I read that public schools in Chicago are now closed despite receiving $2.6 billion in federal aid to compensate for Covid safety measures that would keep them open. Teachers unions in San Francisco, New York City, and other Progressive cities are close to forcing the same outcome.
They’re doing this because they can. There’s a vacuum in the administrations that govern schools as all the power dynamics have evolved into a twisted mess. It’s now baked into the institutional DNA of those municipalities. No simple administrator-ectomy will turn this around. Those cities, those school systems – and parents and students are screwed in a new and profound way.
It isn’t about Covid. Covid just unlocked a Pandora’s box. Far-left Progressive administrations fully enabled the teachers unions and provided an initial template for school abandonment starting with ‘emergency’ measures in 2020 and beyond. I remember saying to myself, “this will come back to bite them – soon.” Once out of the box, the teachers union bosses and a majority of so willing (pajama-professional) teachers stretched their wings like a dragon birthed at an inopportune time. Now they fly over the villages and burn their own cities to the ground.
“Surely you overstate this,” one might say. But were not concerned observers sounding the alarm last year as so many jurisdictions forced continued remote learning even while the initial threats to the first wave of Covid were quickly waning and while so many indicators showed that remote learning was a failed experiment? They fought tooth and nail to avoid opening at the 2021-2022 school year. In the more Progressive cities, it took extraordinary pressure to force those school systems to open in September at all. Now with a far milder variant abounding, producing symptoms, hospitalizations, and mortalities in line with or even lesser than a typical flu season, here we are again. The resolve of these teachers unions is conversely stronger than the degree of mildness in the present Covid strain. It’s not about Covid, it’s about power – and a new power structure.
So where will this lead? I’ll propose four likely outcomes:
First, the level of teachers union/school system intransigence will deepen and spread to school systems governed by the most Progressive administrations. Others will be emboldened by their acts. Maybe New York City will buck the trend due to the new mayor having more common sense, maybe he won’t. Places like Minneapolis and Portland will fall if they haven’t already.
Second, those school systems will enter a semi-permanent state of defying normal, ‘traditional,’ in-person operations. It’s now easy to conceive a scenario where they’re never going back, not with their present constitution, not unless a leader strong enough, backed by electorates resolute enough, comes along to destroy the power structures now in place and reforms them from scratch. This would entail: firing school superintendents, disbanding school boards, having a legislated reorganization of election and appointment methods, freeing teachers from union obligations, and perhaps even declaring emergency state takeovers of municipal systems. In short, full-scale administrative warfare.
Third, predictably, parents that can afford to flee will. This will fall sharply along income and class lines. The upper middle class might already be largely gone, at least to private education options, but now, the middle class will follow if they can. Those that cannot will be left in what could end up being a post-apocalyptic social hell.
Fourth, whole demographics of remaining students will evolve into a malignant power structure of their own. This may be the most frightening outcome of all. With a significant chunk of normal, structured life disabled, to what extent will lower-middle and poor parents be able to compensate for a chronic education lack in their kids? Hardly at all. Kids are resourceful and not always in a good way. Cities have gangs, but what happens if the majority of the remaining student body becomes one big Lord of the Flies gang? We’re never getting them back, maybe not even now, but definitely not if this continues. Of course, this is the dooms-day scenario, but I see no logical reason why it could not happen, and these cities are already half there.