Virginia Gentles | July 12, 2024
(Fox News) — National Education Association president Becky Pringle wants to win “all the things.” She wants the nation’s largest teachers union to win all the power, all the elections, and all the progressive demands that radical union activists desire.
Unfortunately, Pringle’s union does not seek to “win” a better education system for our nation’s struggling students.
Before the NEA’s staff union shut down the organization’s annual meeting last week, Pringle gave a fervent, bordering-on-maniacal speech calling on NEA delegates to “Do this work! We must do this work! We get to do this work! We will do this work.”
She shouted to the gathering of 7,000 union activists, “NEA, we have to win all the things. All the things, all the things… We must win all the things!”
Pringle spoke for almost a half an hour, but somehow didn’t have time to express concern about the harmful lingering effects of COVID-era school closures, including widening achievement gaps, profound learning loss, and a growing chronic absenteeism crisis.
Pringle instead lamented the “poisonous spores of a stacked Supreme Court,” pledged to fight against education freedom (“vouchers”), celebrated union strikes that closed schools, and highlighted legislative victories to keep sexually explicit books in schools.
She also pledged support for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the strongest champions “of the labor movement in the history of our nation.”
In an ironic twist, Pringle lost the support of her own organization’s union soon after her emotional cry to “win all the things!”
The National Education Association Staff Organization (NEASO) launched a strike last week, shutting down the NEA’s annual summer gathering. Just after Pringle gave her speech bragging about NEA local affiliates’ strikes, her staff gave her a taste of her own medicine.