Education spending demands and unruly students| Hour 3

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to thepeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So the Raleigh rally organized by the totally not a union, but absolutely a union, the NCAE, the North Carolina Association of Educate Tours, not Education Educate Tours. The strike, the one day strike that they planned for May first, on Friday, May Day, COMMI Day forced the closure of schools all around North Carolina. But this was a coordinated protest by all of the usual suspects. I went over some of these organizations, you know last week, you know, running down all of the socialist organizations, the one Communist one, the fifty to fifty one, the Indivisible Crowd, like all the same. No King's usual. Suspects organize these marches all over the country and which I always find interesting, like if you're in a district that's spending more per pupil than the national average. Do you argue that you reduce your per pupil spend it? No, you don't. Oh, okay, interesting anyway, these occurred all over the place. And I saw one clip from a march of some kind. There were a bunch of people, you know, shouting, you know, union slogans and stuff, and a bunch of them were wearing purple shirts, not the Red shirts like North Carolina has historically used and is now being brought back by the by the Union. And you might want to look into the historical significance of the Red Shirts in North Carolina history. It's not good. It's not good. Democrat affiliated though, but not good. Anyway. There's a woman in a purple shirt, a bunch of people standing around her in purple shirts, and she's like this, you know, probably somewhere pushing sixty five, seventy years old, and she's got the you know, the big glasses, and she's got a bat and she is whacking away at a Donald Trump penata. Somebody is holding this pinata on a stick and she is just wailing away on the on the pinata. And what made this, I mean, and everyone's like cheering Iran, and then some other woman comes over and like tries to give it a punch and a kick or whatever, but it's on like this chain, so it's like swinging all around and everything. So it's kind of comical to watch them, because like the way she's swinging this bat, like you could tell she's never played baseball, doesn't know how to swing a bat. It's like it's it's kind of comical. But the koudi gras the chef's kiss on this video is the front of her shirt says maca m a ka maca and then underneath the big letters you can see it says make America kind again. And then at the very end of the clip she turns around. You see the back of her shirt because she turns around to like hype up the crowd and they're all cheering for her, and you know, she's like yeah, you know, and she turns around and you can clearly read on the back of her shirt it says do unto others as you would have others do unto you. And she just got finished whipping up on a pinata of Donald Trump. See they're the kind ones don't you see why isn't that evident? You should listen to me. I am kinder than you, and I will keep abusing you until you acknowledge it. So we had the rally here, we had there were rallies all over the place. I'm gonna go to Chicago in a moment tell you what happened up there. At least we did have that happen here. But Andrew Pomeran's writing at Carolina Journal dot com, the protest had a widespread impact on school operations across North Carolina, numerous districts canceling classes or shifting schedules due to anticipated staff absences. The North Carolina House currently and they're making this about, oh, we don't have a budget. Like again, we have a budget. We just don't have an updated budget because they can't agree. The House and the Senate cannot agree on the particulars. A couple of particulars. There's like, I think two or three of them. They got one of them solved last week. I want to say it had to do with the Medicaid rebase. Funding or whatever. But the other couple of items are like the tax rate and teacher pay. Raises and what number they're going to use there. So the House has proposed an average teacher pay increase of eight point seven percent over the buyennium. We do our budgets every for It's a two year budget in North Carolina. So the House wants to give teachers eight point seven percent. The Senate plan is only three point three percent, but also bonuses. Okay, so one time bonuses chucked in. Two earlier proposals from the governor called for an average raise of about six percent. Okay, So Governor Josh Stein, Democrat, he proposes six percent. The Republican House proposes eight point seven percent. So now Stein comes back and calls for an eleven percent increase because you cannot be proposing a smaller increase than Republicans in the House. That will not stand right. So it's like, okay, take the eight point seven got to go above that. Let's go to eleven percent. Educators at the rally pushed for more aggressive increases beyond current proposals. The NCAE wants twenty five percent pay raises and an expansion of benefits to boot finances of the state be damned. Okay. A couple of years ago. Actually, now probably they're like ten years ago when the Democrat Party had suffered in electoral losses and they were scandal ridden the state party. They had multiple executive directors and board members and chair chairs that were forced out, that had to resign amid scandal among sexual abuse allegations, all sorts of stuff, right, and then they lost in the elections and Republicans took over and they were not doing well. They were like a month away from losing their headquarters because they couldn't pay the rent. Okay, it was very bad. And so you have this shell of a party and into the breach, shall we say, steps Reverend William Barber and he then launches the Moral Monday Protests, the Moral Monday Movement, or as I call it, the Momomo. And he then organizes all of these you know, dispirited Democrats basically to march. And he put together, you know, this big list of demands that the General Assembly do or else they're fascist. And the state Legislative leadership had staff run the numbers on what the demands would cost. And it was somewhere in the neighbor I mean it was it was like three or four times the total budget. It was just insanity, like you're making additional demands that are in access of the budget by a factor of like two x. It's