Free Republic

After Governor Gavin Newsom lifted his hand on February 15 to ease the indoor mask mandates for unvaccinated individuals—but not for the schools, students and parents continued to hammer him on this selective easing and his continued insistence on maintaining his emergency powers, which allow him to keep these COVID mandates in place.

Los Angeles school teacher Glenn Laird has been a union stalwart for almost four decades. He served as a co-chair of his school's delegation to United Teachers Los Angeles and proudly wore union purple on the picket line. But Laird is now suing to leave UTLA and demanding a refund of the dues the union has collected since his resignation request. His turning point came in July 2020 when the union, the second largest teachers union in the country, joined liberal activists to demand that Los Angeles defund the police in response to Black Lives Matter demonstrations. “We have to...

Leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) will vote in September on a declaration to call for an end of US aid to Israel. The resolution will also ask its members to vote in favor of “the international campaign for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against apartheid in Israel.” UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz sent a motion form to members that stated: I move that UTLA denounce the recent bombings in The West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli resulting in the deaths of hundreds of civilian people, mostly women and children. Palestinians have the right to self-determination free of violence and...

The United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), one of the Golden State's top teachers' unions, allegedly told members in a private Facebook group to be cognizant of posting pictures and details of spring break vacations. "Friendly reminder: If you are planning any trips for Spring Break, please keep that off of Social Media," a member posted in a private Facebook group. "It is hard to argue that it is unsafe for in-person instruction, if parents and the public see vacation photos and international travel." We have a diverse membership and they are able to post their views on personal Facebook pages...

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...

How would the nation's school system be different if teachers were paid like engineers? Secretary of Education Arne Duncan proposed last month that a significant boost in teacher salaries could transform public schools for the better by luring the country's brightest college graduates into the profession. But it's possible that teachers would rather have more job security than a higher salary. When Michelle Rhee controlled Washington D.C.'s schools, she offered up to $130,000 salaries to teachers if they would give up their union's tenure and seniority rules and agree to be paid based on their students' test scores. She could...

(CBSLA/AP) — Thousands of teachers who may go on strike against the nation’s second-largest school district next month marched and rallied in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday. United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union estimates 50,000 were there. The crowd had relief from overcrowding at the top of their wish list. **SNIP** UTLA teachers and supporters wore red for unity. They are seeing red over LAUSD’s reluctance to part with more green. “I want to see investment in the schools and in the kids,” said LAUSD parent Carmen Montecito. UTLA says if LAUSD would just tap in to its almost $2...

Education: L.A.'s mayor has blasted his old bosses for blocking reforms and protecting bad teachers. Could the unions' charmed political life finally be ending? We can only hope so. Antonio Villaraigosa was once an organizer for United Teachers of Los Angeles and a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association. Now mayor of Los Angeles, he has been a staunch liberal throughout his political career. So his speech last week at a Sacramento conference of the Public Policy Institute of California was bound to make news in a man-bites-dog way. Here's a sample of what he said about his old employer,...

...after 30 years of the institutionalized intellectual vandalism of our city’s most precious and needy children, when will we call it DELIBERATE regularity? If LAUSD was a private company, it would have collapsed a generation ago like the stinking necrotic tumor it is. LAUSD is a criminal enterprise – a $30 billion dollar (allegedly $11B operations, $21B construction) protection racket that extorts tax dollars under the pretext of improvement and higher scores. It makes schools I’ve seen in Calcutta, Rio, and Nairobi look like Cal Tech and MIT. ....LAUSD makes us lament the good old days before Brown v. Board...

(Get ready for more Gay, Lesbian and Transgender High Schools in Los Angeles!) With Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Roy Romer nearing retirement, the game has begun to find his replacement, and the name bandied about town the loudest and most consistently: Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg. The former school board and City Council member remains coy on the topic, but sources say she has been campaigning hard for months - even before Romer announced his intended early departure - to head up the second-largest school district in the nation. "It's not something I really want to do. However, depending on who they're...

Imagine for a moment that your next paycheck is short $53. You call your employer for an explanation and are told that the money is being used to fight for your employee rights and provide you with job protection. Sounds like a good deal, right? Not so fast. Mandatory union dues make this hypothetical scenario a reality for public-school teachers across the country. As employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, we are required to pay a monthly fee to United Teachers Los Angeles, regardless of whether or not we want to become members of the union....