New School-Union Contract Has 'Educators of Color Protections' That Put White Teachers on the Chopping Block
A new agreement between Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) stipulates white teachers be laid off before minority ones if the situation becomes necessary.
According to Alpha News, MFT and MPS came to an agreement on March 25 to end a two-week strike from teachers.
Following the deal, the sides crafted a new collective bargaining agreement, and each side ratified it.
One of the provisions in the deal entailed “educators of color protections,” and it included a blatantly racist policy.
“Starting with the Spring 2023 Budget Tie-Out Cycle, if excessing a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site, the District shall excess the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population,” the agreement reads according to Alpha News.
The United Federation of Teachers defined “excessing” as “the process of reducing staff in a particular school when there is a reduction in the number of available positions in a title or license area in that school.”
In nearly every school district in the country, excessing entails terminating the teachers with the least seniority. The Star Tribune said the new Minneapolis provision made it “one of the only school districts in the country with such seniority-disrupting language.”
In addition to protection from excessing, the agreement said teachers of color “may be exempted from district-wide layoff outside of seniority order.” Lay-offs occur when the entire school district does not have enough positions for the people employed, the United Federation of Teachers explained.
Determining who gets to keep their jobs based on skin color is unequivocally racist. No matter what the end goal is, letting skin color define employment is disgusting.
Leftist members of the MFT attempted to justify their blatant racism by suggesting their goal was “to remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination by the District,” Alpha News reported.
“Past discrimination by the District disproportionately impacted the hiring of underrepresented teachers in the District, as compared to the relevant labor market and the community, and resulted in a lack of diversity of teachers,” the agreement said.
Even if it is true that MPS have discriminated against teachers of color in the past, that injustice will not be remedied by discriminating against white teachers. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Nonetheless, leftists in Minneapolis have praised this racist new agreement. Edward Barlow is a band teacher at Anwatin Middle School and an executive board member of the MFT, and he said the agreement could be a blueprint for other school districts.
“It can be a national model, and schools in other states are looking to emulate what we did,” Barlow told the Star Tribune. “Even though it doesn’t do everything that we wanted it to do, it’s still a huge move forward for the retention of teachers of color.”
Not only are leftists unapologetic for this racist new agreement, but they also want to try and convince other school districts to enact similar racist policies. This would be a disaster for the American education system, which already has plenty of problems.
Upper Midwest Law Center senior trial counsel James Dickey told Alpha News the agreement violated the constitutions of both Minnesota and the United States.
“The [collective bargaining agreement] … openly discriminates against white teachers based only on the color of their skin, and not their seniority or merit,” Dickey said. “Minneapolis teachers and taxpayers who oppose government-sponsored racism like this should stand up against it.”
Racism like this should not be allowed under any circumstances, and Americans ought to express their discontent with policies like these in any of our cities.
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