Big Labor’s Vacant Schools Should Close

Teacher Union Bosses Must Pay Price For Violating Parents’ Trust

For decades, competent education scholars have recognized that state labor laws handing union bosses monopoly-bargaining power over how government schoolteachers are compensated and managed lower student achievement. 

But until recently, the total share of parents opting to protect their children from Big Labor monopolists’ harmful impact by exercising their constitutional right to enroll them in private schools or homeschool them showed little sign of rising in response.

For Many Parents, Extended COVID-19 School Lockdowns Were Clearly the Last Straw 

The high direct cost normally associated with private schooling and the high opportunity cost of homeschooling were undoubtedly important factors stopping parents from withdrawing their kids from unionized government schools. 

Finally, about five years ago, government school enrollment in many states where Organized Labor wields sweeping coercive clout over educators began falling steadily and substantially. 

There is no end in sight.

The key precipitating factor behind the decisions of millions of parents to pull their children out of government schools was clearly the extraordinary, medically unwarranted COVID-19 lockdowns of government schools across the country commencing in March 2020. In many Big Labor-dominated jurisdictions, these lockdowns continued for a year or more. 

Federal data for the fall of 2019 and the current estimate for the fall of 2024 show K-12 government school enrollment in Big Labor-controlled California and New York fell, respectively, by 10.1% and 10.6% over the past five years. 

In the 23 states that have never had Right to Work laws barring forced union dues as a group, government school enrollment fell by 6.9%, from 24.10 million to 22.44 million. 

In the 26 Right to Work states, where teacher union bosses are typically “merely” a powerful lobby rather than the virtually indomitable army they constitute in Big Labor stronghold states, government school enrollment has also fallen in the aggregate since the fall of 2019, but by a far more modest 1.3%. 

National Right to Work Committee Vice President Matthew Leen observed: 

“The overall decline in government school enrollment since 2019 is not a consequence of demographics. The latest available age-segregated data show that, from 2019 to 2023, the total of K-12-aged U.S. residents (five to 17 years) rose by more than 850,000. 

“The data show that, in the wake of teacher union bosses’ gross abuse of their power during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have lost all credibility with parents. Parents are now striving to get their children out of unionized schools any way they can: by homeschooling, by paying for private school, or by moving to a Right to Work state.”

In Chicago, 20 Schools Now Operating at 25% Capacity or Less 

Mr. Leen added that, in certain parts of the country where the coercive power of teacher union kingpins is completely out of control, the student exodus long predates COVID-19, and many schools are now mostly empty. 

According to former Chicago Public Schools CEO and 2023 mayoral candidate Paul Vallas, 20 Windy City government schools “operate at 25% capacity or less,” and three are “sitting at less than 10% full.” 

“In Chicago,” said Mr. Leen, “virtually vacant schools continue to rake in millions and millions of dollars in funding from taxpayers, because the militantly anti-parent bosses of the city’s American Federation of Teachers [AFT/AFLCIO] union subsidiary have successfully lobbied to block their closure.

“They are now being backed to the hilt on this issue, as well as every other issue, by Mayor Brandon Johnson, whom they installed in office by lavishly spending school employees’ dues money. 

“Until recently, Chicago Teachers Union bosses have also been backed by the Biden Administration, which funneled billions of additional federal taxpayer dollars to Chicago Public Schools so the status quo could be maintained. 

“One of the first things the new Trump Administration ought to make clear with regard to education policy is that no federal bailouts of government schools that parents have resoundingly rejected will occur on its watch. 

“In short, Big Labor’s vacant schools should close.”

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