Posted on 05/12/2023 6:55:58 AM PDT by george76
As Colorado kids struggle to recoup learning losses post-pandemic, teachers unions keep proving that’s not their priority. Standing at the center is the state’s most prominent teachers union — the Colorado Education Association.
At the CEA’s statewide conference on April 22, the organization — which claims to represent teachers — took a brazen, ideological stance when it passed a resolution attacking capitalism for “inherently exploit(ing) children, public schools, land, labor, and resources.”
Never mind how America’s free enterprise system enables businesses and homeowners to pour billions of dollars into our state’s education system through taxation, or the philanthropic contributions of businesses and individuals. They proceeded to blame capitalism for systemic racism, climate change, patriarchy, education inequality and income inequality.
As radical union member Tim Hernandez proudly tweeted: “CEA may now publicly advocate & lobby for anti-capitalist policies at the CO Capitol.” This jibes with the intent of the resolution’s sponsor, Bryan Lindstrom, a self-described “anarcho-socialist” who ran for Aurora City Council in 2021. “We are constantly using band-aids and minor reforms…but the system itself is the problem, and it needs to be named,” he explained.
Lindstrom previously tweeted that his pension was “literally the only thing keeping me from complete revolution” and “critical race theory is a component of everything I do.” As radical as Lindstrom and Hernandez’s political beliefs are, it’s shocking to see Colorado’s teachers unions explicitly embrace their extreme ideology. At a time when union leaders want parents to believe they aren’t politicizing schools, this resolution belies that claim.
Consider Woodland Park, a community of 8,000 residents located on Pikes Peak’s north slope in super-conservative Teller County. Woodland Park’s union leaders abhor the school board’s support for charter schools — an educational option widely embraced by parents. They oppose the board’s adoption of “American Birthright” standards — a traditional approach to social studies curriculum that eschews the CEA’s overemphasis on racialized and anti-capitalist ideologies.
They are aghast that the board hired Ken Witt, a former president of Colorado’s second largest school district, Jefferson County’s, as superintendent — because he doesn’t support their politics. “As soon as Ken Witt became superintendent, you saw union activity ramp up immediately,” observed Sean Pekron, a teacher at Woodland’s Merit Academy who previously spent 23 years at Woodland Park High School.
Witt’s tenure began on Jan. 1, months after a failed attempt to recall the school board. By Jan. 30, a staff meeting organized by Woodland Park Education Association (WPEA), a CEA affiliate, revealed clear coordination with other unions to further resist.
“The WPEA has filed for a ‘crisis assessment’ from the CEA,” WPEA President Nate Owen stated, per a recording I obtained. “If we get that crisis grant, there will be some additional funding coming our way to allow us to do some more things.” Leaders from Pikes Peak and Colorado Springs Education Associations participated in the meeting. Owen said they will bring in an operative from JeffCo (Ashlyn Maher), who “led Students against Ken Witt” when Witt was JeffCo’s board president.
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Witt recently ended the union’s needless automatic deduction from members’ payroll. He scrubbed a makeshift requirement that district and union leaders “meet and confer” for districtwide teacher contract negotiations — pursuant to a “Conditions of Employment” document that’s operated as a quasi-collective bargaining agreement and provided considerable negotiating authority to WPEA. Thing is, WPS doesn’t have a collective bargaining agreement with WPEA — which only represents 30% of Woodland’s teachers — and it appears the school board never agreed to these conditions. (The practice was also effectively nullified when the board ratified a compensation plan and 8% teacher pay increase last June.)
Let’s be real: The teachers unions aren’t converging on Woodland Park and stoking anxiety because of extraordinary educational concerns. They’re doing so because their influence and control are threatened by a school board executing on the academic-centered agenda they ran on.
School districts everywhere are heavily influenced by teachers unions, which seem to think it’s their turf. A longtime ally of the CEA, former state Sen. Evie Hudak — who resigned in 2013 to avoid being recalled — is a vice-president of Colorado’s Parent Teacher Association. In that capacity, she often testifies on bills in alignment with the union and advances a consistent educational and political agenda.
In JeffCo Schools, Hudak formally advises and helps lead the district and school accountability committees, a conflict of interest given her PTA role. She wrote the state’s school accountability law. Yet, as I’ve reported previously, Hudak has counseled accountability committee members — parents who trust her as an ex-legislator — that they can ignore the law. “While there’s the law, there’s no DAC police,” she advised one accountability committee member.
In Denver, union influence runs especially deep. The school board faces a complete collapse of credibility amid disastrous school safety and discipline breakdowns. All seven members of the board were union-backed candidates — including the irascibly controversial Tay Anderson. Anderson led the effort to remove school resource officers and weaken disciplinary policies. He’s become the biggest lightning rod and greatest source of dysfunctional distraction in Colorado’s largest school district. Yet the union has supported him — to the tune of $65,000 in campaign contributions.
Let’s be clear: The teachers unions don’t care that only 5% of Denver’s Black and Brown third-graders can read at grade level.
Instead, they fear that the success of Woodland Park poses a threat to the very existence of the union — an entity wholly dependent upon indefensible educational outcomes to grow its membership, advance its ideological agenda and entrench its political power.
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
Exactly. It has nothing to do with education.
teacher’s unions will start caring about the kids after the kids start paying union dues......
I remember Albert Shanker as the head of the teachers union, back in the day.
His opinion was that the teachers union would adopt the auto workers union philosophy. That the union simply provided the workers. “Quality of the finished product” was Management’s responsibility.
We are witnessing the fulfilment of that philosophy. Any talk of things being “for the children” is simply PR.
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