The annual meeting for the nation’s largest teachers union included votes calling for universal mask and vaccine mandates, along with further commitments to advance racial equity in the classroom.
Held this week in Chicago, the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly’s annual meeting for its 6,000 delegates featured speeches by Vice President Kamala Harris and a remote address by President Joe Biden.
The agenda for the union’s assembly contains numerous votes calling for the union to take a range of progressive and liberal positions, including a measure calling for the support of “a national policy of mandatory masking and COVID vaccines in schools.”
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“More than 67 percent of the U.S. live in areas with medium or high COVID-19 community level, according to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky,” the measure says. “Mandatory masking, vaccines, and access to virtual education are necessary policy measures to reduce COVID danger.”
Other provisions in the agenda included votes denouncing the Supreme Court’s ruling last month overturning Roe v. Wade while calling for the court to be expanded, the abolition of the Senate filibuster, and the impeachment of the “justices who went against their sworn testimony to not overturn Roe v. Wade.”
“The three Trump appointed Supreme Court justices constitute a far right-wing coup inside the nation’s highest judicial body,” the measure says. “The new civil rights movement must defeat these attacks through organizing mass actions to defend women and all Americans from this attack.”
Items on the agenda were shared on Twitter by Terry Stoops, the director of the Center for Effective Education at the North Carolina-based John Locke Foundation.
https://twitter.com/TerryStoops/status/1544325118037565441?s=20&t=00Tw91UZw1VVq0ZjCEyYOw
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Stoops said it was “unsurprising that the NEA tried to conceal their meeting documents,” noting that “they contain embarrassingly little about overcoming learning loss sustained by children attending schools that adhered to masking and reopening recommendations championed by NEA leaders during the pandemic.”
“NEA leaders claim that they remain focused on the needs of public school children and educators,” Stoops said. “Instead, meeting documents show that the NEA is nothing more than a pathetic assemblage of social justice warriors struggling to be relevant in an era of unprecedented parental empowerment.”
While it is not known which of the many provisions were adopted by the NEA assembly, the union did issue a press release Monday touting its approval of a new policy to “ensure safe, just, and equitable schools” and warning that the presence of law enforcement in schools contributed to excessive policing of students, Ed Week reported.
In a press release, the union said the NEA will “adopt a restorative justice philosophy to create a school climate that rejects the criminalization and policing of students” and “provide training and support for culturally competent instruction.”
“Cultural competency,” when used in educational settings, is a phrase that has at times been linked to critical race theory, an academic theory that posits U.S. institutions and culture are systemically racist and must be dismantled through anti-racism.
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In the press release, NEA president Becky Pringle said that the adoption of the policy “cements the Association’s vision of schools as thriving spaces that are safe and welcoming for all students, discriminatory toward none.”
“The new policy also meets the present moment and the challenges facing our students, educators, and communities,” Pringle said. “It sets as our North Star for achieving our vision of safe, just, and equitable public schools by prescribing ways in which students and educators can flourish and eliminate the obstacles and policies that harm students and impede their success.”
The NEA did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
