Fake news! Teachers union 'demands' for reopening misreported

By Glenn Sacks

"L.A. teachers: No classes until police defunded, charter schools shut." "L.A. Teachers Union Demands Medicare for all and defunding school police before reopening schools." "Ransom Note From L.A. Teachers Union Says They Need Medicare for All, Charter Moratorium, and More Before Going Back to Campus."

These headlines and countless more attacking United Teachers Los Angeles are all based on a misunderstanding. Yes, UTLA has fought to stop charter school growth and now advocates defunding school police, but these positions are not tied to reopening schools. What we oppose is returning to schools that are wholly unprepared to deal with the COVID-19 spike in California. Our only reopening demands concern student and staff safety in the face of this epidemic. Such a position is hardly radical and has been echoed by the leadership of the Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and Oakland school districts.

As outlandish as these criticisms are, they pale in comparison to Fox News host Laura Ingraham's recent interview of longtime anti-union activist Rebecca Friedrichs, who said:

"[T]hese unions are actually using our schools to sexualize our children. … It is shocking what they were teaching our children online through virtual learning. They are teaching our children to sext, to view pornography, they are hooking them up with online sex experts. So what they are doing is grooming our children for sexual predators to use them. … This is one of the big reasons that unions want to keep our schools closed."

Ingraham did not even question or contradict this statement.

Mercifully, the charges leveled by other conservatives, such as Southern California News Group editorial writer Susan Shelley, are more pedestrian – for them, we're just spoiled brats taking advantage of the taxpayer. Shelley writes:

"California teachers' unions won a victory when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a budget trailer bill that … prohibits layoffs of teachers or other school employees through June of 2021. So even if the schools are closed, everybody gets paid. That's a very sweet deal courtesy of taxpayers."

Shelley's charges are echoed by many conservatives, who falsely equate "not reopening schools" with "teachers not working." Yes, schools are closed, but from March to June and again starting next month we have and will still teach all of our classes and do the concomitant planning, grading, paperwork, student conferences, etc. If we're working, why should we not be paid for working?

Conservatives have long portrayed public school teachers as lazy and indifferent. In any job, of course, some work harder than others. But I can't think of many professions where a worker pays the cost of his or her failure more quickly – except perhaps if Dodger pitcher Clayton Kershaw throws a mediocre fastball and it is hit out of the ballpark. Teachers are required to have 30 (or 40) young people who do not want to be controlled under our control and on task seven hours a day, five days a week. Losing control of your students is very unpleasant – it's happened to me a handful of times in a career spanning 19 years, and believe me, I work hard to make sure it doesn't happen.

To be fair, conservative critics are not unreasonable when they question the chances of being able to open schools without any risk. But teachers aren't demanding an environment without risks – we're fighting to reduce and remove unnecessary risks. The government's response to date has been so incoherent and stingy that unnecessary risks abound.

According to the Los Angeles Times, regular testing for students and staff "would be unprecedented in scale, dwarfing the current testing levels in the county and straining a testing infrastructure that is already failing to keep up with surging demand. … L.A. county public health officials recently recommended narrowed testing criteria because of limited supplies and infrastructure." L.A. County Health Services Director Dr. Christina Ghaly said:

"The mismatch of demand has become more apparent. … We have to watch the supply chain."

For conservative critics, these realities are examples of how teachers unions are being unreasonable. Actually, they reflect the terrible consequences of de-industrialization, as well as the indifference and incompetence of authorities. Are we really to believe that the largest, most advanced economy in the history of mankind must unnecessarily risk the lives of millions of its children because it can't manufacture or ensure a sufficient supply of test tubes and cotton swabs? By contrast, in 1944 the U.S., with less than half its current population and 16 million men away at war, still astounded Nazi Germany by producing nearly 100,000 airplanes in a single year.

Between obtaining the manpower and materials needed to follow the CDC's reopening recommendations while also backfilling revenue-starved states' education funding cuts, the Council of Chief State School Officers estimates schools need between $158 billion and $245 billion in additional federal support. We face a dangerous, rapidly spreading disease – are we going to commit the resources needed to protect our children, or not? Forget the hype, headlines and union-bashing–this is what teachers unions are demanding.

Glenn Sacks teaches Social Studies and is co-chairman of United Teachers of Los Angeles at James Monroe High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District.