Free Republic

New York mayor Bill de Blasio insisted on Thursday that the city was prepared to reopen its public school district, one day after the city’s largest teachers union threatened to strike if its demands regarding the reopening were not met. Educators “know kids are suffering right now. They need support, they need what educators can give them, they need positive adult role models and counselors….They need that desperately,” de Blasio said at a press conference. “It cannot be done the same way remotely even slightly.” The mayor continued, “We may be talking about a whole school year we don’t have...

Uber and Lyft are preparing to suspend their ride-hailing services in California beginning on Friday morning unless an appeals court rules at the last minute they cannot be forced to treat their drivers as employees, rather than independent contractors. Lyft in a blog post on Thursday said it would suspend its California operations at midnight. Uber in a blog post said it would have to temporarily shut down unless the appeals court intervenes.

My company uses a lot of independent contractors. I have employees but, given the nature of the work my firm does (short term projects), it makes more sense for me to hire specialists to perform certain tasks rather than bring on a new employee. I have been using essentially the same group of independent contractors for the past 10 years. Some of them work as little as 10 hours a month, others as much as 30 hours a week depending on the jobs we have. Clearly, I'm not the only small business doing this. Sites like UpWork, Fiverr, Guru and...

Prominent Democrat politicians have started making huge concessions on reopening schools. Back in May, Democrats pounced after President Trump supported reopening. Despite the data finding precisely the opposite, it quickly became the Democrat-media complex line that opening schools this fall would be preposterously dangerous to children and teachers.In July, when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a plan to put the city’s 1.1 million school kids back in schools half the week and “online learning” the rest of the week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo picked a public fight with him, saying, “If anybody sat here today...

A Pennsylvania public school teacher has complained that at-home instruction would impinge on teachers’ abilities to “destabilize a kid’s racism or homophobia or transphobia” and host discussions about racism, sexuality, and gender. The coronavirus-fueled transition to online learning has shifted the domain for pushing far-left propaganda on American students from classrooms to homes, and some teachers – specifically Matthew Kay of Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy – are frustrated the shift will complicate their ability to spew their radical beliefs. Kay took to Twitter to explain how the prospect of parents listening to class discussion could “damage” conversations about race, gender,...

They get an A+ for creativity. Teachers brought along visual aids, including handmade coffins and a guillotine, while protesting Mayor Bill de Blasio’s schools reopening plan in Lower Manhattan on Monday afternoon. About 200 protesters — many of them educators, parents and students — marched from the United Federation of Teachers headquarters to the NYC Department of Education offices near Foley Square. “We demand safe schools,” they chanted. The crafty group lugged a DIY yellow guillotine, with “DOE” painted on the blade and “US” written where the head would go. They also carried at least two boxes designed to look...

Politicizing public school instruction marks a disturbing new development that jeopardizes the welfare of kids. Our children need to go to school. Like many places around the country, this has been a hot, lonely summer for kids in North Carolina. The governor shut down playgrounds, pools, and camp, nearly every activity that means summer to a child. But, hey, school was just around the corner — or so we hoped.Even with the prospect of staggered entry and wearing masks, at least kids could look forward to a live teacher in a real classroom with actual books. No longer would they...

In an abject show of selfishness and political bias, teachers unions are trying to hold the country hostage over baseless COVID-19 fears. It’s not enough that public school teachers and the college professors who train them are increasingly prone to teaching leftist absurdities like “2+2=5” or presenting the mendacious 1619 Project as legitimate American history. Teachers unions are now trying to blackmail the entire country into meeting a set of leftist political demands for reopening the schools this fall, using COVID-19 as their excuse.Of course, the pandemic certainly presents challenges for re-opening schools, but other sectors of society have managed...

For most Americans the coronavirus is a scourge. But teachers unions seem to think it’s also an opportunity—to squeeze more money from taxpayers and put their private and public charter school competition out of business. That’s the only way to read the extraordinary effort by national and local union leaders to keep their members from returning to the classroom. Last week Randi Weingarten, leader of the powerful American Federation of Teachers, declared support for “safety strikes” if local unions deem insufficient the steps their school districts are taking to mitigate Covid-19. And on Monday an alliance of teachers unions and...

Ten teachers unions, the Democratic Socialists of America, and other groups are organizing a National Day of Resistance to protest for demands including no reopening of schools, police-free schools, and a “massive infusion” of federal funds while banning new charter schools.Over 20 cities across the United States are scheduled to have protests tomorrow, including Chicago, Dallas, New York City, and Los Angeles. Prominent teachers unions are supporting the “actions” including the Chicago Teachers Union and United Teachers Los Angeles.  Twitter link   The protests are being formed to stop the reopening of schools until the ambiguous demand of “no reopening...

