by Bryn McCarthy
President Biden’s plan to reopen schools within 100 days has faced opposition from teachers unions due to coronavirus safety concerns, leaving other teachers frustrated.
“For the past year, there has essentially been a national teachers union strike that has left tens of millions of families without access to an adequate education,” said Tommy Schultz, vice president of the American Federation for Children, a nonprofit supporting school choice programs.
Schultz cited numbers from October 2020 showing that roughly 3 million children haven’t had a day of education since last March, “completely falling through the cracks.”
Rebecca Friedrichs, who was an elementary school teacher in California for 28 years, echoed Schultz’s concerns for U.S. children and the state of their education.
“Most good teachers are deeply troubled by the strikes,” she said. “We never want to deny the children even one day of learning, and we understand that we are servant leaders to those children.”
Chicago Teachers Union leadership list their demands and leave a box of coal outside the entrance of City Hall following a car caravan where teachers and supporters demanded a safe and equitable return to in-person learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chicago on Dec. 12, 2020. (Photo by Max Herman/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Friedrichs is also a former union representative and was the lead plaintiff in the 2016 Supreme Court Case, Friedrichs v CTA, the case against the National Education Association and the California Teachers Association, which sought to give teachers and other public employees the right to decide for themselves whether or not to fund unions. The case lost after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked in a 4-4 decision and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately ruled against it.
Friedrichs said unions are using strikes to “push their muscle,” and essentially pressure communities into meeting their demands, sometimes at the expense of children’s education.
“Unions use these tactics on good teachers and threaten their jobs and peace on the job,” she said. “So most teachers participate in strikes only to ‘go along to get along.'”
“They’ve been told that no one else will take care of them, no one else will protect them,” she said. “They’re surrounded by people pushing in on them and trying to undermine a focus on academics, quality classroom management and a pursuit of real academic growth as the whole spectrum of agendas and indoctrination platforms swoop in. It’s very politicized.”
Teachers and PSC CUNY union members hold signs during a strike outside Hunter Campus High School in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020. (Photo: Paul Frangipane/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Willie Preston is the father of six children who all attend public schools in Chicago. He said said his children’s teachers and Chicago public school teachers in general are “very afraid” to speak out publicly because the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is a “very unforgiving organization.”…
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