Teachers vow to help kids by closing their schools on Commie Day | Hour 1

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 and Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepeakclendarshow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. Alrighty, so, teachers across the country are vowing to help kids support their education, looking out for their students by closing down all of the schools, which I actually like part of me agrees with them on that that might actually help the kids. But no, no, no, this is I mentioned this about a two weeks ago when the organizers first started promoting their big Commie Day strike. The Teachers' union across the country are going to be walking out of school on Friday, May first, Comi Day, and North Carolina schools are now facilitating this as well. Charlotte Mecklenberg. I think they were meeting. The Board of ED did an emergency meeting like half an hour ago or something. I think they may still be a meeting. I haven't seen yet if there's any news out of their decision, but I mean, this is a fate, a complete it's already going to happen. We know it's going to happen. They're going to turn May first into a teacher work day because so many teachers have requested time off on that Friday. And apparently, unlike you know, everywhere else any other place of employment, if you know, I ask for today off, and then both of my producers ask for the day off, and then all of the other hosts ask for the same days off, like at some point management says no, like we need people here to actually, you know, do the work, and so we're not going to grant your request. But apparently in education it operates differently. You just say I'm not you know, I want the day off. I'm I'm not coming in, and if you try to make me come in, I guess I'm gonna call out sick or something. I don't know. Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools called this emergency meeting to change its calendar after more than one thousand, eight hundred seventy five district employees requested leave for COMMI day eighteen seventy five out of nine thousand total teachers in the district. Now, this story at the Charlotte Observer by Rebecca Noll lumps all of the eighteen seventy five into a category of district employees. So I'm not sure if that's just all teachers or if that's like administrators. And there are a boatload of administrators, people who are not actually teaching any kids. So I don't know if this is all just teachers or if it's a mix of non teacher staff as well. But then they say there are nine thousand total teachers, so there could maybe only half of the eighteen seventy five were teachers, maybe a quarter, maybe there was only ten. I don't know. Educators from around the state plan to march in Raleigh on Friday next Friday, demanding more state investment in public education. The rally is organized by the Teachers' Union. Don't call it a union. It's totally not a union, even though like the last president, guy called it a union. But it's totally not a union. But it is a union, okay. It is part of the NEA. It was chartered by the NEA, the National Teachers Union. So North Carolina Association of Educators, and for decades they promoted this fiction that we're not a union, We're just an association. And they would always say, because there's no collective bargaining in North Carolina, we're a right to work state and you're not allowed to strike, which the Commie day walkout kind of feels like a strike. No right. If a whole bunch of people. Decide to walk off the job in a coordinated fashion at a predetermined time and day, I kind of feel like that's a strike. At least seven of the states one hundred and fifteen school districts have announced that they are closing on May one because of the rally. The only local district that has so far announced an optional teacher work day for that day is Cannapolis. Here's the story from WBTV Tucker reporting yesterday, members of the Kannapolis City Council Board of Education voted to make May one an optional teacher work day after many educators asked for the day off to attend a rally in Raleigh. It's a Raleigh rally. The April twenty second decision canceled school for students on Friday, May one. The district said that the day will not have to be made up. So just one day of education loss. It's a small price to pay for the teachers and the district officials whoever they may be, that are going to Raleigh to demand more money for themselves. That's for the children. Obviously, by the way, the legislature is not going to be there on Friday, May one, so I'm. Not really sure. So you're just going to go to a building that is empty and scream at the bricks, scream at the facade. Okay, sure you're gonna get a lot of media coverage for it. It's a Friday, and usually on Fridays, you know, you got reporters that are looking for weekend story material, and so I'm sure they will give you the coverage that you want through the weekend. I bet they'll get, you know, definitely on Friday and then into Saturday morning, maybe a follow on that'll run throughout the day on Saturday. So that's the point of this. And if your kid has to, you know, not learn anything on that one day, so be it. It's more important that the education experts and the officials, it's more important that they go to an empty building and let that building know that they want more money for themselves and they want to take away school vouchers too. That was also part of the That's also part of their platform for the big event. They want the Opportunity Scholarship program to be dismantled in North Carolina, which, by the way, if