The Abundance Choice – Part 15: Our Fight for More Water

How the Teachers Union Can Save L.A. Unified

Earlier this year the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) released a report entitled “Burned Out, Priced Out – Solutions to the Educator Shortage Crisis.” Given the universally acknowledged challenges facing public K-12 education in California, this report merits serious attention. The UTLA represents teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which with over 500,000 enrolled K-12 students is...

By Edward Ring

Do American Students’ Lives Matter?

The results of the first post-lockdown National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released on June 1, and they showed anything but progress. Most subgroups took a big hit, but Blacks and Hispanics suffered the greatest damage. Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test, said, “These results are...

By Larry Sand

U.S. Schools Get Bad Marx

This article previously appeared on frontpagemag.com. My father was a liberal Democrat. He worshipped FDR and didn’t care much for the GOP. His parents were staunch Republicans, and the political discussions I remember from the 1950s were always entertaining – if not a bit confusing – to this eight-year-old. Importantly, while my dad was a liberal,...

By Larry Sand

“Housing First” Policies Create More Homelessness

Earlier this month a guest column in San Jose Spotlight defended efforts by homeless nonprofits to end homelessness in Santa Clara County. The author, Ray Bramson, is Chief Impact Officer at the nonprofit “Destination Home,” a tax exempt organization that collected over $62 million in contributions and grants in 2020. The CEO of this organization made a reported $335,404 in that...

By Edward Ring

Enormous Amounts of Money Flow into the Bottomless Education Pit

This article originally appeared on frontpagemag.com Spurred by the Covid panic, schools have been the recipient of ungodly sums of money. And it’s not as if the beast was starving before. To put things into perspective, the U.S. spends about $800 billion on national defense, more than China, Russia, India, the U.K., France, Saudi...

By Larry Sand

Questions About Water for Governor Newsom

Borrowing a page from the More Water Now campaign, which unsuccessfully attempted earlier this year to qualify a water funding initiative for the November 2022 ballot, Governor Newsom announced a new water supply strategy on August 11. Perhaps with the presidency in mind, or perhaps because he really means it, Newsom’s remarks were surprisingly accommodating towards those of us who...

By Edward Ring

Education Exodus

Parents are abandoning schools in large numbers, but teachers are not. School reopening time is almost upon us, and large numbers of parents have opted out of government-run schools. Over the past two school years, k-12 enrollment has declined by nearly 3%, or about 1.3 million students nationwide, according to a recent study by the American...

By Larry Sand

Average Pay for Manhattan Beach Firefighters is $328,000 Per Year

Negotiations between the Manhattan Beach Firefighters Association and the Manhattan Beach City Council have been stalled since May, when an impasse was announced. As reported in a local publication serving Manhattan Beach and nearby cities, firefighters and their supporters packed a July 19 city council meeting to urge the council to alter its stance in labor...

By Edward Ring

Union Sponsored AB 5 Hits Independent Truckers

For four days last month, independent truckers blockaded the Port of Oakland, preventing goods from entering or leaving. Threats of arrest, along with the possibility of personal liability stemming from a lawsuit filed against the protesters by the Port of Oakland, were sufficient to bring the blockade to an end. But the reasons for the protest have...

By Edward Ring

Do Teachers Really Need a Union?

Educators don’t get much for their $1,200 yearly dues. In the aughts, after blindly being a dues-paying National Education Association member for years, I opened my eyes, and discovered that I’d been wasting my money. The teachers unions were primarily about politics, all of which went in a leftward direction. One in-your-face example at the...

By Larry Sand

If Cities are in financial crisis, why aren’t they panicking?

Most U.S. cities are experiencing an administrative and financial crisis. This appears to be at odds with the confident tone of recent budget hearings where most of the attention was placed on how to spend remaining 2021 federal relief funds and so called “discretionary funds.” Cities have been able to adopt viable budgets this year...

By Mark Moses

Our Ed School Slums

Many American schools of education are not worthy of existing. On June 29, the California Department of Education, in cooperation with the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the State Board of Education, announced the first-ever release of statewide teacher assignment data. The report revealed that as of the 2020-21 school year, “83.1 percent of teacher...

By Larry Sand

When Will Government Unions Stand Up For All Workers?

Public sector unions have corrupted the ability of California’s governing institutions to serve the interests of the people. The consequences include a failing public education system, catastrophically flawed environmental policies, and an unrelenting attack on the ability of small businesses to survive. In each of these cases, there are plentiful examples of this corruption, and...

By Edward Ring