Today’s entry: Brian: As an educator myself, I find teacher protests not only embarrassing but a disgrace to our profession. We are essential, as essential as nurses and the many other professionals who have humbly reported to their posts with grace using their intelligence to combat this virus while doing the important job they’ve chosen as their careers. As I am also a private school instructor, I can only hope this creates a competition where Americans can choose the best service for their child’s educational needs, not one that mirrors the insane bureaucracy that strives to infiltrate young minds with their own agenda.
Bottom Line: I’ve continued to receive numerous notes expressing outrage at South Florida’s school districts for denying classroom education options and most recently for my exposé on their spending plans. If you happened to miss that story, the school districts are intent on spending 2.4% more in Broward, 7.5% more in Miami-Dade, and 11% more in Palm Beach County this year. Despite what should be significant cost savings for the districts. What we haven’t extensively discussed are the teacher protests and the role of teachers’ unions in pitting teachers against parents, as is expressed in this note.
Something that’s important to remember when it comes to unions, is the general need for either some degree of division/conflict. It’s pretty straight forward. Why would someone pay dues to a union if they thought they could achieve the same outcome or better without the union? Regarding teachers, this was notably on display last year when Governor DeSantis announced 2020 would be the year of the teacher in Florida with record pay raises for Florida’s teachers. Rather than performing cartwheels, which given the size of the increases at taxpayer expense, would have been an appropriate response, we were told by the Florida Education Association that it was “a good first step”. After all, the union would never concede that their constituents would be fairly compensated, would they? But what we’re witnessing right now is worse than simply attempting to extract as much money from taxpayers as possible. The teachers’ unions have squarely pitted teachers against the parents who pay their salaries.
All accredited national polls showed a minimum of 68% of parents desirous of classroom options for education this fall. In Florida, initial reports from the first seven school districts which offered classroom education showed greater than 60% of parents sending their children to schools given the option. This positions most of Florida’s public-school teachers via their union who is suing the state of Florida to attempt to prevent any classroom education this fall, against the wishes of most parents and children. How is that acceptable? But it’s to be expected because the parent of the FEA, the National Education Association has donated 92.9% of its political contributions to Democrats, compared to 5.1% to Republicans this cycle. Is that representative of the country or Florida’s values? Yet our tax dollars are paid to teachers who pay dues to the union which in turn funnel over nine in ten dollars to Democrats. That’s who is behind these teacher protests.
It’s also why it’s important that there’s critical accounting and reporting when it comes to teachers generally. Far too many news outlets are devoid of critical/analytical reporting on them, but rest assured the teacher’s unions are anything but operating in a way that’s reflective of the constituents who pay them.
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