AP says public schools ‘feeling the pinch’ from low headcounts, critics point to teachers union boss

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Backlash against out of control “woke” school boards and activist teacher’s unions is having a visible effect with student enrollments down and some schools being forced to make cutbacks as parents turn to home schooling and private schools.

Those are details of a not so stunning Associated Press report on the troubled environment in public education following harsh COVID lockdowns and forced masking of children as well as the nation’s classrooms becoming a happy hunting ground for groomers and their enablers who are using their trusted positions to promote transgenderism and other forms of sexually explicit content.

According to AP, “Public school systems are beginning to feel the pinch from enrollment losses tied to the coronavirus pandemic,” in a report that cites several examples of trend that could claim serious casualties over the long term.

“A school system in suburban Kansas City is eliminating over 100 jobs, including kindergarten aides and library clerks. Oakland, California, is closing seven schools. Other districts around the country are merging classrooms, selling buildings and leaving teaching positions unfilled in order to close budget gaps,” AP stated.

“Where did those kids go?” asked John Hutchison, Deputy Superintendent in Olathe, Kansas at a recent public meeting,” according to AP.

Where are they? They didn’t come back this year. That’s what’s laying on that additional reduction in our funding,” the school system is slashing 140 jobs.

“Money for schools is driven partly by student headcounts, and emergency provisions in many states allowed schools to maintain funding at pre-pandemic levels,” the outlet reported.” But like the billions of dollars of federal relief money that have helped schools weather the crisis, those measures were not meant to last forever.”

“Families opting for homeschooling, private schools and other options sent enrollment down sharply in the first full school year of the pandemic, and generally it has been slow to recover,” and while AP didn’t come out and say it, there may be no recovery thanks to the inadvertent benefit of remote learning classes as a result of COVID where for the first time, parents were allowed to see exactly that teachers are putting into the heads of their kids.

Powerful teacher’s union boss Randi Weingarten has become the public face of an educational system hijacked by far-left extremists whose ideology and political loyalty takes priority over what’s best for children and their parents, her constant media presence and insistence on pushing an agenda makes her into a perfect figurehead for all that has gone terribly wrong in American schools.

Twitter users reacted to the report with many wagging a finger at Weingarten.

Others had their own take.

Weingarten, who dug in on forced masking and has been an outspoken advocate for Critical Race Theory, gender indoctrination and censorship recently drew criticism for her bellicose rhetoric that parental rights bill like the one signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are putting the nation on a path to war.

“This notion – we’ve been very lucky in America, and we in some ways live in a bubble for a long time,” the president of the American Federation of Teachers said on a liberal podcast, “This is propaganda. This is misinformation. This is the way in which wars start. This is the way in which hatred starts.”

“In Iowa, the Des Moines district canceled a conference, sold a building and isn’t replacing some retiring teachers as it cuts $9.4 million in spending for the upcoming school year. The cuts were needed partially because the district’s enrollment has fallen by 1,600 students since the pandemic began,” AP reported. “The district, which is the state’s largest with 31,000 students, anticipates that it will need to make even deeper cuts next year.”

“I think it’s fair to say, the federal aid helped offset some of the financial challenges,” said Phil Roeder, a spokesman for the district. “It did help to get us through what’s been a historically bad moment in history. But it was a temporary, stopgap, not a long-term solution for school districts,” according to the Associated Press.

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8 thoughts on “AP says public schools ‘feeling the pinch’ from low headcounts, critics point to teachers union boss

  1. Hitting them financially always hurts. This is why I have said for a long time that the money from the state should follow the child no matter where they are educated. This breeds competition which always produces a better product, in this case the education of the child.

  2. Yeah but you arent lowering taxes are you??? Didnt think so. The left provides less and less but still expect to be paid in full. PU.

  3. Finally, the parents are DOING something about the likes of Weingarten and other MARXISTS who believe our children are theirs. I said from the start that the only way the good folks are going to win and our kids protected, is to do the fighting with our feet! Get out of the public schools NOW and take your kids with you. It’s the only way knuckleheads like Biden, his lapdog media and Weingarten will get the message.

  4. I had my own produce business in the 70’s and 80’s and I used to unload trucks on the side for other vendors so we could send our daughter to a private school
    It was worth every penny

  5. The only students still left at public schools, are kids whose parents didn’t want them in the first place, or kids whose parents are on the public dole and have no extra money to send them to a school that actually wants to educate them.

    1. OR those who work long hours to eke out a living and can’t afford private school.

  6. I used to represent a large school district on a Labor/Management Team. The teachers were AFT members. They were all about the teachers, never once expressed concern about the students and were some of the nastiest people I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. Weingarten is drunk with power and outright insane. She’s never been confronted like this. Hopefully she continues to self-destruct.

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