Free Republic

California’s statewide teachers’ union sent a letter June 27 to the Chino Valley Unified School board criticizing its recent decision to allow only government flags on school property—and threatening to take legal action against the board if the policy is not reversed. The board voted 4–1 June 15 to allow only the California and U.S. flags on school property. The California Teachers Association—with more than 300,000 members—in partnership with local union Associated Chino Teachers alleges in the letter the decision violates teachers’ right to free speech under the First Amendment as well as a state employment law. The union also...

A growing number of states are adopting a comprehensive new type of school choice program that would pose a threat to public schools if many students were to leave them for a private education. Eight states—including Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia—have approved “universal” or near-universal school choice laws since 2021. They open the door completely to school choice by making all students, including those already in private schools and from wealthy families, eligible for about $7,000 to $10,000 in state funding each year for their education. What’s more, most of these states have also enacted education savings accounts, or...

There are many reasons why so many US public schools remained persistently closed for well over a year, but at the top of the list is Randi Weingarten. She is the President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and served as the self-appointed and media-anointed spokesperson for teachers’ unions throughout the pandemic. Weingarten appeared regularly across national media outlets for well over two years, relentlessly touting the dangers of public schools and the risk to teachers from in-person instruction. She also painted anyone who advocated for schools to open as heartless and cruel. Now that it’s become clear what...

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...

The nation’s largest teachers union recommends that educators begin teaching the concepts of preferred personal pronouns and gender identity starting in pre-kindergarten. "When you look at elementary school students, many people think they are too young to talk about pronouns,” said panelist Matthew Powell, a member of the National Education Association’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee, during a webinar last summer. “However, by asking students their [preferred] pronouns at a young age,” Powell added, so-called education support professionals “can make room for students who may be exploring gender identity and show everyone [that] gender identity should not just be...

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis has signaled that he will make a priority of passing a long-debated proposal that would prevent teachers from having union dues deducted from their paychecks. DeSantis supported the proposal Monday during a speech in Orlando, describing it as “paycheck protection legislation.” The Florida Education Association and other teachers unions backed DeSantis’ Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, in the Nov. 8 election, with Miami-Dade County teachers union leader Karla Hernandez serving as Crist’s running mate. DeSantis also has battled unions in recent years about issues such as reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. During what was described...

The nation’s largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), declined by at least 59,000 members during the 2021-2022 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) disclosure reports. The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, lost 40,107 members while the AFT, the nation’s second largest teachers union, declined by 19,078, according to the DOL reports. The decline comes as public schools added 95,000 educators from September 2021 to 2022. ... The decline in the NEA’s membership leaves the union with 2,496,627 million educators, the lowest union membership since 2006, 74...

The National Education Association (NEA) appears to be playing clean-up after a tweet Saturday drew harsh criticism for claiming that educators "know better than anyone" what students need. The NEA, one of the largest teachers unions in the United States, later turned off replies to the tweet, but not before 5,000 people responded, including former education secretary Betsy DeVos, who simply stated "You misspelled parents." The National Education Association took issue with DeVos’ tweet, and noted the role of parents in shaping their children’s education. "Together, families and educators are an essential team for advocating for the resources and opportunities...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer discussed a report by the Government Accountability Institute on spending by the National Education Association (NEA) and argued that “The IRS ought to be all over” the organization and examining their nonprofit tax-exempt status. Schweizer said, “I mean, look, we’ve known for a long time, for decades, that the teachers’ unions tend to be left of center. But what’s happened is they’ve become more and more political and less interested in actually doing what their stated purpose is,...

In 2021, the two largest teachers’ unions in the country collected over half a billion dollars from their members, and almost all of their political spending went to leftist causes. While 57 percent of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) membership is either Republican or independent, nearly 100 percent of political spending of the $575 million in dues was funneled into far-left politics.

Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that government employees could not be forced to pay a union to keep their job. The top four public labor unions in the U.S. lost more than 200,000 members since the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that government employees could not be forced to pay a union to keep their job, a new report shows that. The Commonwealth Foundation released the report, which found that the top four public labor unions – AFT, AFSCME, NEA, and SEIU – lost nearly 219,000 members altogether since the Janus v. AFSCME ruling. “The Janus decision to end forced...