unaffordable. But they don't have to They don't ever have to justify that. They were never asked about that. Barber never had to defend this list of demands. They were all so. Demanding that we raise the per pupil expenditure to twenty thousand dollars in North Carolina right now it's about twelve thousand. Why is twenty thousand the right number? They don't ever have to answer that. In fact, here's a message from Russ. He says, there are so many variables in per student spending, like cost of living and all sorts of stuff. He says, but a classmate who is an administrator in Delaware once told me that the tipping point nationally was about sixty five hundred to eight thousand per student. Once you go above that, it's diminishing returns, and a lot of evidence public education gets progressively worse the higher they go over ten thousand. I have seen this study as well, or studies as well, like the sweet spot is somewhere around seven to eight thousand dollars. That's generally what it costs to educate a child in America generally, Now, what happens when you spend more well, will get better results. Not exactly. There's an inverse relationship there. You get diminishing returns and at some point you can even see lower results. So this isn't But again people don't when they're making these arguments. Reporters don't ever ask them to justify this stuff. Got a message. Her Stein's the governor's teacher pay proposal does illustrate salary compression. Also, the no budget actually spend three percent overall more than the previous budget, mostly because of Medicaid and Hurricane Helene. Yeah, all right, I'll tell you what happened in Chicago too. At least this didn't happen here at least. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and art. Stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North carol It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. So Jonathan Turley writing at Jonathanturley dot org. That's his website in Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best selling author of Rage and the Republic. He's a constitutional law. Professor, and he writes about what occurred up in Chicago with this Commy Day protest that the teachers' unions and the local officials all supported and engaged in. He says, called International Workers Day May Day, May first is a global day of protest for socialist, communist and unionist groups, which is why I call it COMI Day. He then says later in the piece, these teachers believe that they are teaching something far more important through their activism, and they say this, while this does not help with the dismal proficiency scores of actual students, it's vital to training students as political foot soldiers. The Chicago Teachers Union and the NEA recently collaborated on a curriculum build to bring social justice into the classroom their words ahead of May Day. There's a history teacher in Chicago, Dave Stieber or Steiber, and he is shown in the in the materials declaring that quote may Day is a dress rehearsal for maybe there's a random day in you know, June that we are all like no work, no school, no shopping. So this is a continuation and a build up of that. Okay, this is what they do, right, They organize their protest marches and stuff and like a day without a socialist, see if you can live without us, you know. Meanwhile, the kids in Chicago, only two out of five are at reading level. Only or at grade level in reading. And it's. Yeah, and ninety three percent of the campaign contributions to the Chicago mayor's election campaign, Brandon Johnson, ninety three percent of those donations came from unions. Right, So, and that's the guy that ostensibly would be negotia with the unions. That he got all of the money from the unions, and so we expect him to care about anything other than what the union demands of him. The CTU, the Chicago Teachers Union, has long held the distinction of being the most radical teachers union in the country. It was a CTU delegation that went to Venezuela during the Maduro regime and then praised the conditions under socialism in a country where dissenters and reporters were being jailed and killed. The Chicago Teachers gushed about how, quote, we did not see a single homeless person while we were there, like you do in all of your socialist run cities in America, which, like, gosh, man. If. Only there were some people in elected positions that could somehow, I don't know, clean up the homeless problem. Like just pretend that a communist leader from China is coming, like Winnie the Pooh is going to drop in and maybe clear out all the homeless people like they did in San Francisco for that one day or two. You know, Chicago public schools paid for buses. Okay, so the public school system used taxpayer dollars to bus their members to the protests. But there was a slight problem. There were a lot of parents that were complaining that you're shutting down our schools and what am I going to do with my kids? Ah? Well, the socialists and unionists they had a solution for this. We're going to bring your kids with us. Yeah, so they bust kids. They bust students to the protests as well. It's like a field trip. Yeah. They paid for buses for both students and educators to go to the protests. The city further promise that there would be no repercussions for either students or teachers for playing hooky, so no penalties. It's not the first time unions and teachers have allowed students to skip classes to support left wing protests. In New York, teachers and students were allowed to skip school to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. Previously, students were allowed to skip school to protest climate change. These school districts do not show the same participatory support for protests on the right and I'm sure that is a complete and utter shocked to you. Right, there's no accommodation or city subsidized buses for pro life protests or demonstrations in favor of Israel, for example. No, it's only one direction. Why is that? Why is that? See, these are questions that reporters never ask Democrats, they're never called to account for these decisions decades ago. Now, this is pretty amazing. Turley writes that his parents helped create an organization to stem the exodus of families from public schools and to reinforce academic standards in the Chicago public school system. His parents did that to try to keep people in public schools