The #RedforEd movement shut down a number of K-12 public schools in Indiana on Tuesday as school teachers skipped class to protest at the State Capitol.
“Thousands of students in Indiana will be out of school on Tuesday while teachers plan to head to the statehouse to demand better pay,” Fox 59 reported.
The Indianapolis Star reported 145 school districts around the state will close for what the state’s teachers union is calling “Red for Ed Action Day”:
So far, 145 school districts have canceled class or moved to an “e-learning day” Tuesday to accommodate teachers who want to attend the Indiana State Teachers Association’s Red for Ed Action Day at the Statehouse. The state’s largest teacher’s union called on its members to take a personal day to lobby state lawmakers for better pay, among other things.
As Breitbart News first 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.
The Star reports the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) “has said it has three main goals for [Tuesday’s] action.”
- It wants an investment from the state in teacher pay.
- It wants lawmakers to make good on a promise to hold schools and teachers harmless from state test scores, which dropped sharply when the state introduced the new ILEARN test in the spring.
- It wants a new professional development requirement repealed.
The #RedforEd movement began in Arizona in March 2018 and has spread throughout the country. The movement flexed its political muscle in the recent gubernatorial election in Kentucky, where teachers organized politically under the #RedforEd banner to help defeat incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin, as Breitbart News reported:
The #RedforEd teachers movement flexed its political muscle in the Kentucky gubernatorial race on Tuesday, powering the campaign of Democrat Attorney General Andy Beshear against incumbent Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. . .
Bevin’s handling of a series of unauthorized teachers strikes organized by the local Kentucky #RedforEd teachers group this past spring created great anger among many of the state’s teachers, and they vowed to defeat him in November.
In August, Breitbart News reported on the wildcat teachers strikes in Kentucky earlier that year:
More than 1,000 Kentucky teachers broke the state’s labor laws when they called in sick to participate in #RedforEd promoted protests over their pension funds at the state capitol this spring, Kentucky’s Secretary of Labor said on Friday.
But none of the 1,074 teachers who broke the law will be fired or prosecuted, Secretary of Labor David Dickerson said. Instead, they were given a one-time warning, with the promise of future consequences should they break the labor law again.
“The Kentucky teacher sickout saga began on February 28, when the local #RedforEd affiliate in the state, Kentucky 120 United, launched a protest of legislation under consideration at the state legislature that shut down public schools in several counties,” Breitbart News reported.
Last month, the #RedforEd movement scored another victory in Chicago when the Chicago Teachers Union went on an 11 day strike that ended when the Chicago Public Schools accepted most of their demands.