Free Republic

Well yeah, the Los Angeles United School District teachers will continue to get paid for providing “remote” teaching lessons online. Unlike the parents who won’t be able to return to work since the little darlings will be home all day. My problem with teachers’ unions has always been that they are a tax payer funded entity (via teacher-paid dues) serving as a political entity that lobbies for progressive positions. In the past they’ve at least pretended to be “all about the children.” But the truth eventually slips out as it did recently when the United Teachers Los Angeles, a...

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s next school year will begin Aug. 18, but students won’t be returning to their classrooms, District Superintendent Austin Beutner announced Monday. “While the new school year will begin in August, it will not start with students at school facilities,” Beutner said. “The health and safety of all in the school community is not something we can compromise. The news about the spread of the virus continues to be of great concern.” The superintendent said the five-month school closure has been the longest in recent history for the nation’s second-largest public school system, but the...

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." -snip Yet the union goes even farther than those requests, calling for "local support" in the form of defunded police departments and the shuttering of charter schools.  Police violence "is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people, and is a serious public health and moral issue," the union writes. The document calls on authorities to "shift the astronomical...

Teachers' unions across the United States are resisting a push from the Trump administration and House Republicans to reopen schools amid the coronavirus pandemic, instead opting for remote learning that experts say presents major risks to children. President Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut federal funding for schools that fail to reopen in the fall, echoing a recent bill proposed by Reps. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) and Tom Tiffany (R., Wisc.). Multiple states have followed suit—Florida announced Wednesday that it will require schools to hold in-person classes beginning in August, and Gov. Ralph Northam (D., Va.) in June unveiled a...

Destroy the ‘Public’ Education System By David Harsanyi July 7, 2020 6:30 AM It’s largely a left-wing propaganda machine that funds Democratic politicians and entrenches racial segregation. ‘Public” schools have been a catastrophe for the United States. This certainly isn’t an original assertion, but as we watch thousands of authoritarian brats tearing down the legacies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, it’s more apparent than ever. State-run schools have undercut two fundamental conditions of a healthy tolerant society. First, they’ve created millions of civic illiterates who are disconnected from long-held communal values and national identity. Second, they’ve exacerbated the very...

MANHATTAN - As the coronavirus continues to spread around the country, New York is preparing for the financial crisis left in its wake. Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Balsio issued a stark warning if the city doesn't get financial help. "If we ever got to the point of having to activate that layoff plan for the fall, we're talking 22,000 employees, that's a vast, vast number of people," de Blasio said during a press conference. For weeks protesters have called on the mayor and city council to defund the NYPD. With the 2021 city budget due next week, hundreds of people...

For decades, there has been widespread anxiety over how, when or whether the educational test score gap between white and non-white youngsters could be closed. But that gap has already been closed by the Success Academy charter school network in New York City. Their predominantly black and Hispanic students already pass tests in mathematics and English at a higher rate than any school district in the entire state. That includes predominantly white and Asian school districts where parental income is some multiple of what it is among Success Academy students. New York’s charter school students are predominantly black and Hispanic,...

For my internet video this week, my staff showed me clips of violent cops. It's not just Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes -- it's the other cops who just watch. It's the Buffalo cops who floored a protester and simply walked by as he lay unconscious, bleeding out of his ear. It's a cop in Philadelphia, swinging his baton into protestors, the Atlanta police needlessly tasing two college students, the NYC cops beating a bicyclist and dozens of cases where police lied about what they'd done until body cams or cellphone cameras revealed the...

The focus of so much of the recent George Floyd protests has been on police violence against demonstrators and others, but in New York City, the union that represents NYPD detectives is turning the tables. "If you assault a New York City Detective and there are no consequences from the criminal justice system, we have to have other means to protect our detectives," said Paul DiGiacomo, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, which has represented some 19,000 current and former detectives. He vowed to sue any protestor, rioter or looter who attacked its members. "It's heart-wrenching because they are out...

Does every town and city in our country have a teachers union? What if all of the red voting towns and cities kicked out the teachers unions out of their schools? We would not be empowering them with our tax money and our schools would not be places of leftist indoctrination.

