https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-8-20-the-battle-lines-are-drawn-on
In a post a week ago, co-blogger (and daughter) Jane remarked that the school shut-downs resulting from the ongoing pandemic provided a golden opportunity for disruption of the monopoly unionized public school model. If schools wouldn’t re-open, perhaps the vast taxpayer funds at issue (or some substantial portion thereof) could simply be redirected to the parents to be used to educate their children as they see fit? Who could even object to that?
Well, make no mistake, the people running the show right now think that they have a sufficient lock on the situation that they can keep getting paid full dollar, provide little or no actual education for the money, and at the same time prevent any competitive alternatives from gaining a toehold. In its current configuration, the Democratic Party, at both state and national levels, is firmly committed to advancing the interests of their friends in the teachers unions, while the students — particularly minorities — get stuck in failure factories from which there is no escape.
The award for the most outrageous chutzpah on this subject goes to Michael Mulgrew, head of the New York United Federation of Teachers. Yesterday Mulgrew held a two-plus hour press conference on the subject of re-opening the New York City schools in September. Mayor de Blasio, to his at least partial credit, has proposed a partial re-opening beginning September 10, with parents having the option of sending their kids for several days a week of in-person learning. According to yesterday’s New York Post, Mulgrew was having none of it:
“Every single person — both adult and child — that is to enter an NYC school must have evidence that they do not have the COVID virus,” Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, told reporters at a press conference, where he laid out the demand. . . . “If all the schools open on Sept. 10, and everything that we just laid out is not in place, the union is prepared to go to court and/or go on strike, if we need to,” he said.