Seattle Public Schools have been closed once again, this time due to an ongoing strike by the Seattle Teacher’s Union. The strike began last week, when Seattle schools were set to open for the 2022-23 school year, and left more than 50,000 students’ fate hanging in the balance. Parents in the district likely had to scramble to make arrangements for alternative childcare, or take additional time off of work. Per usual, teachers were not concerned with the well-being of their students, but with their own paychecks.

Educators voiced their complaints surrounding “teaching in crowded classrooms and in challenging conditions made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic” as reported by CNN. The list of demands from the union included: higher pay, the hire of more teachers, more multilingual resources, and better mental health care and access for students and educators.

“‘We’re educators. We don’t have lots of experience with striking. It’s not what we want to be doing. We want to be in our schools with our students,’ teacher Ellen Santarelli said in a Facebook video. ‘However, to get what our students need … we are willing to go outside of our comfort zones — thousands of steps outside of our comfort zones.'”

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As with most teacher’s union demands, the students aren’t really the priority. Teachers, especially in Seattle, are concerned with their pay, benefits, and not working as much as possible. In 2021, the Seattle Education Association (SEA) advocated against reopening Seattle public schools for in-person learning amid the 2021-22 school year. The SEA called it “dangerous” when in reality, the danger was remote “learning” which caused plummeting test scores across the country.

The first government [nationwide] report to compare student achievement from before the pandemic through 2022 found the largest decline in reading scores since 1990, and the first-ever drop in math scores. The National Center for Education Statistics examined national achievement tests for 9-year-old students in 2022 as compared to 2020. NCES found that the average reading score dropped 5 points, and the average math score dropped 7 points.”

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The graph below shows the percentage amount that students’s declines in testing scores in Seattle between spring 2019 and fall 2021:

It has been made abundantly clear that remote learning has caused a massive drop in reading and mathematic ability in children nationwide. Instead of working to make up for lost time, Seattle teachers selfishly chose to strike for higher pay, after a full year of working from home, and a recent strike for similar complaints in 2015. The 2015 strike won teachers a 9.5% raise over three years, which means they were overdue to demand higher pay once again.

However, the one good thing that can be derived from students not attending schools in person is the greater involvement of parents. Washington school psychologists, of course, have the ability to treat and prescribe medications for children undergoing any mental duress, and have no legal obligation to tell the parent about it.

“Last year, via SB 5889 . . . forced insurers to cover gender dysmorphia treatment and gender-affirming care for minors between 13 and 17, without parental consent. It mandates that insurers deal directly with the patient without requiring the policyholder’s authorization.

It builds on SB 5904, which provides outpatient mental health treatment without parental consent for the same age group.”

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The simple fact is that students are suffering. Liberal educators indoctrinate them instead of teaching, push radical ideologies on children, then demand higher pay from the tax-payers in their community. Public schools aren’t fitting the bill for our nation’s children, and it’s time