A new contract between the public schools of Minneapolis and the teachers union is sparking uproar because senior white teachers may be laid go before teachers of color.
The contract states that instead of determining teacher layoffs or relocations based on seniority, as is customary, schools may disregard this process and fire senior staff members if a teacher of color would otherwise be laid off.
The deal was struck in the spring of 2022, after a two-week teachers’ strike, under the leadership of Gretchen Callahan, president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. Many have deemed the agreement unlawful, claiming that it addresses past racism with greater prejudice.
The agreement states, “If excessing a teacher who is a member of a group underrepresented among licensed teachers at the site, the district must excess the next-most senior teacher who is not a member of an underrepresented population.”
The prioritization of minority educators over senior educators may also apply to rehiring after a layoff.
The measure was greeted with instant opposition, with one economics expert describing it as “racist in action.”
In an editorial published in Liberty Unyielding on Sunday, constitutional attorney Hans Bader labeled the agreement as unlawful, arguing that a race-based layoff clause violated sections of the Civil Rights Act.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1996 that a school district cannot consider race, even as a tie-breaker, in deciding who to lay off, even to promote diversity, constitutional lawyer Bader wrote.
Jeremy Munson, the Republican representative to the Minnesota House of Representatives, said that although he was never in favor of safeguarding workers solely on the basis of seniority, the union’s agreement was ‘racist.’
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but discriminatory employment contracts have no place in our society, he added.
Meanwhile, social media users expressed anger and unease over the agreement, with one stating that it “did not sit well with me.”
“I can only say wow. How do you feel about this, all of my educator friends? Anthony Dunne said in a Facebook post: “From the outside looking in, I do not approve of this.” We hire and fire individuals based on their skin color. Consequently, in my simplistic opinion, battling past racism with fresh racism. The contract reads, “The District must deprioritize the more senior teacher who is not a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in order to recall a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers.”
According to school system and teachers’ union representatives, this makes the city one of just a few in the nation that engages in’seniority-disrupting.’
According to ABC News 4, the district is anticipated to lose positions as a result of budget cuts resulting from declining enrollments. Consequently, the deal might be crucial in the near future.
Additionally, the new contract stipulates the formation of “anti-bias, anti-racist” employee advisory groups.
According to the contract, they are to prioritize’reducing inequitable practices and attitudes in our learning locations and spaces and assisting educators, particularly educators of color, in navigating and disrupting our district as a largely white institution’
The clause was originally alluded to in March when an agreement was first reached, emphasizing the reality that the majority of the most senior teachers in Minneapolis are white and that individuals of color were often the first to be let go during layoffs.
The March agreement that terminated the Minneapolis teachers’ strike
According to MPR News, the deal that ended a two-week walkout was first reached in March.
At the time, union officials referred to the deal as “historic” and claimed improvements for education support professionals, class size limits, more nurses and mental health experts in schools, and more education support professionals.
The agreement raised the hourly wage of the lowest-paid education support personnel to $19 per hour, an increase of almost $4 per hour and $11,000 per year.
The new agreement also includes a doubling of the number of nurses, counselors, and social workers in primary schools.
Union representatives informed MPR News at the time that this safeguarded around ‘half’ of the district’s teachers of color.
Some conservative activists, notably the public school reform crusader Christopher Rufo, were outraged.
This is the natural conclusion of ‘equity,’ he tweeted.
Monday night on Fox News’ Hannity, contributors Leo Terrell and Clay Travis negotiated the arrangement.
Terrell, a black civil rights attorney, said, ‘It’s racist. It is discriminatory and unlawful. It should be instantly invalidated. I read the union’s statement. They said that they want professors that look like them. Wrong. Students need instructors who will educate them. Educate. Not what they seem!’
Travis, a sportswriter who operates the website Outkick the Coverage, concurred: ‘Of course it would. And I agree with all of Leo’s statements. Sean, the current basis of the Democratic Party consists of two components. Everything is racist, and America is a terrible country. That is the core of what the Democrats believe, and if you boil down every program they promote, you will find that to be the case.
Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, also condemned the agreement in a tweet: “This is racist.” This is forbidden. This is one another reason why government unions should be abolished.
The 1776 Project PAC, a conservative political action group, referred to the deal as “staggeringly racist and unlawful.”
Mark J. Perry referred to this as “racism in action.”
To remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) have mutually agreed to contract language that supports the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups relative to the labor market and the community served by the school district.
It is the most recent instance of teachers’ unions promoting left-wing education values.
Both the AFT and the NEA have backed the inclusion of the controversial 1619 project in school curricula. The effort, which began as a New York Times article, was welcomed as a “corrective history” of slavery in the United States. However, it has been criticized for ignoring facts in favor of a left-leaning revisionist narrative.
Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers trade organization, maintains that Critical Race Theory is not taught in schools, although she has lately fought back against parents who have spoken out against it. Yet a multitude of reports indicate that the parents’ fears that it has infiltrated classrooms are justified.
Students in Buffalo, New York, are taught that “all white people” promote systematic racism. The Arizona Department of Education has devised a ‘equity’ toolbox which argues that newborns display the earliest indications of racism at three months old and that white children become full fledged racists at five. Third graders in Cupertino, California, are instructed to deconstruct their ethnic identities and rate themselves based on their ‘power and privilege.’
A school principal in New York City gave white parents a “tool for action” that instructs them to become “white traitors” and push for “white abolition.”
In Seattle, there are teacher training sessions in which schools are declared to have committed “spirit murder” against black students.
All of these concepts are important to the CRT as stated by radical advocates Bettina Love and Ibram X. Kendi. In its most recent handbook for returning to school after COVID, the Department of Education included a link to Love’s Abolitionist Teaching Network’s Guide to Racial and Restorative Justice, which accuses white teachers of the’spirit murder’ of minority children and advocates for all white teachers to receive ‘anti-racist therapy.’