With all of the talk about the misnamed “Parents’ Bill of Rights” legislation that was rushed through the NC General Assembly last year, it should be obvious that the aim of those in Raleigh is to weaken public education even further.

That version of the bill literally said “to enumerate the rights of parents to DIRECT THE UPBRINGING, EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, AND MENTAL HEALTH OF THEIR MINOR CHILDREN” lending itself to be interpreted as making the public school system responsible for taking each parent’s wishes for his/her own child’s upbringing and making it part of an individualized education program that the parent gets to measure the effectiveness of.

That’s almost funny because in reality, parents already have the most control over public education. Yet this bill seemed to also suggest that they do not have total control power over their parenting and need educators to be some sort of surrogate in their stead.

Also ironic is that the same body of lawmakers who passed this “Parents’ Bill of Rights” took away a “Teachers’ Bill of Rights” when they abolished due-process rights for new teachers in 2014. In a Right to Work, At-Will state with horrible unemployment benefits and minuscule corporate taxes it seems that an “Employees’ Bill of Rights” was literally taken off the books.

Actually, there are two specific actions that could be taken to strengthen the rights of teachers in North Carolina. And if these actions are supposedly not popular among North Carolinians, then put them on the ballot.

First, we should restore due-process rights for teachers. They are that important. Their removal was a beginning step in a patient, scripted, and ALEC-allying plan that systematically tries to weaken a profession whose foundation is advocating for public schools.

Due-process removal actually weakens the ability of the teaching force in NC to speak up and advocate a little each year as veteran teachers retire and are replaced by new teachers who do not receive those rights.

One of the first items that the GOP controlled General Assembly attempted to pass in the early part of this decade was the removal of due-process right for all teachers. Commonly called “tenure,” due process rights are erroneously linked to the practice that colleges use to award “tenure” to professors. Actually, they really are not the same.

What due-process means is that a teacher has the right to appeal and defend himself / herself when an administrator seeks to terminate employment. It means that a teacher cannot be fired on the spot for something that is not considered an egregious offense.

Of course, if a teacher does something totally against the law like inappropriate relations with students, violence, etc., then due-process rights do not really apply. But a new principal in a school does not have the right to just clean house because of right-to-work laws. Teachers with due process rights cannot just be dismissed with the swish of a wand.

Secondly, NC teachers (and all public sector employees) should have the right to collectively bargain.

It’s a special kind of cruel irony that the only state in the country with the lowest legal minimum wage, no collective bargaining rights, loosely regulated vouchers and charter school expansion, a school performance grading system that measures achievement over growth, and the lowest corporate flat tax in the nation allows for its state education leaders to have a group hire a public relations firm on their behalf to help control the narrative for a spectacularly flawed teacher licensure proposal that had no real teacher input.

AND at the same time be a Right to Work / At Will state. 

The ban for collective bargaining itself was established in the Jim Crow-era. It literally is the last holdover as far as those laws are concerned. And NC is one of seven states that makes collective bargaining illegal.

Maybe that’s why we have so many vacancies.