Bernie Sanders’ federalizing teacher pay is a threat to local schools

Just when you think Vermont’s socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and the left-wing establishment could not be more insane and dangerous, they come up with a new low.  This time it involves nationalizing teacher pay.

In a move emblematic of the progressive left’s growing appetite for federal control, Vermont socialist Senator Bernie Sanders — flanked by members of the Squad and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten — has introduced the Pay Teachers Act.  It is a sweeping proposal to federally mandate a $60,000 minimum starting salary for all public school teachers nationwide. While the bill is framed as a solution to the teacher shortage and a boost for educational equity, it represents a profound shift in how America funds and governs its schools with disastrous implications on local school district budgeting.  It is essentially an unfunded federal mandate on every school district in America.

The Sanders Bill goes beyond the $60,000 teacher minimum wage.  It also includes:

• $45,000 minimum for paraprofessionals and support staff.  This would provide a full-time salary for support staff who work minimal hours each week.
• $1,000 per teacher for classroom supplies.  This is based on a widely held belief that teachers spend a lot of their own money to provide supplies for students.  While there are a small number of anecdotal examples, teachers making such purchases are extremely rare.
• Tripling Title I funding to $36.77 billion.  Title 1 funding is supposed to help low-income students.  The funds can be used for tutoring, after school programs, teacher training, technology and other programs promoted by individual school districts.  It is based on an old canard that more money produces better education.  It has utterly failed to improve education for low-income students in segregated minority communities.
• Billions in new federal spending on teacher training, career ladders, and school modernization.  This codifies teacher benefits that are best left to contract negotiations.

This legislation would override the traditional school budgeting process in which states, cities, and school districts—as independent taxing entities—set teacher pay and benefits based on local budgets and cost-of-living. Instead, it centralizes control in Washington, with a one-size-fits-all funding mandate.  It will impose undue pressure on local budgeting – and shift money away from the “children’s budget”, with direct benefits to the students in the classroom, and the “teachers’ budget”, which provides benefits to teachers and the unions – and ultimately to the political machines supported by the unions.

The Nexus Between the AFT and Democratic Party Establishment

At the heart of the push behind the Pay Teachers Bill is Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), who until recently held a leadership role in the Democratic National Committee. (Do I smell a conflict of interest?)

The AFT has donated 99.9% of its political contributions to Democrats in recent cycles — totaling more than $2.5 million. It’s not just a union.  It can be fairly seen as a member of the Democrats’ major donor class.

Weingarten’s coordination with Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other progressive senators underscores the union’s role as an ideological arm of the Democratic Party. The legislation was unveiled at a Capitol Hill town hall featuring union leaders and hundreds of activists, turning a policy rollout into a campaign-style rally.

Chicago …My Kinda Town

(Just so you know … I served as the senior consultant to the Chicago Board of Education during a brief period of reform and was involved in two major labor negotiations and strikes.  I served in a similar capacity with the Detroit Board of Education during a union strike in the Motor City.)

Chicago stands out as a prime example of the political corruption that permeates the failing public school systems in America’s major urban centers – especially the segregated Black and Hispanic communities.  The Chicago school system is irrefutable evidence that the left’s single bromide – more money – is not the solution to failing education.

What Sanders & Company are proposing only benefits the unions and the local Democrat apparat that they so generously finance.  That money is used to deny minority children the opportunity of a quality educations through school choice programs.

The imposition of a federal government unfunded mandate will put more pressure on what I call the “Children’s Budget” – the money that directly serves the needs of the kids in the classroom.  It will lead to unnecessary budget shortfalls that will either be funded by local tax increases or by reducing expenditures in the Children’s Budget.

The federal government has no business imposing fixed costs on every public school system in America. It will create budgeting chaos throughout the country … increase the cost of education … and produce no discernible benefit for the children.  Black and Hispanic students trapped in dysfunctional schools in the segregated communities will continue to suffer from the (hopefully) last vestiges of Democrat-imposed institutional racism.  The proof is in the numbers.

Now for a bit of possible good news.  I doubt the Sanders et al legislation will ever be found on President Trump’s desk.  Not even if Democrats succeed in taking control of the House.  The announcement of the Sanders’ legislation was nothing but a public relations stunt to maintain the party’s influence over the teacher union vote.

As long as those Black and Brown kids represent money for the teachers’ union and the local political structure, there will be no improvement in education in the segregated communities.   This is just a throwback to old-fashioned plantation politics.

So, there ‘tis.

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