There is a war brewing in New Hampshire between Commissioner Frank Edelblut and parents, versus The New Hampshire Teachers unions. How did it get to this point? This conflict has been brewing for some time.
When Commissioner Edelblut appeared before the Executive Councilors, who would approve his appointment, testimony from the public took up the entire day. Progressive Democrats organized to oppose his appointment, while those on the right side showed up to support it.
But something has changed since Frank Edelblut was appointed as Commissioner. Something has changed in public education that has parents more engaged than ever before.
We can see it across America, parents are showing up to school board meetings demanding change. It started when schools shut down for COVID, but schools are open now. You would think that things would have gone back to normal, and parents would be satisfied. That isn’t the case. As a parental rights advocate in New Hampshire, I’m getting calls and messages from parents across the state who are sending me information on disturbing practices that are coming into the classroom. I’m sure the Commissioner is getting this same information, and he now feels compelled to speak out.
In this op-ed Commissioner Edelblut wrote, he includes a link to some of the evidence he’s received from parents that have caused them to file complaints. He wrote about the biases taught in the classroom, and how they conflict with the values of some of the families they are supposed to be serving.
Public schools serve a diverse group of families, so if something taught has a political bias, chances are it’s going to be a problem for some of the families. Normally this is ignored. Parents have to endure an attack on their values, or go somewhere else.
You would think those opposed to school choice would want to make sure that as many families as possible were being served, so they wouldn’t walk away from their local public schools. But that’s not the case. The teachers unions are notorious for opposing school choice options for families, but they insist on pushing bias in the classroom that causes families to leave. When they leave, public schools lose funding.
School choice advocates have capitalized on this.
People like Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT. (American Federation of Teachers) has been thanked by her political opponents for driving more parents to support school choice. When schools were shut down, and the union heads insisted they stay closed, parents removed their children from the public schools and enrolled them in private and parochial schools. I saw several pro-school choice organizations thank Weingarten for doing what they couldn’t do, drive the school choice political movement forward.
Commissioner Edelblut, in his op-ed, provided evidence of political indoctrination and bias in our public schools. This kind of bias has the same impact as remote learning and forced masking. Schools end up alienating a portion of their families who then flee the public school system.
Critical Race Theory, that divides our kids and families, started showing up in some of The New Hampshire Schools. This caused the legislators to enact an anti-discrimination law so parents could protect their children from the harmful hate that comes with the radicalized CRT agenda.
Families are now seeing political bias when radicalized teachers display their BLM (Black Lives Matter) flags, or inject LGBTQ or gender identity into their classroom. Families are told to accept this bias aimed towards their children, or leave–so some leave. When families leave, not only does the funding source to the public schools stop, they become new school choice advocates. In other words, the social engineering is causing enrollments to drop in our public schools and creating more school choice supporters.
Some of these topics are highly political and push a different set of moral standards than what some of the families want for their children. These families have never insisted that their morals and political biases be taught, only that someone else’s not be force on their children. Where’s the tolerance? Where’s the respect for diversity?
With all of this talk about appreciating diversity, you’d think there’d be more appreciation by the unions for their diverse teaching staff and the families they serve. Many of these teachers do not agree with this radicalization of their public schools. Many of them just want to teach the academics.
Whatever side of the fence you sit on, one thing is for sure, the more the public schools turn away from academics, the more parents will support school choice options.
In essence, the Commissioner who is a school choice supporter should thank the unions in New Hampshire. They are doing more to promote school choice among the population than any conservative group could ever wish for.
What do I think about this? I think the unions are ignoring the political fall-out from what they support. Enrollments are declining in the public schools, and New Hampshire went from one school choice organization to adding another option for parents. Parents now have growing numbers of home-schoolers in this state. That means less funding to local public schools.
Someday parents will begin to question why enrollment continues to decline while budgets increase. Many are already looking at declining proficiency scores in many of our schools while spending has significantly increased.
If the unions are pro-public schools, as they claim to be, why they ignoring the declining enrollment, in spite of these public ed reforms that the unions support?
The Commissioner made a point in his op-ed that may have been missed, he said, “To be fair, most educators do not engage in such practices, and effective educators know that blatant displays of bias are not necessary. They can teach challenging and sometimes controversial topics without allowing their personal preferences to seep through to the children. A student may never even know a teacher’s opinion on a topic, particularly a sensitive topic like sexuality and gender, or perspectives on political systems, whether capitalism or socialism, or an ideological engagement of race and diversity.”
He is right, most educators come to school, and do not exploit the children by pushing their political or biased views. We need to remember to thank them for their professionalism in the classroom. But it is the others who do not respect the good families in their district, when they push their views on the children.
Some of the radicalized teachers are angry about the Commissioner exposing some of the bias in their classrooms. Too bad. If you are going to exploit the children in your classroom, that needs to be exposed. If you are there to exploit children, you need to rethink your approach. You are not helping the families you serve, and you are certainly not helping public education thrive.
While the NEA-NH continues to reject the pushback from Commissioner Edelblut on the bias and political indoctrination in the schools, those who support the school choice political agenda will sit back and watch their issue become more important among the parents who are being alienated in this war.
I see this transformation all of the time.
