Teachers Union Boss: We Own Your Children

Children belong to government-school teachers and teacher unions, argued a leading teachers union boss in explosive comments this week. Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates also mocked those who expressed concerns about the ominous ideology that government is responsible for children, rather than God and their parents.

Speaking to a crowd during a speech at the City Club of Chicago, Gates referred to writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin. “Baldwin says the children are always ours. Every single one of them, all over the globe,” Davis Gates said. “And what comes next is ‘CTU thinks your children are its children.’ Yes, we do. We do. We do.”

Despite some apparent confusion in the wording, the message was clear. “‘CTU thinks all children belong to it. And they’re a socialist conspiracy ideology,’ she continued, again mocking critics. “Well, I don’t know about all that, but we like children. We educate them, we nurture them, we protect them, we support them, we negotiate for them, we create space for them. We even have them in our homes.”

Longtime campaigner for children and teachers Rebecca Friedrichs, who won a historic victory against teachers’ unions at the U.S. Supreme Court, expressed shock at the comments. “Once again, a teacher union leader is totally out of touch with boots on the ground teachers and parents,” she told The Newman Report, responding to the scandal.

“Good teachers do not believe the children belong to the union, or the state, or even the community.  Good teachers understand that children belong to their parents,” she continued. “And my belief, as a former longtime public-school teacher, is that children are gifts from God. They belong to God, and God entrusts them to their parents.”

Unfortunately for teachers, children, and taxpayers, unions such as CTU have hurt everyone. “Ever since unions gained a stronghold in our schools, student success has dropped sharply across many subject areas,” continued Friedrichs, who leads “For Kids and Country.” “Unions may think they are advocating for the kids, but in reality, they are bringing much harm to the children in America’s schools.”

Ironically, even as the CTU boss claims to own the children, families disagree. And they are fleeing her grip as quickly as they can. Almost 50 government schools in Chicago are operating at less than one third capacity, according to news reports. Just over the last decade, enrollment in the city’s schools has plunged by some 70,000, leaving the district with just 325,000 victims. The exodus continues.

Also ironically, as one prominent critic pointed out, if Chicago’s government schools and teachers union were parents, they would lose custody of the children under laws protecting minors from educational neglect and other horrors. Government data show less than a third of the students in the district are even “proficient” in any subject. Sexual abuse and violence, meanwhile, are exploding across the city’s public schools. 

The comments from Davis Gates echo those of other prominent figures in recent years. From then-President Joe Biden and then-U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to TV talking heads and countless more, the narrative is coming from all angles. “Our nation’s children are all our children,” Biden claimed in one of several outbursts where he sought to have government usurp responsibility from parents over children.

Davis Gates has a history of making unhinged comments. For example, just last year, The Newman Report documented how she celebrated a “sustainable community school” in Chicago known as Richards Academy as a model to emulate. And yet, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education, the “sustainable” academy did not have one single student proficient in either reading or math.

Almost 80 percent of students at that “academy” were chronically absent, even though two thirds of them somehow “graduated.” Even more astounding: the cost to taxpayers was $4,000 more per victim than at more traditional government schools in the district, which are already extorting taxpayers for unfathomable amounts. The CTU boss called for replicating this “success” across the entire system.

“We have committed as an entire union to using our contract to create more sustainable community schools like Richards Academy,” Davis Gates said at a press conference, calling it the “type of school community that is necessary to nurture, to educate, to reimagine, to ameliorate injustice and disparity.” How dumbing down and sexualizing students will ameliorate injustice was not immediately clear.

Earlier this year, meanwhile, Gates’ union described federal law enforcement as a “real threat” that government schools in Chicago were “staring down.” Demanding special “training protocols” to help members resist federal law enforcement, the union said anyone in authority who was not “doing everything in their power” to resist the Trump administration’s “horror film” was doing a “disservice” to the community.

Thankfully, Davis Gates is totally wrong on the issue: unions and governments do NOT own children, they never will, and that is a very good thing. Unfortunately, this dangerous mindset — the same ideas held by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and so many others — is widespread among those who lead the government “education” system. Parents must take back their power and lay down the law, now.

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