Parents and Teachers Rally at Roy’s Place to Reopen Schools

RALEIGH – More than 100 parents and teachers showed up to let Governor Roy Cooper know that they want schools OPEN, and solutions are not being pursued fast enough.

From ABC11:

“[…] “We are a group of parents and educators and citizens that are here because schools have been closed almost a year coming up in March,” organizer Emily Kissee said.

Kissee brought her two kids to the rally; she and several others expressed their distaste by holding signs that read “I need school,” “WCPSS reopen our schools our kids need it”.

The group fueled by a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — echoed by Duke Health — that said students have the ability to return to schools as long as students and staff strictly followed precautions such as wearing a mask, washing hands and waiting six-feet apart.

“The longer this goes on, you can tell it’s not sustainable for [my son]. In the last couple of weeks especially you see that light that used to be there about getting up and going to school, it’s just not here,” said Christine Vance a Wake County mother. […]”

While school districts drag their feet, to tentative to act in favor of clear science and data instead of the whims of bureaucracies and wannabe unions.

If Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, no stranger to damaging authoritarianism, is ordering schools there to open, what in the world is the hold up in North Carolina? In Chicago, the battle is a little more defined: everyone wants to go back to school, but the Chicago Teachers Union refused, issuing demands instead.

Here in North Carolina, it’s a similar battle, but the lines are more fragmented. The NCAE and their supporters will go out of their way to insist they are not a union. That’s true; but it’s only true because they’re not allowed to be a union under North Carolina’s ‘Right to Work’ regime that outlaws public sector unions.

You better believe if those Right to Work laws did not exist, the NCAE would be a union tomorrow. Regardless, the politics and priorities of the NCAE is indistinguishable from those other radical unions more interested in leverage than learning, apparently.

State lawmakers are working on legislation to require school districts offer an in-person option. Recognizing the bipartisan outrage over the nonsensical and harmful policies keeping schools closed, even Democrat lawmakers are indicating their open to supporting such a bill (with ‘guardrails,’ of course).

The General Assembly is back in full swing, and this bill should be on Governor Cooper’s desk by the end of the week, if priorities are in place.