Ingraham: Teachers unions and public schools 'flunking and flailing' amid parental pushback

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Ingraham: Flunking and flailing

Laura Ingraham says public schools will continue to lose enrollment because the left will never back down on using schools to push its ideology.

In her "Ingraham Angle" commentary on Tuesday, host Laura Ingraham said some on the left are finally waking up to the prospect that locking down students, forcing them to cover their faces with cloth masks– and instituting draconian rules like no talking during lunch or forced quarantine of otherwise healthy students have damaged the Democrats and the reputation of the public school system.

"You know it’s bad for the Democrats when they’ve gotten the New York Times worried about how they’re handling education," she said, pointing to one aforementioned warning from liberal columnist Michelle Goldberg,  who wrote that Democrats desperately need schooling to get back to normal.

"Since the early days of the pandemic, The Angle tried to warn Democrats that locking down schools would damage for children and the economies in states that refused to open up," Ingraham continued.

"It was obvious to anyone except the rankest of partisans that life had essentially returned to normal in states run by conservative governors."

Bill Lee, Tennessee's governor, speaks during a roundtable discussion on vaccine distribution on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. governments top infectious-disease specialist, slammed the U.K.s drug regulator, saying that it rushed to clear the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE. Photographer: Houston Cofield/Bloomberg via Getty Images

She pointed to Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas, Brian Kemp of Georgia and William Lee of Tennessee, who largely kept their schools at proverbial normal operation.

"Yet the Democrats running these other states, and the school boards dominated by teachers union influence simply didn’t care. They ignored warnings and pleas from parents, from us, from everyone," she said.

In one recent case, critics claimed an appearance by American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten at former Virginia Gov. Terence McAuliffe's last rally in Norfolk helped doom his quest to reclaim the governorship against now-Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, speaks during the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Legislative and Grassroots Mobilization Conference in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Feb. 10, 2020. Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"Beyond the closures, and mask mandates, parents also began to see the garbage their kids are actually being taught.  The most depressing, racialized and sexualized course content taught by activists masquerading as educators," Ingraham continued.

"Moms and Dads described the situation as a one-two punch to the solar plexus – But rather than getting knocked out, parents punched back: Hence the victory in Virginia and the nail-biter in New Jersey."

"The decline in our public education system tracks the other parts of the country where the Democrats have dominated.  Your average city public school in Baltimore is going to be as well run as the Baltimore City Council.  Ditto for Chicago, Hartford, Connecticut, and Los Angeles."

Ingraham noted that overall, many public schools are rejecting common sense education policies that challenge and educate students and instead pandering to unions, and to "race radicals [and] gender benders."

"Today we see where 40 years of neglect and politicization has gotten us," she said.

"And the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg and every other liberal out there should know that the reason schools haven’t gotten back to normal is because the Left doesn’t want them to go back to normal."

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"Good for Goldberg for seeing the writing on the wall, but for many people, it’s already too late. It’s obvious that the type of education most parents want and most kids need in a competitive world is not something they’re willing to provide. The public schools will continue to lose enrollment because the Left will never back down on using the schools to push its ideology."

"Nor will they force the teachers’ unions to take measures that would allow the schools to return to normal. That means parents will continue to vote with their feet and their money."