NCAE chooses activism over academics… again

This week, the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) held a “Kids Over Corporations Mass Call” to promote its planned May Day mass demonstration in downtown Raleigh.

This is not the first time that the NCAE has asked its members to disregard their responsibilities to North Carolina children and travel to the state capital for a political protest. This year, however, NCAE leadership appears to want participation to be sizable enough to force school boards to cancel classes on May 1.

In 2018 and 2019, mass call-offs for an NCAE march forced dozens of school districts to cancel classes for hundreds of thousands of students across the state. Ordinary North Carolinians bore the burden for these unanticipated cancellations and will do so again if the NCAE is able to persuade enough teachers to join them for the upcoming political spectacle. When unanticipated cancellations occur, working parents must scramble to make arrangements for child care, students are deprived of a day of learning, and districts’ hourly workers are robbed of a day’s wages.

An internal FAQ supplied to NCAE members supplies responses to these objections. If asked whether the May 1 event will hurt students, NCAE leadership suggests that political posturing is the priority.

“Our hearts are with our students and in our classrooms, but when the very idea of strong public schools is under attack and our kids’ future of growing up in a democracy is in jeopardy, it is our professional obligation and moral responsibility to fight for our kids,” the FAQ declares.

Perhaps NCAE members should be reminded that teachers’ professional obligation and moral responsibility is to teach kids, which they plan to forgo on May 1 to advance the union’s political agenda. Indeed, partisan politics underlies this entire effort.

The FAQ continues, “But we have reached the conclusion that it is time to take the issue to our legislators’ bosses, WE THE PEOPLE, in order to make the general public understand the moral disgrace of failing to put our kids first and ultimately with the aim of changing the composition of the legislature itself.” [emphasis added]

Herein lies the truth about the upcoming May Day protest. It is not about kids. It is about political power. The NCAE is working on behalf of North Carolina Democrats to regain a legislative majority that will reduce educational options for children and usher in higher taxes for working families.

The Kids Over Corporations petition advertises these policy aims. The NCAE craves a massive increase in school district appropriations underwritten by significantly higher taxes and money currently allocated for private school choice programs. Claims that state lawmakers have chosen tax reductions and school choice at the expense of district school spending are questionable, however. According to the NC Department of Public Instruction, state public school appropriations reached a high of $12.75 billion this school year, even as declining birthrates and the continued popularity of charter, private, and home schooling lead to district enrollment declines.

North Carolina is not the only state that will see May Day protests this year, and public education is only one of a number of issues that underlie these highly coordinated and generously funded demonstrations. As detailed recently by my Defending Education colleague Rhyen Staley, the NCAE’s parent organization, the National Education Association, and dozens of left-wing activist groups have targeted May Day as a day of “collective action,” urging likeminded citizens to join them in a day of mass protest. This broader effort asks participants to avoid work, school, and shopping as a form of protest against unnamed “billionaires” who impede their collectivist fantasies.

While the NCAE parrots many of the same class-war talking points as their comrades, its leadership has a more specific target in mind — undermining the Republican-led General Assembly. And they are shockingly comfortable allowing North Carolina children and families to suffer to achieve their shameless political ambitions.