Union President: Time to Make Charter Schools 'Ours'

MINNESOTA — Charter schools are popping up all across the nation, with 41 states offering families access to the alternative public schools.

Because the large majority of charter schools are not unionized, they can focus solely on serving students instead of pacifying the financial demands of school employee unions.

The unions know they cannot stop the spread of charter schools, so they have decided to take them over.

Late last year, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers decided to authorize its own charter schools. An email written by MFT President Lynn Nordgren and posted on Eduwonk.com explains the union’s decision.

” … [C]harter schools are not going away despite 20 years of protesting,” Nordgren writes. “Because of this, it is time to figure out how to… stop the de-professionalization of teaching, the bleeding out of our unions and the miseducation of too many students… It is time to ‘get in the game’ and make it ours.”

We all know that “the miseducation” of students is really the unions’ specialty, and they guard it jealously.

Nordgren writes that the MFT’s decision to open charter schools will “keep our union responsibilities and rights as an option, and make sure teachers are respected and have a voice in the schools in which they work.”

Translation: the unions want charter schools to choke on all their rigid work rules, pay schedules and adult-centered demands which will render the alternative public schools no different than their government-run counterparts.

The union’s new philosophy about charter schools is simple: if you can’t beat ’em, infiltrate and destroy them from within.