Two Nations, And The Rights of Teachers
Can you imagine a world in which a popular art teacher is fired for taking her students on a school approved trip to a museum of art?
It is hard to conceive, but that is exactly what is happening to Sydney McGee, a veteran of 28 years of teaching. Last April, she took her fifth grade students to the Dallas Museum of Art. At the museum, a student saw a statue depicting a nude human body, and the parent complained.
For subjecting her students to the depravity of art, McGee is now losing her job. And the students of Wilma Fisher Elementary School in the Dallas suburb of Frisco are losing an excellent teacher of art.
Texas is a “right to work” state. Collective bargaining for teachers is prohibited by law.
The contractual protections that public school teachers possess in states like New York are lacking in Texas. There are teacher unions — the Texas state affiliate of the NEA is defending McGee — but these unions are limited by the law in what they can accomplish.
And so a twenty-first century version of ‘Know Nothing’ politics rules the school district of Frisco, with no checks and no balances.
Two nations, one red, one blue — and two different realities for teachers.