Democrats ever do take control of the legislature, that is what they will do. There is no doubt they will dismantle the voucher program. Several CMS schools started rejecting leave requests for May one out of concern that there will not be enough staff. Charlotte Mecklenberg Association of Educator's president Amanda Thompson told The Observer in an email yesterday, quote, Our worry is that CMS received suppressed numbers due to some principles handling this situation differently versus supporting educators and harming kids. Okay, she didn't say the harming kids part, right, So some principles apparently were rejecting these requests because they were like, yeah, no, sorry, can't have that many people out sick quote unquote on the same day. So no, your request is being denied, And so that happened in some schools. I think, yeah, Rjery Kell was one of them. The principal at Arjorie Kel, Susan Nichols, told staff in an email that they need to ensure that we are able to provide appropriate instruction as well as adequate students supervision and safety throughout the day. Why do you hate children, Principal Nichols? Why do you want the children to suffer? Don't you know that the teachers have to not be there in order to demand more pay. They also want the state to adopt a budget for the current fiscal year, which the North Carolina Legislature has not approved it yet because they're still in this fight over tax rates and such. The medicaid thing that they settled yesterday, that was part of it too, but that got settled yesterday. Among other local districts, only Union County Public Schools has so far responded to the Observer's questions about its May one plans. Union received three hundred four requests for leave and plans to continue to operate on a normal schedule next Friday. But that could change, right, isn't that fun? It could change like on Wednesday, right before the big march, before the Raleigh rally. Right, they may not you got enough teachers that keep submitting these requests, and then maybe they get to just say, Okay, parents, you're gonna have to scramble, take a day off of work and you know, not get paid, but we're gonna we're gonna have to close. The schools because the teachers you know, can't show up. If you're gonna go rally at the legislative building when no one's there, why not just do it on a Saturday. 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 our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. 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. This story from The Carolina Journal by wbt's own Nick Craig. The NCAE is calling the event the Kids Over Corporation's Rally. Which is so stupid. Kids over Corporations, man, you mean the kids you abandoned back at the classroom. Those kids. The campaign is set to mobilize educators, parents and community members across the state to push for major changes in public education funding and policy by assembling at an empty building, Guys like, I don't know, maybe it would be better if, you know, tried to have discussions with the lawmakers who are actually like on the education committees, the ones that are drafting curriculum and stuff. But look, I get it, Okay, I get it. You have a fundamental disagreement about what you want the K twelve government factory model to look like. I understand you like the factory model. Because you own the factory model, you have all of the positions in the model. You get to part the part of the deal here. And I don't even know if a lot of well probably most teachers don't even recognize this because most of them just want to teach kids. I do believe that they're drawn to it. They're called to be a teacher. And I always say, when talking about teaching and teacher pay, I believe it is an art, and I believe that you should pay great teachers six figures. You pay them a lot of money if they're great teachers. But I refuse to pay the bad ones the same amount of money because they are not great teachers. And that means you guys need to figure out a way to come up with some sort of mechanism to dare I say, grade teacher performance? Right? However you want to structure that because if you say, oh, look at the test scores, Oh we can't do that, Okay, Well look at improvement over last year? That that that can't be the defining factor. Okay, Well maybe reviews from your principle now, because not all of us get along with the principal. Okay, how about other teachers? That that, you know, drop in and monitor your your classroom or something. No, we can't do that either because we don't get along with all the teachers. Some of them hate us and all the stuff. It's like, okay, so you can't figure out a single way to measure performance when that's literally your job with kids is to measure performance. So like we're at an impasse. I don't know what else to tell you, because to me, it just kind of seems like you should be able the education quote experts should be able to figure out a way to reward great teachers more than bad ones and maybe get rid of the bad ones, like maybe even that just I'm just spitballing here, and get rid of some of the bad ones. But no, instead we get this structure where it's all based on the number of years you've managed not to get fired from a job that's like impossible to be fired from. So oh, I made it ten years, therefore you know I'm as good as everybody else that's been here ten years. And that's not true. And here's the thing, parents, students, teachers, they know who the good teachers are, and they know who the not so the good teachers are everybody knows this. You know, in colleges they've actually developed a rating system