Scuffle over teacher unions in Fayette a distraction from real purpose and real enemy | Opinion
There seems to be an evergreen lede that frequently starts off my columns about the Fayette County schools: “I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, but it seems like a waste of time that distracts everyone from the crucial work of educating our children.”
That perfectly describes Valarie Honeycutt Spears’ latest story about a kerfuffle between Fayette County Public Schools and KY 120 United-AFT, the local chapter associated with the American Federation of Teachers and part of the larger AFL-CIO. Fayette teachers can also be represented by the National Education Association, or KEA, which is the largest educator group in the state.
Labor unions are important to our democracy. Teacher unions in particular, stopped the worst changes to the teacher pension system, and more or less, helped convince voters to get rid of Gov. Matt Bevin. Needless to say the GOP doesn’t like most organized labor. This past session session, they passed a bill to prohibit automatic payroll deductions for union fees for public employees, unless they are for police and firefighters, which gives you some idea of where they stand.
In meeting the requirement of this new law, Fayette County administrators said they had just realized that KY 120 reps didn’t fill out some required paperwork, and so Fayette County schools is not going to “recognize” them, which led those members to go to a school board meeting and express themselves loudly. Now I don’t know why Fayette County couldn’t have just asked them to fill out the paperwork without going through the drama of “not recognizing” them. I don’t know if this is some weird power play by school board chair Tyler Murphy because he is a representative from Kentucky to the National Education Association Board of Directors, which is affiliated with KEA and FCEA or if FCPS administrators simply don’t like KY 120.
Whatever the case, it makes everyone look bad. Some people are still mad at teacher unions in general because they blocked a quicker return to school during COVID, some people are mad at Fayette County and public schools in general because they don’t understand why they spend so much time on matters like this instead of teaching kids to read and do math. The COVID deficit is real and still hurting our kids’ results.
Public education has enough problems, and infighting does not help. In fact, public education’s enemies, like the Kentucky GOP, collect these stories like Halloween candy so they can use them when the next argument over school choice or school funding comes along.
Texas political scientist Joel Montfort had a great Twitter thread just a day ago, where he pointed out the systemic destruction underway of public education. You can read the whole thing, but it boils down to this:
“The GOP wants it to fail. They want to choke the life out of it. They see that it has created a generation that has completely turned on them. They are furious. This is retribution.”
Montfort goes on to lay out how they make teachers miserable by preventing them from teaching history, underpaying them and undermining their retirement, so more quit and fewer join the profession. Then they can say school districts are failing and we need school choice at private schools. They make them public enemy number one, accuse schools and teachers of somehow “grooming” or teaching critical race theory when they point out that Jim Crow laws were bad.
Does any of this sound familiar in Kentucky? I mean, it’s not just a plan, it’s a reality, and the only reason it’s not further along is because unions have held back widespread privatization efforts. Just this session, we were supposed to substantively address the teacher shortage, and instead we passed rules on transgender kids, sex education and “harmful books.”
So quit with the infighting. Administrations and unions and anyone who supports public education should be on the same team because it’s very clear who the enemy is, and they are very close.