President Joe Biden’s claim that AR-15s fire bullets at a velocity that is five times higher than that of other guns is being shot down by people who know guns. Biden repeated the claim Friday in a speech to the National Education Association teachers union, even though it has been repeatedly debunked. Several rifles and even some handguns fire bullets at a higher velocity than the 2,700-3,100 feet per second of AR-15s. “The speed of the bullet is five times that that comes out of the muzzle of most weapons,” Biden said, describing the popular hunting rifle as a “weapon...

President Biden shocked viewers of his Friday speech to teachers when he recognized an audience member and told the crowd, “She was 12, I was 30.” Biden lit up social media with the confounding and seemingly inappropriate aside. He did not say what he did when he was 30 and the woman was a preteen. “You gotta say hi to me,” Biden said mid-speech at the National Education Association headquarters in DC. “We go back a long way. She was 12, I was 30. But anyway, this woman helped me get an awful lot done.” The audience of teachers and...

The National Education Association is reportedly equipping teachers in Ohio with QR-code badges that direct students to how-to guides promoting “non-binary” gender identities, “queer sex,” and the idea that “transgender men” can become pregnant, among other things. Conservative writer Christopher Rufo shared the findings on Wednesday. He noted that local news outlet ABC 6 reported that the National Education Association and the Hilliard Education Association in Ohio have been equipping staff in the school district with QR code badges that direct people to the NEA’s LGBTQ+ Caucus website. They are provided with resources from “gender activist” organizations, including The Trevor...

FIRST ON FOX: Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, a Democrat, told teachers’ unions that they would be his "first" call for education policy should he get elected. While taking questions during a January speaking gig at a Pennsylvania State Education Association Political Institute event, Fetterman said that, if elected, he would be a staunch ally of teachers’ unions. His comments had not been reported previously. "I’m not going to sit up here and pretend that I know exactly what’s needed, I’m going to turn to you," Fetterman said. "If you send me to Washington, D.C., you’ll be the first people...

The New Jersey branch of the National Education Association is running an advertisement condemning concerned mothers and fathers as 'extremists.'(LifeSiteNews) — One of the strange and unintended effects of the Covid lockdowns was that for the first time many parents were exposed to what educators were teaching their kids. Many were shocked, and the resulting backlash torqued an already-growing parental rights movement rooted in opposition to LGBT indoctrination and Critical Race Theory (CRT). At first, progressives insisted that parents, if not lying, were simply following for the fevered conspiracy theories of raving right-wing pundits. Then along came activists like Christopher...

Public schools even for the youngest children are becoming playgrounds for the woke, featuring drag queens, transgender closets, Critical Race Theory and more, but if you say a word about it, the National Education Association (NEA) will destroy you. That is the message of a new YouTube ad from the NEA’s New Jersey chapter. According to Fox News Thursday, “the ad flips back and forth between colorful photos of teachers with students and black-and-white photos of parents, arguing that the latter are trying to fuse politics with education.” Which, of course, the hard-Left, thoroughly politicized NEA itself would never ever...

Potemkin villages” refer to the magnificent facades that Crimean governor Grigory Potemkin supposedly built in front of decrepit villages to impress Catherine the Great on her grand tour of the region. Today, there’s no better term than “Potemkin schools” to describe how educrats run public education in New York City. ... teachers at William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens complained that administrators forced them to pass failing students. Last year, a long-stalled investigation revealed that Maspeth High School in Queens repeatedly faked passing grades. In 2020, at Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill High School where more than 70% of the students...

As a teacher, I attended the National Education Association convention last week, and my worst fears were confirmed. Public schools are no longer a safe place for families who hold traditional values or for families who believe gender (as in male/female binary) is biologically determined. It was also evident that the teachers union is a lobbying arm of the Democratic Party.

The National Education Association is seeking to change the word “mother” to be more inclusive to the LGBTQIA+ community. Fox News reported the resolution would change the word to “birthing parent.” The proposed resolution stated, “Using this contract language, members need not worry about how a Board of Education/solicitor defines ‘maternity leave,’ ‘mother,’ and/or ‘father’; the language is an inclusive reflection of how LGBTQIA+ members build families.” The outlet noted the resolution, NBI 63, was not brought to a vote. The news of the resolution sparked criticism on Twitter. Nicole Neily of Parents Defending Education told Fox News that “normal...