for professors. How can you not implement something like that, not as the sole criteria, but as one criteria? Why not? Anyway, if you believe the NCAE. This is a quote in Nick Craig's piece from Bob Lupke. He is the director of the Center for Effective Education at the John Locke Foundation. He says, if you believe the NCAAE, you would think North Carolina spent no money on public education. In twenty twenty four twenty five, North Carolina spent eighteen billion dollars in state, federal, and local dollars on K twelve education. Eighteen billion Since twenty sixteen, enrollment in North Carolina public schools has declined, but real spending per student is up seven percent. Enrollment was down five percent, So you've got a twelve percent basically delta there, right, You get enrollment dropping five percent and you've got real spending going up seven percent. What's the problem. I don't understand, all right, So here's what the NCAAE is demanding in their rally in Raleigh. To set as the per pupil expen. Okay, so first, hang on second, I have to say, finally, kudos to the Teachers' Union in North Carolina that has finally given us an actual firm figure of twenty thousand dollars per pupil. That's what they want to see spent by the year twenty thirty, So over the next four years, they want the per pupil expenditure to be twenty thousand dollars per kid, which that is the first time I have ever heard anybody in the education arguments ever give me a per pupil number. So finally the NCAAE has done that. Now, twenty thousand dollars is insane. Okay, that's insane. You have states that spend way less and have way better outcomes for their students. How do they do it? What's going on there? Don't know, no, can't figure it out. The Mississippi Miracle we've talked about that. North Carolina is on a similar tree jectory with the abandonment of the but the whole language learning whatever model that was where it's like, hey, kids, just go out and pick up a book, judge it by its cover. That's great advice, and you know, if it's a topic that you're interested in, just you know, read as many words as you can and you'll kind of get the gist of what's happening. That was kind of the model that they were that they've been using now for like a decade, and Mississippi said, that's crazy, We're going to go back to phonics, and surprise, surprise, all of a sudden, they're third graders are now reading at or above grade level. Like why did we move away from phonics? If I remember correctly, it was some academic in a university who developed this alternative method and just pushed it out there in some paper, and all of a sudden that became the new thing. Everybody just glommed onto it, and everybody just threw out phonics and moved to this different model which did not work. Oh well, couple generations of kids can't really read, which is kind of fundamental I've heard. So now they can't read a grade level, they're falling behind, and that affects every single subject they're learning, because if you can't read, you can't figure out a word problem in a math class. So that's one thing. Twenty thousand dollars per student, I think LUPG addresses this. Yeah, he says setting a spending floor of twenty thousand dollars per student is a terrible idea. There are school districts that spend much less and do well and those that spend much more and do not so well. Money is not unimportant, but how it is spent is more important than how much. And he is exactly right. And the. Leandro litigation that North Carolina we just like the Supreme Court finally put an end to that case after like thirty something years. So the Leandro judge, Howard Manning, he had said that the issue is not the funding, it's where you're prioritizing it. And he constantly was telling districts, your administrative bloat is out of control. Right. The money isn't being used for the classroom, it's being used for the administrative offices. And for some reason the Democrats and media, but I repeat myself, they've always been focused on the Leandro case because they thought money, money, money, that's how we're going to get our money. And then they got a Democrat judge to take over the case, and sure enough he ordered billions more to be spent, and they were like, yes, here we go, and the Supreme Court said, yeah, that's unconstitutional. A judge can't order expenditures. That's got to come from the legislature. But for all of their love for Leandro, for that case, they ignore the thing that the judge told them, which is it's not a money issue, it's a priority issue. Already. Let me go to the. WBT text line driven by Liberty Buick gmc ian says, wasn't it Fdr Patron Saint of American Socialism who held that public sector unions are immoral because taxpayers have no say in collective bargaining. Correct? Even Fdr said there should not be government unions because the people who are paying for whatever outcome you achieve in your negotiations with lawmakers. Right, the people who pay are not actually at the table. Government school teachers have zero right to strike. Yes, in North Carolina, that is correct, they are not allowed to strike. And that is what this is. This is a strike. Joseph says. They want to rally on Friday, May one because it's May Day, correct, the one holiday godless communists celebrate and academia was taken over decades ago on the Long March through the institutions. Yes, that's why I call it commy Day. I think the technical name is International Workers Day or something, but it's it's it's for communism. Maybe we could use off duty police officers as substitutes while the commies frolic in Raleigh. That's