Last year, the conservative Freedom Foundation made headlines with a high-profile effort to convince Miami-Dade teachers to dump their union. 

Ultimately, it flopped: 83% of members voted to stick with United Teachers of Dade. Still, Brent Urbanik, president of the rival Miami Dade Education Coalition, said he appreciated the Foundation’s “all-hands-on-deck” support, which included funding mailers to teachers’ homes and to knock on doors. Urbanik said he couldn’t have run the campaign without the Foundation’s help. 

But he’s not a fan of the group’s latest move. In late September, it named anti-union firebrand Ryan Walters, ���������dz���’s former state chief, as head of its new Teacher Freedom Alliance.  

“Most teachers just want to go to school. They want to teach their subjects, and they want to know that they’re not going to get fired for saying the wrong thing,” he said. With Walters at the helm, he said, the Teacher Freedom Alliance risks becoming “the right’s version of the left’s problem, which is the politicization of classroom material.” 

To Aaron Withe, the Foundation’s CEO, Walters is a “freedom fighter” who brings passion and new energy to a cause that has seen mixed results since the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in . The court ruled that teachers and other public sector employees can opt out of paying fees to unions they don’t want to join. But Walters is escalating the attack. Since resigning from his state job, he’s criticized for striking over their recent loss of collective bargaining and joined members in Florida, where he said unions have turned schools into “Marxist indoctrination centers.” 

One frequent target of his rhetoric doesn’t see the new Alliance as a threat. In a statement, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the Foundation’s post-Janus efforts a “dismal failure.”  

Urbanik, who teaches AP Psychology at a magnet school in Miami-Dade, is among those educators who think the AFT and the National Education Association have strayed too far from core bargaining issues like salaries, benefits and working conditions. That’s what Mark Janus, a former child support specialist in Illinois, argued when he challenged AFSCME on First Amendment grounds, that he shouldn’t be forced to financially support a union’s political activities or preferred candidates.

“There was an inherent unfairness in requiring people to join a union and spend money on political activities they disagree with in order to hold a government job,” said Dean McGee, senior counsel and director of educational freedom at the Liberty Justice Center, the conservative law firm that represented Janus. 

Since Janus, some teachers say that unions continue to make it hard to opt out by automatically renewing membership without warning or creating short “escape” windows for canceling membership. But in 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear those concerns.

‘Power comes from money’

Teachers’ conflicts with their unions aren’t always political. Members of the Miami-Dade Education Coalition say United Teachers of Dade didn’t fight for raises and merit pay tied to a 2011 state law after the district said it was an unfunded mandate and they couldn’t afford the bonuses. 

And in Chicago, Liberty Justice Center represents members of the Chicago Teachers Union who are union leaders for a required annual audit for the past four years. 

The Teacher Freedom Alliance, McGee said, takes the Janus ruling a step further. “The power comes from money, and the money comes from member dues,” he said. If unions are losing members, he suggested they focus on “members’ interests and not broader political fights.”

He didn’t mention specific priorities, but the NEA this year that aim to counteract President Donald Trump’s “embrace of fascism” and to support “No Kings” protests. 

Opt-out campaigns have generally seen mixed results, experts say. When they’re combined with legislation to undermine the unions, as when Wisconsin stripped public sector unions of collective bargaining in 2011, membership drops, said Eunice Han, an associate economics professor at the University of Utah who studies unions. 

In 2023, Florida passed a law that requires unions to maintain a 60% dues-paying membership. In January 2024, United Teachers of Dade . Urbanik’s group saw an opening. 

A year after the law passed, over 50 public sector unions in the state had been wiped out because they couldn’t reach the 60% threshold, according to . But only three of those were K-12 unions, all of which represented non-instructional staff. 

of the Florida Education Association “have successfully re-certified,” Han said. The Freedom Foundation has seen small victories in other states where it’s been active, like Oregon, California and Washington. 

Larry Delaney, president of the Washington Education Association, said the Foundation frequently sends mailers with messages encouraging teachers and other school staff to opt out. The cards include a section the member can rip off and mail back to the union’s address. Their campaigns get creative, he said. Around Halloween, one mailer portrayed Delaney as a monster. Another said “Give yourself a Christmas bonus! End your monthly union dues.”

But only a handful of members opt out each year, Delaney said.

Some mailers look like a and include a fake check representing how much money members would save in dues each year if they quit the union. Based on his own experience, it costs about $40,000 to send mail to all 84,000 members of the union statewide, and the Freedom Foundation sends a new mailer almost monthly.

“I don’t know what their direct mailing budget is, but it’s large,” he said. The Foundation didn’t comment on its mailing budget.

The Foundation, a $17 million operation, according to its most , is a nonprofit and doesn’t have to disclose donors. In Florida, the free market-oriented , founded by successful futures trader Bill Dunn, donated $100,000 to support the Miami Dade Education Coalition’s opt-out campaign, according to .

by the Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive organization that tracks spending by conservative groups, show the Koch Brothers, the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation in Pittsburgh, are also among the Foundation’s contributors. Those organizations often fund right-leaning causes, like efforts to roll back and PragerU, a media operation that produces conservative videos for kids.

‘We won’t be intimidated’

The Foundation used some of its resources to fight that says union members can sue if someone is trying to impersonate them as an opt-out strategy. 

“They say that we’re pretending to be union officials and going to union members’ homes to convince them to leave,” Withe, the Foundation’s CEO, said in an . “We won’t be intimidated. If anything, we’re more emboldened to go and get more of their members.”