and improve the standards. They convinced more families to remain in the system because they believed as I do. He says that public schools can play a critical role in shaping citizens through a diverse and shared experience. I was long skeptical of voucher systems because of that commitment to public education. However, teachers, unions, and administrators are destroying public education in America. They're treating families as captive audiences while infusing education with social and political agendas. The only way to break this decade long cycle of failure, in my opinion, is to give families alternatives by allowing them to send their children to schools with core educational priorities as opposed to advocacy priorities. Think about what, like what it would take to make a guy like Jonathan Turley with that background to now be supportive of vouchers. I Turley didn't leave. The public schools. The public schools left him, all right. So there's another story related this from the McClatchy Papers, News and Observer. Charlotte Observer headline student behavior a major concern among NC teachers survey says what that means? So the story by t Qunghui, the reporter of the Education Reporter up there in Raleigh, says, thousands of North Carolina teachers marched in Raleigh last week demanding higher pay and more school funding. But a new report shows that poor student behavior is also a major concern for educators. No. Yes, the State Board of Education scheduled to receive a presentation tomorrow highlighting the top issues. The top issues found in twenty twenty six this year's North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey, Student conduct was a major concern with a majority of the one hundred two thousand, six hundred forty educators almost one hundred three thousand teachers took the survey and said student disrespect to teachers, skipping class, and disorder in the hallways are issues in their school. Quote. Managing student conduct emerged as one of the most challenging working conditions in the survey and one of the clearest day to day issues for teachers, and anybody who knows a teacher will confirm this. Teachers in traditional public schools and charter schools are surveyed by the state every two years for their assessment of working conditions. More than ninety percent of the state educators took the anonymous survey, so that's like, this is pretty clearly then accurate. The findings are in line with how teachers across the country have reported an increase in student behavioral issues since the pandemic, when students went an extended period without in person learning. And whose decision was that, right? Who or what entity pressured governors to keep the schools closed, Right, the very union that's now demanding more money, And you've got your union members complaining about the student behavior which they're tying to the pandemic which you guys kept the schools closed for again, nobody will be. Called to account for this. North Carolina student suspensions and crime school crimes dropped for the second year in a row school year, but the rates are higher than they were before the pandemic. Here we go. Fifty eight percent of teachers said student disrespect of teachers was an issue at their school, fifty six percent said disorder in unstructured areas like hallways, cafeterias, and bathrooms were an issue, and fifty five percent said tardiness and skipping class was an issue, while not a majority still forty seven percent said disorder in the classroom is an issue. So basically you've just got general misbehavior all over the place. The biggest student behavioral issues reported by high school teachers were tardiness and skipping class that came in at seventy seven percent, cheating at sixty seven percent, and drug and tobacco use at sixty four percent. Looking at middle school number one problem there at seventy disrespective teachers, then disorder in unstructured areas at sixty seven percent. I mean, these numbers are all the same, no matter like even in the elementary schools, they got student disrespect at like fifty six percent. Disruptive behavior prevents learning. You get one kid in the classroom that acts in this way and disrupts the classroom, it impacts everybody else from being able to learn. DPI Department of Public Instruction in their report says quote. Many also pointed to no consistency with consequences office referrals like you go down to the office. You're misbehaving in the classroom, Gonna send you to the office, right, And that was like, oh my gosh, I'm in serious trouble now. Office referrals that were quote often ignored and students being returned to class shortly after their removal. I have people in my family who are teachers. One up in New York told me about this, gosh, probably twenty years ago. Like they have like a three strike system up in the New York schools. And when she would send someone to the office, the first two times they would get in trouble. But then the third time that they acted up and she'd send them to the office, they wouldn't take them, They would not come get them. And the reason why is because. After the third strike, now they had to suspend them, and they don't want to do that because if you suspend a kid, you may not get the full allocation of state money. Also, it doesn't look good. On your stats. And so the students know this, so they have an incentive to rapidly get to their third strike, so now they can never be removed from the classroom. Right, the disrespect is coming from the students, and in this case, as I just outlined, the disrespect of the teachers is coming from the administration because they're not willing to hold the students accountable. So you've got disorder and disruption from the students and an administration that disrespects the teachers. So it's not the North Carolina Republican legislators that are disrespecting the teachers here, okay, And notice there are no marches by the NCAAE or the Chicago Teachers' Union or any other union to address this. These working conditions are often intolerable. Schools across the country have been trying to reduce the number of out of school suspensions because kids don't learn if they're not in class, but some teachers feel the pendulum has swung too far after schools abandoned their zero tolerance policies. Can we reconsider this? DPI said, students are running around and running the