interesting. Yeah, moonlight as a as a sub Gary says the county. My wife teaches in the other teachers vote on who the teacher of the year is every year for that school. That's a good idea, Pete. How do they do it at private schools? That would be good enough for me. That's from Mark, Pete. Can we get another federal holiday for the Raleigh rally? Yeah? I would be opposed to making Commedy Day a federal holiday. Yeah, but if it was a holiday, I mean, that's the thing. They're picking this day for a reason. They could pick any other day. They could pick a day where they're all already off. Right, we did we not just have spring break? Oh no, you can't do it during spring break. That might hurt turnout. We're not gonna spend one of our vacation days, one of the days off that we get. We're not going to go all the way to Raleigh to yell at an empty building. We're gonna do it on Commy Day seven oh four, number says, maybe we should have opposing picketers saying more teaching the fundamentals. That would be interesting. Do you get counter protests? Probably not. Now everybody else is just trying to, you know, get by live their lives, send their kids to school, and now they're going to have to make other arrangements because you want to go lobby for well, a twenty thousand dollars per pupil expenditure. Also a twenty five percent raise for every school employee. I'm assuming that includes administrators. Eliminate private school vouchers. That's on the bullet point list here. Lift the ban on collective bargaining for public school workers. So, just in case you weren't clear that they are a union like, one of their things that they are demanding as part of their strike is the ability to collective bargain. Why would they put that on the list of demands is because they want to be able to negotiate contracts the union to negotiate contracts for all teachers. And then they also have pass fair maps, protect voting rights, and restore checks and balances in state government. I'm not really sure what all of that means. Fix our tax system, so the wealthy finally pay what they owe. This is why I call it comedy day. Right, So what do what do the wealthy? Quote unquote what do the wealthy? Oh what do they owe? Tell me like, how much of a percentage of their income do you have a right to take? That's what they're talking about, right, they see the core tenet of communism, The thing that animates the entire ideology slash religion is envy. That's it. It's always the same. Wait, County Public Schools already has a teacher work day scheduled for May one. I'm thinking going forward, they're just going to start building this into the school calendar. Meanwhile, several other districts, including Durham, Chatham, Chapel Hill, Carborough, Ashville and Guildford have adjusted their calendars ahead of the strike as educators plan to take time off or call out. Then there was this really Oh hang on a second, let me play this because Nick Craig, who I was just reading his piece at Carolina Journal, host of the Carolina Journal News Hour here on WBT and The Nick Craig Show. You can get it on YouTube, your podcast platforms, and also he's on nine till ten every night here on WBT. Got a couple of clips that he posted up onto the Twitter machine. This is from the new Hanover County school Board meeting where they were discussing this. Judy Justice says teachers need to be political. The idea is that it is the state that's going to see the amount of support that teachers have for their schools and don't think it's any other thing. Teachers aren't. Teachers are not political. I know. Well, wait, teachers are not political. They're organizing a strike right now. You don't think that's political. I do not whiz on my boots and tell me it's raining. I am too bright for your gaslight. Judy Justice, do that or a back. They need to be though, because since they haven't been, they have been taken, in my opinion, taken advantage of. It's time that we stood up for our kids. We can't be continued to. Be the first fifty person in the nation in per puple expenditure, and it is political. The people empowered did that intentionally. So teachers need to be political now because they never have been. They were never doing the March for ED, Read for ED. They never did this before. This is the first time. It's unprecedented, except it's not. It's not. The NCAAE has organized these marches for years, so this is not unprecedented. They are acting political, and we all know, we have all had see This is the thing that amazes me that this board member will get up there and make this comment with a straight face that teachers aren't political, when every single person that has attended a K twelve school has had a teacher that has done something political. Of course, this is it's like saying every teacher is a great teacher. That's not true. Every one of us has had a teacher that wasn't great. Right, We have had great ones, hopefully you had more great ones than not great ones. But this gas lighting, like please, they're literally demanding collective bargaining rights like that. They want to eliminate school vouchers so parents have to send their kids to the local school even if it is not providing a sound basic education as is constitutionally required. Don't know, the answer is always more money, more money, more money. Noonan writes in okay, twenty thousand dollars per pupil, But then we need performance guarantees. They only get at twenty thousand if one hundred percent of third graders read at grade level pro rated based on the actual reading performance, and have a trigger to fire the bottom ten percent