Teachers unions in many parts of the country have held public schools hostage for close to a year. But now, it seems they’ve finally, (hopefully), pushed their luck too far.
Even Democrats are growing tired of the teachers unions’ unreasonable demands. Though they’re usually the unions’ political allies, Democratic officials are starting to realize that keeping schools closed is politically unsustainable. Parents on both sides of the aisle are rightly angered, and the public school system is hemorrhaging thousands upon thousands of students as a result.
In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot stood by the city’s plan to reopen this week even though she had not reached an agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union, which is refusing to send its teachers back to the classroom.
“Another day has passed, and the Chicago Teachers Union has not agreed to anything,” she said this weekend. “The CTU leadership has failed and left us with a big bag of nothing … Those teachers need to be there to greet their students and teach them in person. If the CTU continues not to show up and fails to work toward an agreement in good faith, then we will have no choice but to take further action.”
If only Lightfoot had shown this kind of backbone sooner, Chicago’s students might be in a better position today. Nevertheless, it’s good to see Lightfoot standing her ground, even though it took her nine months to do so.
Other Democrats must follow suit. Los Angeles, Detroit, Virginia’s Fairfax County, New Jersey, and West Virginia, just to name a few, remain beholden to the teachers unions’ demands, which have become more and more absurd over the past few months. In Fairfax County, for example, the teachers union is arguing that its members cannot return to in-person learning until next year, in 2022, even though teachers lobbied to get prioritized vaccine access.
Ideally, President Biden would lead his party in this effort. But he has already reneged on his campaign promise to reopen schools quickly, and his chief of staff even went so far as to defend the teachers unions last week.
This means it’s up to local and state Democratic officials to do what’s right and reopen the public school system immediately, even if they have to fight the teachers unions to do it. Recent events suggest Democrats are finally willing to do this — perhaps because they realize there is a political incentive in all of this, which is the opportunity to create a bipartisan issue that attracts a massive amount of parent-led support.
The fact that students are suffering massive academic and social losses should have been incentive enough. But I’ve come to expect very little from the Democrats running the public school system, just as I’ve come to expect the worst from the teachers unions — especially now that they’re approaching the reckoning they’re due.
