overhaul the state's education system.

Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's State Superintendent, recently sparked backlash from his Democratic opponents when he called teacher unions "terrorist organizations" during a state congressional hearing earlier this month. The meeting ended after intense questioning from Democrats who objected to many of his claims.

"They're not advocating for kids," he told Fox News Digital. "They're not advocating for teachers really, either. All they're doing is lining their pocketbooks so that union leadership gets richer and richer, and they continue to fight to keep education down. I am absolutely not going to negotiate with folks that take on terrorist means to get what they want, which is destruction of our schools."

Walters has been an outspoken critic of teachers unions and their role in keeping schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as what he says is an outsized focus on politics instead of education.

"The teachers union advocated for school shutdowns," he said. "They're advocating for critical race theory to be taught in their classrooms. They're advocating for radical gender theory to be in our classrooms. Here in Oklahoma they're fighting us on school choice."

"I will never back down to the teachers unions," he added. "I will never back down to their leadership, which continues to push this radical agenda and terrorize the classroom. I will continue to stand with parents, teachers and kids across the state."

He said union leaders have asked him to stop discussing their organizations because they are losing membership as a result, but he said his end goal is to hold them accountable.

"They utilize power through the money that they take from teachers paychecks, and they push people behind the scenes," he added.

[itsahoot]

You'll get no argument from me but...do republicans even have a platform anymore?

Yep. We suck less than them, most of the time.

[itsahoot]

So-called conservatives who sit on their fat asses

They also don't enter teaching as a profession.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” ~Ronald Reagan

[sauropod]

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