No one wants to watch an innocent man suffocate under the knee of a cop while bystanders plead for his life. Yet millions now have that haunting image seared into their memory. The question to ask in response is simple: what could have been done to prevent this? While I’m in quarantine and can’t see my students, I imagine their predominantly minority faces and wonder how can I keep them from a similar fate? Policy recommendations to prevent another tragedy like the one that befell George Floyd have ranged from defunding the police to ending qualified immunity and military surplus...

<p>Waiting for someone in the media to ask and waiting for the democrat governors and mayors to provoide answers.</p>

BOSTON (CN) — Former Vice President Joe Biden won the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest coalition of labor unions, on Tuesday, in a development that could help him in union-heavy swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden is “the embodiment of goodness and decency,” said Richard Trumka, president of the 12.5 million-member organization, in a video. The endorsement was not unexpected....

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, unless that horse resides on the Pritzer horse farm in Wisconsin As he requests the power to seize private business property if owners open too early or not in concert with his wishes, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker says it’s not safe yet to hold indoor church services, but it’s totally okay that construction workers travel to his Wisconsin horse farm to build his new house. Construction workers have been deemed essential, especially union construction workers who have dues taken out to fund the campaigns of politicians like Pritzker and who get...

Any growth in state education spending over the past five years is being eaten up by greater teacher retiree system costs, according to a new report from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan. Since 2012, school districts have had to return per-pupil funds to the state to cover unfunded liabilities in the Michigan Public School Employee Retirement System (MPSERS). According to current projections, those liabilities won’t be paid off until 2038. According to the Citizens Research Council, that required contribution has eaten up the modest 12% increase in state per-pupil spending since 2013. And that’s reflected in average teacher pay,...

In a crisis, flexibility is king, especially for those in the classroom. But union bureaucracy makes it impossible to innovate. As public school teachers with a combined 33 years of experience, we know we’re supposed to be “union strong” and never air unions’ dirty laundry. But the coronavirus crisis has pitted unions against teachers, students, and administrators who just want to teach and learn.Our fellow teachers have gone above and beyond to ensure students don’t slip through the cracks during quarantine. We’ve seen teachers furiously posting to message boards and offering one-on-one assistance to students via videoconferencing.From unions, however, we’ve...

The children's commissioner for England intervenes after clashes between unions and scientific advisers about schools reopening. The government and teaching unions must "stop squabbling" and agree a plan to get children back to school in "a safe, phased return", the children's commissioner for England has said. Anne Longfield also called for "rigorous" coronavirus testing of teachers, children and families to ease safety fears among parents. "I am disappointed that the debate about when some primary school kids can return has descended into a squabble between government and the teaching unions," she said. "All sides need to show a greater will...

Government unions should not be shifting the costs of the shutdowns to the laid-off employees of private businesses. Yet that is the approach sought by Democratic governors of large states as they demand massive bailouts of their government workers who have sat idly by. Public schools are closed throughout the country. Although some teachers are still teaching via the internet, administrators and higher-ups have enjoyed an extended vacation at home. Those higher-ups should not be receiving full paychecks, at the public’s expense, which are being denied to waitresses, manicurists, and hairstylists. The sooner everyone is allowed to get back to...

The nation's two biggest teachers unions say they would consider strikes or major protests if schools reopen without the proper safety measures in place or against the advice of medical experts — raising the possibility of yet more school disruptions. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, previewing a reopening plan first with POLITICO, said funding is needed for a host of public health measures for schools, including personal protective equipment. Collective bargaining, strong enforcement of safety standards and protections from retaliation will be important for teachers and staff so they feel safe to speak up as schools try new...

The powerful United Auto Workers union on Friday criticized Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman’s call to re-open casinos despite the continued risk of coronavirus, the latest labor organization to weigh in on her remarks. UAW president Rory Gamble, whose union represents casino workers in Las Vegas along with automobile workers across the United States, called on Nevada politicians to denounce Goodman at a time when states are looking at how to re-open businesses in ways that keep workers safe. “UAW Casino employees, their families and the community are not test subjects for her irresponsible theories on public health and the...