The teachers unions keep racking up dubious awards. In the past week, I have seen cashiers, cops, postal employees, pharmacists, doctors, receptionists, nurses, bus drivers and others who work directly with the public remain on the job. Maybe they realize that if they don’t work, they will have no income. Maybe they have a sense...
What has happened, what hasn’t happened, and why. On June 27, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that government workers no longer had to pay dues to a union as a condition of employment, and the ensuing hysteria was a sight to behold. Loopy headlines like “How The Supreme Court’s Janus Decision Could Cripple Public...
Too many educators are clueless on issues relating to their profession. In 2006, I co-founded the California Teachers Empowerment Network, whose mission is to give educators unbiased information and to combat union spin and outright lies. While we have helped a good number of teachers, there are still way too many who are...
AFT continues to use teachers as ATM machines to fund their pet leftist causes. The latest American Federation of Teachers annual financial disclosure has been released (H/T RiShawn Biddle). This year’s LM-2 is filled with goodies that are sure to warm the cockles of leftist teacher union members, but apolitical educators, centrists and certainly those...
An email sent to educators just 10 years ago opened a lot of eyes – including mine – about the true nature of the teachers unions. In 2005, after having taught for 24 years, I was becoming quite agitated. All along I had been subsidizing the teachers unions’ political agenda and thought I had no...
Given the assertions you make in your latest “Where We Stand” column, we need to talk! So it’s been a year since I last wrote to you. You sure have been busy! Defending mandatory voting laws and Hillary Clinton, railing against cheese sandwiches and Jeb Bush, it’s totally understandable that you may be getting a...
Unions demand apologies, but refuse to make any themselves. The cover of the November 3rd edition of Time Magazine reads “It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher; some tech millionaires may have found a way to change that.” Accompanying the text is a photo of a judge’s gavel about to pound an apple. The...
Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher and president of California Teachers Empowerment Network, summarized it succinctly: “Ah, the commissar has spoken from on high!” The “commissar” is none other than the president of the Anaheim Elementary Education Association, Kristen Fisher, who dispatched an email to dues-paying union members on Oct. 6. It seems that Fisher...
CA announces a budget surplus — and legislators can’t wait to blow it. It’s hardly surprising, but California’s we-never-met-a-big-budget-bill-we-didn’t-like Democratic lawmakers and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson have joined hands to sponsor SB 837, new legislation that would provide free public preschool to every four-year-old child in California. The Kindergarten Readiness Act of 2014, introduced...
Although California is not a right-to-work state, public school teachers have the ability to receive a yearly rebate of $300 – $400 from the California Teachers Association. Teachers have these options because the United States Supreme Court has held that a union can’t force a non-union member to pay for the union’s political and other activities unrelated...
Prepared by Golden Together, a Movement to Restore the California Dream Edward Ring, California Policy Center Steve Hilton, Founder of Golden Together Published March 20, 2025