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...

On no pretext of benefit to Students, Teachers are united in beating back Charter Schools, the Gig Workers of K-12 education, like Dr. Seuss' Sneetches with Stars against those without. Empty Public Schools will get full funding; Charter Schools will get nothing. Teacher Unions imagine they are otherwise secure in keeping their strangle-hold over Federal education money. Labor Unions overall are almost dwindled down next to nothing along with their old Bluebeard marriage to American Corporate dinosaurs gone to extinction with globalism. But the Teacher Monopoly Unions, like the Post Office, imagine they can have the secret of immortality, perpetually...

The pandemic has left everyone with lots of give and take. In educating our children, however, don't let teachers' unions take from our children to give to themselves. As the Wuhan virus pandemic persists and wild rhetoric along with it, teachers unions are threatening to strike if schools reopen, but they’re also pushing to limit online teaching. These unions have long incentivized all the wrong things in education, but demanding teachers be paid to do virtually nothing is a new low. As a New York Times headline announced this week, teachers are “Wary of Returning to Class, and Online Instruction...

A group of Iowa teachers have sent their own mock obituaries to their governor in hopes she'll revisit plans for reopening schools. "I'm very scared," 7th grade teacher Kerry Finley of Iowa City told "Good Morning America." "Are we going to wear scrubs? Are they going to amend the dress code? If we are going to do this, we are going to have to do this the way the hospitals did. We need training. We can't just say, 'OK, go back.'" Finley is one of several educators who wrote their obituaries after art teacher Jeremy Dumkrieger shared his own obit...

The president of the American Federation of Teachers warned Wednesday that strikes due to unsafe working conditions in schools were possible in Texas, Florida and Arizona — all states with high coronavirus infection rates. “If people die while they are educating kids, you eviscerate any credibility that you would have going forward about whether or not a school is safe,” Randi Weingarten told POLITICO. Earlier this month the American Federation of Teachers, which represents over 1.7 million educators, adopted a resolution which demands the only schools that should reopen for in-person instruction should be in places where the infection rate...

As the nation heads toward a chaotic back-to-school season, with officials struggling over when to reopen classrooms and how to engage children online, teachers’ unions are playing a powerful role in determining the shape of public education as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage. Teachers in many districts are fighting for longer school closures, stronger safety requirements and limits on what they are required to do in virtual classrooms, while flooding social media and state capitols with their concerns and threatening to walk off their jobs if key demands are not met. On Tuesday, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union raised...

he union representing resident assistants at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst says the plan to reopen residence halls this fall while in the middle of the pandemic is “suicidal,” and says its members will have no part of it without increased precautions for their safety. Members of the Resident Assistants and Peer Mentors Union, part of United Auto Workers, Local 2322, on Monday were nearly unanimous in opposing plans to reopen the residences calls with the start of the fall semester. According to a statement, 95% of members voted to authorize the union’s bargaining team to formally refuse to...

Scientists are yet to find a single confirmed case of a teacher catching coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the world, a leading epidemiologist has said. Mark Woolhouse, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Edinburgh University, offered reassurance to staff preparing for the full reopening of schools next month. Professor Woolhouse, a member of the UK government’s scientific advisory group, Sage, said that in hindsight closing schools in March was probably a mistake, but the limited role children play in spreading the virus only became clear further along the infection curve.

A North Carolina teachers' union is calling for the implementation of universal health care and welfare benefits for illegal immigrants in order to reopen schools in the fall. Just days after the Durham Association of Educators (DAE) issued a statement railing against the school district's reopening plan, Durham Public Schools voted unanimously to hold all classes virtually for at least the first nine weeks of the school year. Included in the DAE statement was a call to adopt a variety of far-left policy goals before holding in-person classes, including Medicare for All and "direct income support regardless of immigration status."...

When public school districts have a monopoly, they can easily justify delaying school or implementing extended closures. School choice is the solution. Across the country, school districts are announcing delayed openings or full-on closures for the semester or year. In its place, they will offer virtual learning as they did in the spring.Despite President Trump’s clear opposition to this (or because of it), school district leaders insist that a risk of a COVID-19 outbreak is too great to safely reopen schools. This is doubtful, seeing that schools would have to be “guaranteeing that no one will get sick if schools...