school. Teachers are not supported when they are having discipline issues. Now, ninety one percent of the teachers in North Carolina who filled out the survey said that they do intend to continue teaching next year. Eighty four percent said they're going to stay at their current school. Only forty nine percent of teachers who said that they plan to leave the profession had a positive response about how their school manages student conduct. What does that mean? Means more than half of the teachers who are quitting, right they plan to leave the profession. More than half of them are dissatisfied with the way schools. Manage student conduct. See and so when the only focus is on teacher salaries or per pupil expenditures, right, it's a dollar figure, but you can give somebody the national teacher average pay in North Carolina. You can do that. But if the conditions of the workplace are so terrible, they're not going to want to come. This is also part of the reason why, as I mentioned in the first hour of the show today talking about the Charlotte Police budget, you know, if you make if you send the message that like we don't care about your working conditions, or we're going to you know, trash talk you you're not going to be supported, then you should not be surprised if people do not want to go into the field. This message from the text line from Awesome Andy, who says many of the best teachers go to private schools to teach, and it is well known that private schools pay less than public schools. Money is not the issue. A judge told school districts this in North Carolina during the Leandrew hearings. He said, it's prioritization of your funds. Gary says, as the husband of a North Carolina public school teacher at a Title I school, the NCAE demands do more to hurt public opinion of educators and teachers than help. I agree. I agree the unions are the worst ambassadors for the profession. The helliat says, do you know how prevalent it is for teachers to retire in one state and then are allowed to teach in another aka double dipping. I've never been crazy about that, especially operating off budgetary retirement plans versus four oh one K model. If I'd been aware of that in nineteen ninety I would have taught elementary pe. Yeah, I mean there are Every job has its pros and cons, right, every job. Eddie says. Schools have been on the decline for years a direct correlation to the breaking of the family unit. Teachers can only teach, not raise someone else's kids. Teachers cannot teach children that go home to a petri dish that grows disrespect, crime and drug abuse. Yeah. Like, this is the other thing. I believe we actually demand more of our teachers than is fair in this regard with the behavioral issues. Teachers should not have to put up with this stuff. They are there to teach the kids. Now. Part of this, though, is the education establishment push to provide more. Things and to do more things. We're going to open up new programs and new services, and this is the model. It's a holistic approach. Whatever. And so when the leadership of the school systems and the elected leaders when they get up and they promote all of these things in order to address all these societal problems. Because I do agree with educators who will say that, like the problems from the neighborhood come into the classroom, right, Well, if you are then saying that you're going to do all of these other things to provide all of these sort of neighborhood related solutions. Then parents then start offloading that responsibility to you, and they start saying like, go ahead, do it, Okay, fine, that's less responsibility for me. And in fact, somebody also pointed out out here that it's that it is a teacher appreciation week as well, and to do the marches right before teacher appreciation week, do you think that that may leave a little bit of a sour taste in parents' mouths and in taxpayers' mouths because you just, you know, canceled class on them, and then on a Friday and then on a Monday, you're like, appreciate all of us teachers Like, yeah, we really don't appreciate what you just did there. And in Gibaris County they actually asked for volunteers parents to come in because they didn't have enough staff to fully supervise all classes, so they asked volunteers to help monitor students in class common areas and assist staff with general supervision needs and then celebrate teachers the next week. Guys, this is. Not I mean, I know, commy day falls on May first every year. You wanted to coordinate that, but probably not a great idea to then, you know, demand appreciation right after you canceled their kids school. Back to the Jonathan Turley piece, schools have long been a target for indoctrination by radical elements. And it's not just this is not me telling you this. If you just go back and read the writings of the people over the last you know, one hundred and fifty years that created this system, they're very clear. For example, the Cultural Revolution in China, that's the most extreme example where kids were forced into protests and taught that political activism came before scholarship under the slogan quote to rebel is justified. Mao declared that quote, our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture. The Commies have recognized this for a very, very long time. The academia has been the target for decades. A century. In the Charlotte of the Chicago Teachers' Union, Anya Seminar, they had a preschool teacher from Chicago, and she's explaining that the purpose. This is a preschool. The purpose is to quote encourage teachers of young children not to feel like this is stuff that's way beyond their students, not to be afraid of raising up social justice issues including workers' rights, anti racism, pro lgbt lgbt QIA, plus issues immigration and immigrants' rights. This erosion of the line between education and advocacy is now occurring on every level of the educational system. Some universities now have resident activist programs and offer degrees in advocacy. These are the new Jacobins. It includes a cadre of radical educators who use schools to pursue fundamental changes in our constitutional system. And while the students may not be able to actually read, they will learn the three hours of modern education resisting, raging and rebellion. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again. Thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.