ABOUT TEACHERS UNIONS AND COVID-19

If grocery store clerks, UPS workers, bus drivers, police officers, sanitation engineers, oilfield hands and people who work in meat processing plants are essential workers, why aren’t teachers?

As the pandemic invaded one community after another, millions of brave souls went to work every day, often putting their lives at risk, to keep Americans fed, warm and safe. Thousands of doctors, emergency medical teams, nurses and firemen knowingly exposed themselves to sick patients; many became ill themselves. The heroism of these people, confronting a little-understood disease, cannot be overstated.

Now our nation urgently needs our children to go back to school, for the good of our youngsters and working families. But public school teachers are balking. Instead of working with officials to facilitate reentry, they are requiring exorbitant safety measures that make returning to the classroom all but impossible.

Some are making demands that have nothing to do with health precautions, but rather target Democratic political priorities, like defunding the police.

For instance, United Teachers Los Angeles released a paper decrying “our profoundly racist, intensely unequal society” and stating that “Police violence is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people … We must shift the astronomical amount of money devoted to policing to education and other essential needs …”

For good measure, the Bernie Sanders-style polemic also calls for “Medicare for All” and insists on a moratorium on charter schools.

Ironically, the union’s paper admits that “Vulnerable students … were disproportionately negatively impacted by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s shift to crisis distance learning.” And yet, it adamantly opposes opening up our schools.

Liz Peek, The Hill