Apparently Lt. Gov. Dan Forest is warning the state against one of the most evil entities known to humankind – teachers who advocate for public schools.

Not one week after he himself invaded schools with a misleading missive through actual teacher email addresses, he posts on social media that schools are being infiltrated by teachers with agendas to advocate for public schools and their students.

Anonymous tips? Accusing schools of allowing NCAE members (only 5,000 members according to his letter) into schools? Keeping a list to punish schools? Calling on people to turn speculation into gospel to fuel electioneering efforts?

Of course he is! Because Dan Forest is not running a campaign for governor against Roy Cooper. He’s running a campaign against NCAE, and he is hoping to drive a wedge between teachers.

He uses the word “union” to identify NCAE. Remember that he wants to become governor of one of the seven states that bans unions and what those unions allow state workers to do: collectively bargain.

The ban itself was established in the Jim Crow-era. It literally is the last holdover as far as those laws are concerned.

Oddly enough, a recent study from the College of Education at the University of Georgia concluded that states which have strong teacher unions have a high correlation to stronger education spending especially after the Great Recession.

In that letter referred to earlier that he sent to teachers, Forest bragged a lot about what he has done for public schools as the lieutenant governor when in actuality he has acted against them. Simply put, Forest is hoping that teachers will forget what this current NCGA he was aligning himself with has actually done to public education since 2011. That includes the removal of due process rights and graduate degree pay increases for new teachers, a greater reliance on standardized tests, the elimination of class size caps, instituting a punitive school grading system, fostering unregulated charter school growth and vouchers to religious schools, as well as the creation of an ineffective Innovation School District.

What he wants you to do is chase his red herring. As of right now, his Facebook post has garnered quite the response – over a thousand comments and over a thousand shares.

It’s a big red herring. But I would bet that most of the people who are offering comments are not teachers and could not express a perspective that best represents what is really happening in our public schools.

Yet it is humorous to see a man who in his eight years in office has really not done a thing for public schools try and turn teachers against each other over a group that he claims only has a few thousand members in a profession that totals over 100,000.

Actually, it’s not really humorous; it’s revealing. This candidate for our state’s gubernatorial race is scared of teachers.