The newly elected majority of the Douglas County School Board voted to dismiss superintendent Cory Wise, and the teachers’ union is working overtime to obfuscate the reasons why as they plot to overturn the board.
Without Wise at the helm and a progressive majority on the board, the union is losing steam in their fight to gain bargaining rights for teachers.
DougCo is having a tough enough time as it is keeping teachers in the classrooms these days, what with sickouts and student protests organized by the union.
Instead of walking out of our classrooms… STAND WITH STUDENTS who lost 2 years of learning.
—> More than 3,000 DCSD students left #DougCo, fed up with mandates under Corey Wise.
—> More than $38M in funding was lost, when parents pulled students out of #DCSD under Wise. pic.twitter.com/jUi7E45Iq1
— Roger D. Hudson (@RogerHudsonCO) February 6, 2022
As of Sunday, only adults were sharing that graphic on Twitter for the “student” walkout.
Before the vote, School Board President Mike Peterson said he’s lost trust in Wise for numerous reasons, including the whole mask fiasco last fall.
From the Denver Gazette:
Peterson accused Ray and the other two incumbents, Elizabeth Hanson and Susan Meeks, of colluding with teachers unions (which Ray denied), and he said their Monday event was “the biggest campaign ad for the next election.” He said he’d lost nearly all trust in his three colleagues.
Peterson denied that he was trying to ram through Wise’s exit and said that his conversation with the superintendent last week was supposed to be the beginning of a process. He said the other board member’s decisions – and Wise’s alleged complicity in Thursday’s protests, which Ray scoffed at – accelerated his plans.
Minority board member David Ray actually compared the decision to fire the superintendent as a move to the “Dark Ages,” referring to that medieval period of western European history after the fall of the Roman Empire, when the position of Holy Roman emperor was eliminated.
What he probably meant to say, was this:
I hope all DougCo teachers, not currently in the union, will join @DCFederation tonight.
Collective power is all we have left. pic.twitter.com/zTNDIsQBMJ— GunViolenceIsNotNormal (@CO2NZ) February 5, 2022
Not satisfied with having lost two days for students last week, the teachers’ union is planning another lost day of education by staging a student protest led by kids who don’t mind skipping school for a (insert progressive labor cause here).
Teacher union stooges also chimed in with their support:
NEW:
Over 50 current and former School Board Directors across Colorado sign on to letter of support for ousted Douglas County Superintendent Corey Wise. pic.twitter.com/aGMzAScSlY
— Denver School Board Vice President – Tay Anderson (@DirectorTay) February 6, 2022
And to top it off, they’re throwing their support to the charity robber barons known as Go Fund Me, which will collect a 2.9% payment-processing fee plus 30 cents for donations, which topped $24,000 for Wise over the weekend.
The teachers’ union clearly plans to keep him at the forefront while they launch a recall election.
The majority conservative school board has only been in office for two months, and the union has to wait until six months. But they’ve already run a trial petition that collected 18,000 signatures over the weekend.
Meanwhile, it looks like students will be the losers as teachers continue to participate in union tactics with new and improved excuses to shut down the classrooms.