LA Teachers Union to Kids: “We don’t actually care about you

Kids in Los Angeles have had it rough since 2020, kicked out of school to lie on their couches pretending to pay attention to Zoom for a full year and a half during the pandemic. They were forced to return, faced with mandatory vaccine requirements and mandatory masks. There was also a multitude of plexiglass obstacles everywhere.

Now the helpful LA teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), has voted to vote to boycott , which is the first of four voluntary extra learning days that will be held in order to assist struggling students. Teachers would still be paid, however, because there are other things they want. They will be organizing a demonstration downtown instead of teaching.

You know it’s better than having to teach.

Teachers Union telling teachers to stop attending the LAUSD voluntary learning days for students (where they would get extra money) and instead, rally without pay for UTLA contract demands. #NotQuiteAStrike
https://t.co/itWKivJvg7 via @ladailynews

— LA Parent Union (@UTLAUncensored) August 19, 2022

Special education teacher Marcela Chagoya said in a statement:

Our students don’t need four optional extra school days, they need a district that is committed to investing in their future. This lack of planning or transparency around the ‘Accelerated Days’ shows that the district doesn’t have any plans for them and sees it as an alternative to investing in small class sizes and better social and emotional resources.

With teachers who care this much, it’s no wonder over 50,000 students didn’t show up at the start of the school year.

The LA Times reports that the boycott was widely supported by teachers:

Among roughly 34,000 union members, 18,257 participated in a survey this week. Within that group, 93% voted to support a boycott, the union said. As well as teachers, counselors, librarians, and nurses are represented by the union.

You can see the heading on the Union’s Twitter page. It is featured right at the beginning of the article. Is it a teacher? Is it a child learning? It shows a woman shouting into a bullhorn and making demands at rallies. It should come as no surprise then to discover that the union president, Cecily Myart-Cruz, is a radical who tried to keep schools closed as long as possible during the pandemic (going so far as to say that California’s re-opening plan in 2021 was “propagating structural racism”) and who continues to spout inflammatory rhetoric in the few interviews she now gives. Reporter Jason McGahan wrote in Los Angeles Magazine Friday:

“There is no such thing as learning loss,” she [Myart-Cruz] responds when asked how her insistence on keeping L.A.’s schools mostly locked down over the last year and a half may have impacted the city’s 600,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade students. Our children didn’t suffer any loss. Our babies might not have been able to learn all the times tables. It is okay. They acquired resilience. They were able to survive. They acquired critical thinking skills. They can tell the difference between protest and a riot. They know the words insurrection and coup.”

The head of the LA Teachers Union literally said “There is no such thing as learning loss.” https://t.co/2aGGCCQs38

— The Only Gary Johnson Stan (@colorblindk1d) August 26, 2022

“There is no such thing as learning loss.” As a parent, I cannot tell you how deeply this ticks me off. As a parent, I saw firsthand how lockdowns affected kids in many ways. It’s not enough to believe me, there are numerous studies that show a severe learning decline in our youth.

Myart-Cruz cares about a lot of things (including eliminating school police), but it would seem that the only two things she doesn’t care about are teaching and children. McGahan wrote:

…under Myart-Cruz’s stewardship, which began when she assumed office in the summer of 2020…[her] purview has been expanded to include a breathtaking range of far-flung progressive issues: racial justice, Medicare for all, the millionaire tax, financial support for undocumented families, rental and eviction relief–over the last 15 months, UTLA has championed them all. While many of these are worthy goals, and worth discussing, they don’t fit the mold of your local teachers’ union. In what universe, after all, does UTLA’s recent boycott of Israel over the conflict with Hamas benefit the teachers–or students–of Los Angeles?

Why does this extremist personality manage the teachers union? This is mind-boggling. It is a shame that she should not be managing AOC’s twitter account.

In so many ways the nation failed to help the most vulnerable members of society in the pandemic, the young. UTLA was one of many teachers unions that behaved in a deplorable manner during this crisis. They would prefer to use our children as bargaining chips, instead of helping them.