Teacher Freedom Summit takes the war over our kids’ education directly to unions

For the first five years after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in Janus v. AFSCME that public employees could no longer be forced to join or support a union with their dues or fees, leaders of the country’s teachers’ unions steadfastly denied the ruling had made a meaningful dent in their membership.

And the numbers could be finessed to make that boast seem almost plausible.

Not anymore.

According to U.S. Department of Labor disclosure reports, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) lost more than 59,000 working members combined during the 2021-22 school year.

That decline comes after an 82,000-member loss the previous year.

And it isn’t because fewer teachers are being hired. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently reported that local schools added 95,000 employees between September 2021 and September 2022.

Nor were the membership losses confined to specific areas of the country. Every state affiliate but one that was required to file a disclosure report lost working members.

NEA ended the school year with 2.5 million working members, down 40,107 from the previous year.

The national union is at its lowest membership level since before the 2006 merger between NEA New York and New York State United Teachers.

AFT, meanwhile, had 1.2 million working members in 2021-22, a loss of 19,078.

It’s worth noting that only 43.5 percent of AFT’s total members work full-time anyway.

Five state unions are affiliated with both NEA and AFT. One (North Dakota United) is not required to file a disclosure report. The other four all lost working members. They include: n New York State United Teachers — 411,811 (down 4,384); n Montana Federation of Public Employees — 18,692 (down 1,274); n Education Minnesota — 73,008 (down 732); and, n the Florida Education Association — 129,445 (down 4,682).

It flatters us to think we had something to do with these defections. After all, the Freedom Foundation has visited 359,000 public employees at their homes and offices since 2018, and we’ve sent 19.1 million pieces of mail and 40 million e-mails to public employees across the country.

As a direct result of our efforts, public-sector unions have already experienced a 21.5 percent decline in membership, and a corresponding loss of tens of millions in uncollected dues revenue — dollars they would otherwise have been able to spend to advance their radically liberal political agenda.

But the reality is that union bumbling and bullying have sent more members scurrying for the exits than three Freedom Foundations could have.

By AARON WITHE, CEO

Regardless of who gets the credit, though, we know an opportunity when we see one.

That’s why the Freedom Foundation is making plans now to host its first-ever national Teacher Freedom Summit this summer.

The event, scheduled for July 10-12 at the Gaylord Rockies Resort in Aurora, Colo., will bring together up to 300 educators from around the country for a freewheeling exploration of how much they’re paying in union dues, what their union is buying with it and how to stop it.

And none of it will cost participating teachers a cent.

Though still in the planning stages, the Teacher Freedom Summit is perhaps the Freedom Foundation’s most ambitious outreach program to date.

Understanding that no one has more credibility than a friend or co-worker, our goal is to supplement our own outreach staffers with a growing number of teachers who can advise their peers about their rights and help them negotiate the union-erected barriers to their freedom.

Freedom Foundation staff and nationally known guest speakers will cover such topics as: n how to run opt-out campaigns in their school districts; n how to decertify and sue their unions; and, n how to prevent unions from polluting local school curricula with subjects like Critical Race Theory and age-inappropriate sex education.

The future of this country is its children, and make no mistake, unions are determined to subvert them early by transforming America’s schools into indoctrination centers for Socialist thought.

That can’t be allowed to happen and, as always, the Freedom Foundation is leading from the front.

If we’re not willing to surrender the U.S. government to the corrosive influence of organized labor, we’re certainly not going to hand over our children, and our Freedom Summits will be a powerful weapon to see that doesn’t happen.