By Ray Cardello on April 13, 2021

When the Defund the Police movement was in full swing last year, there was agreement that most police officers were good but because of the few, the bad apples, the need to defund all of police departments was the battle cry of the left.. We have a new situation upon us that may be costing more lives and creating immeasurable damage to a generation of children and it is now time to take action against this group…..the Educators of our country. Just like it took just one officer in Minnesota, former officer Derek Chauvin, to become the poster child of the Defund Movement, Alissa Piro from Los Angeles has become the teacher that critics will point to when they call for public school systems to be defunded. Teachers, and teacher’s unions, in cities such as Chicago, Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles have helped to cast a dark cloud over a profession that has always been looked up to by parents and students but is now being second guessed. In their effort to exert their power for personal and professional gain, they may have made a huge mistake. They have forced parents and taxpayers to reevaluate the product that such a high percentage of tax revenue is spent on.

Any matrix you look at will show the decline in basic skills for students in the United States versus the world. Many reasons were considered as to why this was happening but teachers somehow remained above scrutiny. They somehow retained the respect of the community. Then the indoctrination of American students into the advantages of Socialism over Capitalism, the introduction of the Woke Society, the guilt trip put onto these students for their parent’s role in the systematic racism of our country was starting to get serious attention. But when the Pandemic hit in the spring of 2020 and teachers and unions refused to allow students to attend in person classes in many regions of the country, the teachers / unions had overplayed their hand. When parents had to decide between going to work or staying home to basically homeschool their children, those parents started to question the essential value of teachers. Colleges and universities is a whole other story as they had long ago lost respect of the public. With out of control costs and the lack of marketability of college grads with useless degrees, colleges had already begun their slow death. But K-12….this is still considered essential but the public school system is failing at every level. There was no curve sharp enough to give them a passing grade.

Parents have started to look to alternatives since 2020. Charter schools, private schools, parochial schools are all looking better to many parents and these parents are looking to get credits on their local taxes for not using the public school system. And why not? Taxes have been squeezing the American family at every level and if they were feeling forced to seek alternative means to educate their children at direct cost to them, then why should they also have to pay for public schools. Makes sense.

We are at a collision course or at least a crossroads. We have a declining quality of our public school system with teachers and unions demanding more money for the system and themselves and we have parents who have had enough and want to defund the system. It has taken us a generation to get to this point and there is definitely no easy or quick solution but the system does need to be evaluated and restructured if it is to survive. It took the Pandemic to shine the spotlight on a problem many knew existed but only a few wanted to admit. There was pushback from teachers at the possibility of parents being able to see inside the sausage factory as teachers took to Zoom to interact with their students. The fiasco we all witnessed as we watched Alissa Piro berate her class and their parents was to say the least, out of line. More importantly it brought to light the possibility of systemic issues with the teachers who are the foundation of the educational system. Just like good cops will suffer because of the actions of Derek Chauvin, Alissa Piro just put her knee on the necks of an entire class of students and the parents of those students will want her made an example of…..and they are right to do so.