The annual far-left love fest also known as the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly (RA), was marred from the start this year by a strike involving the union’s “staff organization.” Known as the NEASO, its approximately 350 staff members have been at odds with NEA management since April, according to the left-leaning nonprofit news organization Truthout.

Citing unfair labor practices, staff workers set up a picket line on July 5 outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, where the 2024 NEA RA was taking place. According to Education Week, striking staff workers are being locked out of their jobs and won’t be paid “until the union and NEA management reach an agreement.”

Truthout reported that striking staff members “found themselves stranded when the NEA made the decision to cancel their hotel rooms and return flights home from the convention, and cut off access to their work emails and phones mid-trip,” and that further retaliation would be forthcoming. The news outlet likened the NEA’s action to “union busting.”

Besides a shortened convention, the NEASO strike prompted President Joe Biden to bow out of addressing the assembly, citing his desire to avoid crossing the picket line. About 6,000 delegates reportedly attended this year’s RA, down from the union’s heyday attendance numbers of the 1990s, but up considerably from the pandemic years.

In addition to hearing speeches by radical Democrats and others espousing the union’s far-left agenda, delegates typically vote on New Business Items (NBIs) and adopt new “resolutions,” but this year’s conference ended without the usual debate on most submissions.

According to Education Week, NEA President Becky Pringle asked that delegates vote to “suspend the rules,” meaning that these matters “will be decided by mail-in ballot.” Just 10 of the 115 items submitted for debate were voted on before proceedings were shuttered by the strike.

Issues that reportedly were discussed include Artificial Intelligence (AI), about which the union seeks to offer guidance, with a view to ensuring that the issues of “equity, data protection, and environmental impact” are addressed. The union objects to AI being used “to replace jobs of educators....”

The NEA also passed measures concerning “LGBTQ+ rights,” which has been a huge priority for years. (See Education Reporter, July 2023 and July 2022.) One approved NBI directs the union to update the “What to Know about State Anti-Trans Laws” resource on its website, and maintain the link monthly at a cost of about $31,000. Conservative observers say this would track any laws seeking to protect children from radical medical interventions promoted by trans activists, groomers, and complicit providers.

Delegates further approved adding a section to the NEA’s website “listing all NEA supports available to LGBTQ+ members, including a list of the states where LGBTQ+ curriculum is required, and where it is banned. It also directs the NEA to include mental health resources, and resources for districts and allies to support LGBTQ+ educators on the website.” Cost for this upgrade: $99,000.

Becky Pringle goes off the rails

Before the abbreviated convention ended, its president, Becky Pringle, gave an off-the-rails speech, the last several minutes of which critics compared to a comedy sketch that appeared on the popular 2005-2013 television show, “The Office.”

Fox News reported on the speech, noting that Pringle “banged on the podium, flailed her hands in the air and screamed about winning ‘all the things’ repeatedly....”Fox described her as ‘screechy,’ as she called for “transformative social justice change in the education system,” a demand the NEA has made repeatedly in recent years.

Pringle, who has visited the Biden White House some two dozen times, ranted against the Trump Administration, claiming that “We worked hard to rid ourselves of a tyrannical, deceitful, and corrupt White House, but the reality is that the seeds that were sown during that horrible season continue to germinate.” She failed to explain why this should be so after nearly four years of the presumably accommodating Biden Administration, unless she was referring to parents who actually agreed with Trump’s education policies.

Popular school choice proponent and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, Corey DeAngelis, said of the NEA president’s rant:

• These power-hungry control freaks think they own your kids. They’re in a cult that worships government and detests parents. It’s time to defund teachers’ unions and allow the money to follow the child ... Becky Pringle pulled a Dwight Schrute (in reference to The Office episode). She is off-the-rails and desperate to maintain control over the minds of other people’s children.

Charging that Pringle is out of touch, Heritage Foundation research fellow Jason Bedrick told Fox News Digital that her “overwrought, hyper-partisan tirade amounted to an advertisement for school choice. Apparently, she hasn’t seen the polls showing record-low public trust in public schools.”

And National Review’s Jack Crowe noted: “Pringle believes she’s a revolutionary.... Channeling Dwight Schrute, [she] urges her colleagues, not to raise the nation’s embarrassing reading and math scores, no, but to ‘fight for freedom.’”

Becky Pringle Delivers Keynote Speech at the 2024 NEA Representative Assembly in Philadelphia (youtube.com) (Start at 27-minute mark for referenced clip—Ed.)

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