Parent Union rally: This week, California Policy Center’s Parent Union held a rally outside the California Teacher Association’s offices in Santa Ana to call for the reopening of schools. According to coverage of the event from the OC Register:
During the rally Tuesday, a few teachers spoke about the detrimental effects of online learning on students, especially those who need special services. Students have regressed academically since schools shut down mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic, they noted. And many who are in vulnerable situations, some speakers said, have been made even more vulnerable, exposing them to abuse and even suicide, because they don’t have their safe haven – school – to turn to.
“Our call is a call to action, to let parents choose,” [Parent Union President Cecilia] Iglesias said prior to the rally. “We’re suggesting: open up the schools, following safety guidelines, and give parents the choice.”
Amplifying parents’ voices: As CPC president Will Swaim pointed out to the Voice of OC this week, the protest over school closures is “a class struggle” that disproportionately hurts society’s most vulnerable:
Swaim and the protest’s organizers maintain virtual classes policies will detrimentally impact working class families with technological and homeschooling limitations, as well as students living with disabilities and special needs. He said parents should have the option of having their kids return to in-person classes if they want to — just as they should have the option not to if some parents don’t feel it’s safe. “Should parents have a one-size-fits-all system of education imposed on them?” he said.
Seeing institutions like teachers’ unions — many of which have largely spoken against charters — as driving these restrictions on in-person learning, Swaim said “the staff have a union, the teachers have a union … where are the parents in all this? Where’s their voice?”
Will’s Power(ful)point presentation: On Wednesday, Will gave the airtight case for reopening schools in a virtual presentation to the Pacific Club. It’s a must-watch and must-share. (Skip to six-minute mark, which I’ve queued up in this link, when Will begins speaking.) He highlights 1) the significant harm that children face from closed classrooms, 2) the science showing the minor risk students face returning, 3) the empirical evidence demonstrating that schools and daycares that have reopened have not been meaningfully affected, and 4) how teachers unions are exploiting this virus to advance their socialist agenda.
More reopening ammunition: This week, the nation’s top doctor Anthony Fauci came out in favor of reopening schools. He argued that school reopening should be the default position, citing the impact of closures on students and parents.
What California families are up against. CPC contributor Edward Ring released his analysis on how much California’s public-sector unions make in annual revenues. He concludes they rake in at least $921 million mainly from dues each year, hundreds of millions of which go to influencing the political process. Here is his summary table breakdown of annual revenue by major government union:
Make your voice heard by signing Parent Union’s reopening petition: If you haven’t already, sign the Parent Union petition to Gov. Newsom to reopen schools. “California’s minority students don’t have any further to fall,” the petition reminds the governor. “The latest standardized test data reveals that just one in five black students in the state meets math standards and just one in three is proficient in reading. Latinos met grade standards for math and reading at only 28 and 41 percent, respectively.”
The one-size-fits-all regimen for schools needs to end: In his latest piece, CPC contributor Larry Sand argues that education decisions, from police in schools to reopening timelines, should be more of a bottom-up process and less top-down: “Originating in the Catholic Church, subsidiarity is an organizing principle that stipulates ‘matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.’ And our times are most definitely screaming for this simple but powerful concept to be applied to schooling.”
The left’s next target: Learning pods: Not content to close public schools, charter schools, and private schools, the left is attacking learning pod arrangements set up spontaneously by groups of parents as racist. On the latest episode of National Review’s Radio Free California, CPC Board Member David Bahnsen and Will wonder: Are learning pods a hate crime? They also examine LA’s distance-learning plan for fall and point out how it’s just a repeat of the spring’s failure.
Abolish qualified immunity: This week, the OC Registereditorialized against qualified immunity, which shields police officers from liability over their actions. The piece quotes the recent opinion by District Court Judge Carlton Reeves:
"Our courts have shielded a police officer who shot a child while the officer was attempting to shoot the family dog; prison guards who forced a prisoner to sleep in cells ‘covered in feces’ for days; police officers who stole over $225,000 worth of property; a deputy who body-slammed a woman after she simply ‘ignored [the deputy’s] command and walked away,’” [Judge Carlton] wrote, among other examples.
"Just as the Supreme Court swept away the mistaken doctrine of ‘separate but equal,’ so too should it eliminate the doctrine of qualified immunity,” concluded the judge.
Kindergarten Cop? Really? Instead of directing their efforts toward reining in teachers unions and police unions, which are largely responsible for school closures and systemic police violence, activists in Oregon succeeded this week in canceling the movie Kindergarten Cop from a local film festival. In the film’s zany plot, typical of the 1990s, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a police detective who goes undercover as a teacher. Predictable hijinks ensue. Critics protested that the film glorifies the “school-to-prison” pipeline. Talk about activism that’s style-over-substance. Kind of like a Schwarzenegger movie.
Wait – what’s Kindergarten Cop doing playing at a film festival in the first place? Its inclusion on merit alone provides an actual reason for protest!
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