North Carolina’s four largest public school systems have cancelled classes on May 1 because so many of their teachers are taking the day off to attend a May Day protest at the State Capitol in Raleigh.
Wake County (Raleigh) and Charlotte-Mecklenberg public schools are among those shuttering their doors on May 1. “But some districts are asking their teachers to arrange for small delegations to go to Raleigh while classes remain in session on May 1,” the Raleigh News Observer reported on Monday:
But the N.C. Association of Educators and other teachers who are organizing the May 1 protest say that the school districts are hurting themselves by not allowing all teachers to attend. Event organizers say they need “massive, unlimited numbers” of people at the event as they pressure lawmakers for changes such as providing raises to all school employees and expanding Medicaid.
“The only hope we have of winning is to fill the streets of Raleigh with a powerful sea of red, to pack the legislature with folks using their teacher voices to be sure members of the General Assembly hear the echo when they’re writing this year’s budget,” Justin Parmenter, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg schoolteacher, wrote in a blog post Saturday. . .
Parmenter is a member of the board for Red4EdNC, a teachers’ group helping organize the protest.
As Breitbart News reported in February, “A well-funded and subversive leftist movement of teachers in the United States threatens to tilt the political balance nationwide in the direction of Democrats across the country as Republicans barely hang on in key states that they need to hold for President Donald Trump to win re-election and for Republicans to have a shot at retaking the House and holding onto their Senate majority.”
“This teachers union effort, called #RedforEd, has its roots in the very same socialism that President Trump vowed in his 2019 State of the Union address to stop, and it began in its current form in early 2018 in a far-flung corner of the country before spreading nationally. Its stated goals–higher teacher pay and better education conditions–are overshadowed by a more malevolent political agenda: a leftist Democrat uprising designed to flip purple or red states to blue, using the might of a significant part of the education system as its lever,” Breitbart News noted.
According to its leaders, the #RedforEd movement began “organically” in March 2018, fronted by a then-23-year-old left wing socialist and Bernie Sanders supporter in only his second year as a teacher in Arizona, Noah Karvellis. As Breitbart News reported earlier this month, however, the entire launch was orchestrated by the leadership of Arizona’s teachers union.
On May 1, the #RedforEd movement turns its focus on North Carolina.
Organizers estimate that thousands of protesters–many of them public school teachers, will show up. Last year’s Education Advocacy Day, held on May 16, 2018, attracted an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 attendees, many of whom where teachers.
Bryan Proffitt, a North Carolina public school teacher and organizer of the May 1, 2019 protest, bragged in this Facebook post on Monday that last year’s efforts shut down 42 public school systems across the state.
Another red and white banner bearing the imprint of the North Carolina Association of Educators proclaimed: Five Issues One Day.
None of these five issues, as identified in the website of the North Carolina Association of Educators, addressed the issue of improving student performance:
All Out for May 1st!
On May 16, 2018 educators across North Carolina took action to defeat fear, hopelessness, and the power of school privatizers.
The North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) just wrapped up its 2019 Convention. During debate at the convention representatives from across the state identified and overwhelmingly voted to set the following items as demands to the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA):
- Provide enough school librarians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, nurses, and other health professionals to meet national professional-to-student standards;
- Provide $15 minimum wage for all school personnel, 5% raise for all ESPs (non-certified staff), teachers, administrators, and a 5% cost of living adjustment for retirees;
- Expand Medicaid to improve the health of our students and families;
- Reinstate state retiree health benefits eliminated by the General Assembly in 2017;
- Restore advanced degree compensation stripped by the General Assembly in 2013.
The convention also set May 1, 2019 as a day of action to call all public school workers together and demand the NCGA act on these demands.
Please fill out this short survey for the NCAE Organize 2020 Racial and Social Justice Caucus and let us know what you’re able to do in this fight for our schools!
A little more than two weeks before the planned May 1 protest in Raleigh, a total of 11 North Carolina public schools have cancelled classes for the day due to the number of teachers who will be out of the classroom and in Raleigh that day. That number, however, is likely to grow.
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