Union Agreement Requires District To Layoff White Teachers Before Teachers Of Color
Minneapolis Public Schools will now layoff and rehire teachers based on their race, instead of following seniority and success rates.
Race-based practices are becoming increasingly popular in public schools. While some districts are implementing race-based admissions, race-based grading, and discipline, now the Minneapolis Public Schools are utilizing race and heritage to determine layoffs and rehires. This is due to the latest union agreement that is full of “anti-racist” policies which focus on implementing further racially-obsessed policies next spring.
The final agreement between Minneapolis Public Schools and the teachers union sets a new precedent. That when laying off teachers, seniority must not matter when dealing with minority teachers. On page four, section A. 15.2.5 Excessive Teachers clause declares that white teachers who do not belong to an “underrepresented population,” must be excessed before those who are members of an “underrepresented population.”
In addition, when reinstating teachers for employment the Minneapolis Public Schools must contact underrepresented teachers before white ones. Anti-racist sub-committees are being developed to ensure that hiring practices are more diverse, updating curriculum to be more supportive of diversity, and training teachers to implement anti-racism in the classroom. While anti-racism may sound like a positive movement in passing, the movement is often focused on anti-whiteness and promoting racial division to somehow end racism.
How policies that specifically give one race precedence over another will end racism is unclear, but many parents have expressed their opposition to racially obsessed education practices. While districts like the Minneapolis Public Schools follow the Department of Education’s push to implement identity politics into the classroom, student success rates are continuing to plummet. There is no evidence to prove that teaching anti-racism or focusing on racially based education practices encouraged and promoted healthy learning practices.
In fact, there is mounting evidence that suggests the opposite. Test scores in WOKE school districts are said to be abysmal. While enrollment declines are prominent in states like California and New York, where identity politics have become popular throughout various districts, so have attendance rates. The Minneapolis Public Schools alone are failing students in math and reading subjects.
The Minneapolis Public School district’s current test ranking sits well within the bottom 50% of Minnesota schools with a score of 3 out of 10. Only 42% of students are proficient in math, and 47% are proficient in reading. This is curious, being that Minnesota received over a billion dollars in COVID relief funds to help make up for learning loss and other pandemic-related issues.
Upon further examination, these failures are directly linked to political ideologies dominating the classroom. Instead of focusing on reinforcing core class lessons, the state advised districts like the Minneapolis Public Schools to spend their taxpayer-funded COVID relief money on “culturally responsive” training, anti-racism practices and promoting gender theory. Now white teachers are to be laid off before teachers of color even if they have higher seniority and better success rates.
While racial issues have been pushed to the forefront of many political arguments, they are now being utilized to instill racially biased practices in the name of “anti-racism,” but these policies have yet to improve Minneapolis Public School student success rates. Nor have they served to unify students regardless of what they look like, where they come from, or how they identify. As proponents consider this some kind of cultural victory, many believe this measure will only further divide students and teachers as a focus on race takes precedence over knowledge, effort, and skill.
