Oregon, My Oregon

Vicky Taft at PJM, Angry Parents Weigh In on Portland's Teachers Strike, Which Has SHUT DOWN All the Schools

Portland, Ore., school teachers are on week three of a strike that has not garnered them all that much support from the parents at home. The school district helped the striking teachers union cause by pre-announcing that, instead of hiring temps, it would help the union hold the children hostage by announcing that all schools would close. They're doing it for the children, you understand.

Portland is the largest school district in the state with between 44,000 and 49,000 students. The district says both and isn't sure because of the ever-declining population since its disastrous COVID-19 performance.

While many parents have joined teachers on the picket line and are part of "the struggle," their fervor, even in woke Portland, isn't shared.

One Portland parent started a Change.org petition to re-open the school while bargaining continues. Eric Happel's petition has 372 signatures. He says that "students cannot wait any longer ... [and] are still struggling to catch up to where they were academically prior to pandemic school closures, and recent reports show chronic absenteeism at alarmingly high and growing rates." Sports have been canceled, and art and music performances may be shelved altogether.

The same union that was the last in the nation to go back to in-classroom learning after COVID now heads this disaster in the making. Being last hasn't been an impediment to Oregon teachers keeping their jobs. Nobody's getting fired for poor performance.

School during COVID was so disastrous that Democrats who are paid off by the powerful teachers union passed a law to dumb down graduation standards, which are so dumb that they give the word dumb a bad name. How bad is educational performance in Oregon? Awful — it's just above Arkansas — and getting worse. The Democrats just extended the lower standards for another five years.

Well, at least they're scoring above Arkansas, for now.