The Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) board of education has left absolutely no doubt as to who is running the district. It’s the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers (PFT).
The board voted 7-2 Wednesday to again delay the return of students to the classroom, this time by two months, from early February to early April. But even then, it will be a hybrid plan, with some students back in class while others still will be taught remotely.
That means that once they return – if they return – the district’s 22,000 students will have been without any in-class instruction since last March. For others, it most likely will be longer.
That’s a year and a month. Or more.
School directors kowtowed to the demands of the teachers’ union. It insisted that all teachers and staff be fully inoculated for the coronavirus before they head back to the classroom.
And the union has more than intimated, by word and by deed, that teachers and staff might just not be available if they didn’t get their way.
Extortion and hostage-taking is so professional.
But given the disarray of the nation’s vaccination program, it remains the wildest of wild cards as to when PPS teachers and staff might receive their shot (or shots).
As we’ve pondered before, might the intent of the PFT be to run out the clock on the school year? Reasonable people would not be surprised at such self-serving organized skullduggery.
And lest we forget our litany of “never minds”:
Never mind that PPS’ own data shows that on top of an already abysmal academic record, student grades are falling even more, failures are climbing even more and the achievement gap between black and white students is growing even more.
Gee, wasn’t closing the racial achievement gap supposedly one of the top priorities of everyone from the board, to the superintendent and even the PFT?
And never mind, of course, that, in general, the spread of the coronavirus is negligible in public school classrooms. It’s especially true in elementary schools, the Centers for Disease Control says.
And never mind that Allegheny County data suggest the rate of Covid-19 infections is no different among students in districts learning remotely and those in districts with students in class.
And never mind that PPS is one of only three districts in Allegheny County pushing back on in-class instruction.
Just never mind.
Thus, the message of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, endorsed by Pittsburgh Public Schools directors, is clear — to students, parents, taxpayers, common sense and moral behavior:
“Drop dead.”
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
