How School Districts Put Politics Before Children
3rd November 2019
The foundational myth of labor unions is that companies don’t exist to make stuff or provide services but rather to hire and pay (unionized) workers. Once teachers became unionized they were promptly infected with the same disease: The purpose of schools is not to educate but to hire and pay teachers.
November 4th, 2019 at 00:22
Not quite true: School districts exist to distribute money.
Even small school districts handle millions of dollars. Big, wealthy districts can easily be in the hundreds of millions. It’s not all spent inside the school – like for teacher’s salaries – it’s also spent on contracts to repair buildings, supply food, supply energy, etc. The school board is tasked with making sure that this money is funneled to the right political donors who provide those services.
The school board hires a Superintendent who’s job is to make sure that NOTHING interferes with the board spending money. That is especially true of those pesky parents who are not satisfied at some aspect of the mediocre education offered their offspring. So the Super hires Principals to run the individual schools, carefully making sure that parent’s are kept quiet. If necessary, teachers can be sacrificed to make sure this organization functions as designed.
Teachers, fearing that the parents may make a fuss or even sue them, and knowing that the district is not going to back them up, join Unions. (Trust me, the unions ADVERTISE that these terrible things are going to happen without their help.) Is there any ground more fertile for corruption than a union?
I’ve written 4 paragraphs without mentioning the children or education. That’s because neither is as important as the rest of the system.