of teachers if it drops below eighty percent of students at grade level, well, that's an interesting idea that they will never agree to to do. This is from an eight three nine number. Most people work a standard twenty eighty hour work year. Teachers do not. If you do the math, they are very well compensated. I say fire them. Yeah, well, I mean I've seen people say, like, look, everybody that's going out, that's calling out sick on this day to go march, Like that's where you start cutting. Jamie says. Teachers could get an instant raise if they stopped having union dues taken from their paychecks. Oh yeah, speaking of that, got a couple of screenshots sent to me from inside the legislative Halls of Power from the NCA's own website under the heading quote protect your union membership, switch to auto pay today because the lawmakers are trying to quote weaken our union. So they call themselves a union, they are a union and they are going on strike and that is illegal. Seven oh four number says more government intervention is always the wrong answer. Look at what happened when the government decided to back student loans. The rates and the tuitions went through the roof. When the government created the No Child Left Behind program, the education system simply lowered the bar. Pat says, how come I don't hear any mention of the kids in any of the teacher's rhetoric for or the reason for this strike. Yeah, they're not going out there demanding higher test scores, more kids at grade level. That's never one of their favorite part of their platform. Corey says, Viva la revolucion. These mindless puppets are so tiresome. Alan says, So can we get Trump to send in ice for the day. That would put an end to this nonsense. I don't know where are you going to send it? To the schools or to the rally. Wes says, I haven't heard any of the teachers that had a Southern or local accent. Well, that's that's an interesting observation. Nine eight zero number says as Rush would say, this is a teachable moment, all the more proof the government school model should be completely and permanently dismantled. Well, that has been my position. But I recognize that a lot of people, Republican and Democrats alike, they don't want to see the K twelve system abolished. They want there to be some sort of because you know, most people went to public schools. They have this nostalgia for their time when they were there, and they want their kids to have that same experience and all of that, right, I get that. So my compromise was to say, okay, fine, you want to keep some of this, you know, this zombie factory model operating, fine, vouchers, that's my that's my compromise is vouchers. But the left doesn't. There is no compromise for the left on this stuff. So it's they want to get rid of the vouchers too. It's about control because they're not having enough kids. That's the demographics. People who identify as liberal don't have as many kids as those who identify as conservatives, and so what they need is for you conservative parents to send all of your babies to the liberals, so this way they can pass along the activist the ideology. Right, that's sort of the model, and conservatives keep sending their babies to these schools. I don't know why. Kirk says, when I was a teacher, membership was voluntary, I of course declined to join, And Eric says, you know why they couldn't do it on a weekend. Pete may Day is deeply tied to the Marxist movement. Same reason. They will all just happen to be wearing red on their Mayday protest while the leaders gaslight everybody that it's all just coincidence. Meanwhile, in a related story, Wake County Public Schools is the largest school district in the state with around one hundred and sixty one thousand students and comes in at the fourteenth largest in America. Charlotte Mecklenberg is the second largest school system with about one hundred and forty thousand students. We ranked six sixteenth largest district in the country. But CMS has twenty two employees making over two hundred thousand dollars. Twenty two employees making more than two hundred k. Wake County bigger district, has not twenty two. They have three. Three that they have three, that's it, three that make more than two hundred thousand. This according to the Charlotte Observer that obtained public records. The twenty two highest paid CMS employees make about five million dollars combined. Most of that is the superintendent, Crystal Hill. She makes three hundred eighteen thousand. She's slated to get a seven percent pay raise, taking her up to three hundred and forty thousand, seven hundred dollars, but it will only go into effect after the state legislature passes a new budget with raises for the teachers. Wait County also has a higher cost of living than Mecklenberg, So they have three people in their district, which is bigger, that make over two hundred k, and it's more expensive to live there than here. But we have twenty two. NCAE is encouraging everybody to call out of work on March first as part of this COMMI Day rally and the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System. The superintendent is proposing an increase in school funding of twenty five million dollars more and says that she will cut some central office positions. Don't know which ones, but that's the that's the that's the promise. That's the swap. You give us twenty five million additional to our like billion dollar plus budget, and we'll make some cuts to Central Office, So baby steps here. I guess 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 dpetecalnarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.