The Foundation wasn’t able to keep the bill from passing. It allows union representatives to bring a civil lawsuit against a group or individual that tries to deceive a union member into opting out. Withe said the unions provided no evidence that the Foundation employed deception. 

But his group did manage to get teachers in the small 126-student along the south coast of Oregon, to create a new independent union in June. When all 13 of their teachers voted unanimously to create the new Cruiser Educators Association, the Oregon Education Association didn’t oppose the move. 

Gabe Shorb, a sixth grade teacher in the district, first heard Walters speak at one of the Foundation’s Teacher Freedom Summits and called his message “refreshing.”

He said several teachers had already opted out on their own and a few had joined the Teacher Freedom Alliance. Those remaining felt the Oregon Education Association wasn’t very helpful when they bargained with the district and asked for contract information from comparable districts. Membership in the new union is free.

“I’m hoping that we’ll make connections and show other small districts that, ‘Hey you don’t have to pay a lot of money for something that’s really not that useful,’ ” he said.

The Freedom Foundation also pushed this year for that would prevent teachers from using paid professional development days to attend the Montana Federation of Public Employees’ annual meeting. The sessions, the Foundation argues, are “oriented toward political activism, radical woke ideology and union marketing.” to panels on topics such as equity training and promoting LGBTQ issues. But the bill died in the session.

The Teacher Freedom Alliance aims to give school staff an alternative to the AFT and the NEA. Its free membership includes liability coverage up to $2 million, which protects teachers if they’re sued or need legal representation for other reasons. The American Association of Educators, with about 32,000 members, charges $19.50 per month for that includes liability coverage as well as other benefits, like shopping discounts.

Walters first promoted the new Alliance in March with a , drawing an ethics complaint from Rep. Ellen Pogemiller, a Democrat, who argued that he was using state resources to endorse an organization. The complaint was dismissed, and the state attorney general said he didn’t break the law.��Walters did not respond to attempts to reach him by phone or text.

When he accepted the new job, Pogemiller filed , suggesting his promotion of the group was for personal gain. The state ethics commission hasn’t issued any findings. 

Walters might have taken the job because he thought it would “give him a larger national profile,” said Julia Koppich, an independent consultant in San Francisco and expert on teachers unions.

He might also have been seeking a higher salary. His paid $124,000. The Foundation did not disclose his salary at Teacher Freedom Alliance, but past show Withe made $525,000 in 2023, and other top executives earned in the $200,000 range. 

Koppich wonders how the new Alliance will benefit teachers. In states where unions have bargaining rights, teachers who drop their membership can’t negotiate their own salaries and working conditions with school districts, Koppich said. They’re bound by the union contract whether they pay dues or not. 

In non-union states, teacher pay is set by a statewide salary schedule.

“Unionism is baked in where it’s baked in and anathema where it’s always been anathema,” Koppich said. “These [opt-out] organizations don’t have a great track record.” 

In Miami, Urbanik blames part of his group’s poor showing in the election on the Miami- Dade district. He said officials “heavily suppressed” his organization’s message. Some teachers didn’t even know the vote was taking place. About two-thirds of the Miami-Dade teachers didn’t vote.

“We were not allowed to have contact with teachers on school grounds,” he said. “I was not allowed to have a mailer placed in mailboxes.”

Under Walters, opt-out drives are likely to go national and his rhetoric about unions funding agendas unrelated to the classroom are expected to intensify, said Han, with the University of Utah. 

“I believe that with Walters’s leadership,” Han said, “we may see a more politically charged and aggressive version of the Freedom Foundation’s strategy.”

The American Federation of Teachers published the findings Sept. 10 after research company Grow Progress 705 members about classroom expenses and federal education policy changes. The union also collected personal insights about student hunger, an issue that have found is prominent at school and could be impacted by impending to food assistance programs.

“Every year, public school educators dig into their own pockets to help their students get the education they deserve,” union President Randi Weingarten said in a . “They pay for books, decorations, paper, pencils and, yes, even food.”

Families that deal with can’t afford enough groceries to meet their needs, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The most recent available shows that nearly 18% of households with children across the nation struggled with food insecurity in 2023.

Research the national nonprofit in March found that 92% of teachers have taken some type of action to address student hunger at school. Nearly half personally provide food in the classroom, while 29% have purchased food for students to eat outside of class.

“Families are struggling to put food on the table for their kids for a variety of reasons, whether that’s the rising cost of food or the worsening job market or limited resources,” said Sara Steely, a No Kid Hungry spokesperson. “The entire education system is stronger when kids are well-fed, and teachers are up against a lot — food shouldn’t be something they have to think about.”

In the AFT survey, a Florida union member said students need food at school because of a lack of it at home, while another teacher in Kentucky said many students “are starving because of lack of food availability.”

Ann Walkup, a Rhode Island physics teacher and AFT member, said she and many educators at her high school buy food like granola bars, crackers and water bottles.

“Most of us keep some sort of stash somewhere,” she told The 74. “There are definitely some teachers who have a situation like [food insecurity] with some of their students. We’re supposed to refer them to the office, and there’s a system the school has to support them, but admittedly, it is just easier to be like, ‘Hey, I’ve got an extra granola bar.’ ”

Steely said child hunger is about to become even more complicated with the recent cuts to the , which helps about 42 million people afford groceries each month. In July, the Trump administration approved a tax bill that will from SNAP funding through 2034.

Once the SNAP cuts are fully implemented, roughly 2.4 million people are projected to lose food stamp benefits in an average month, according to estimates from the .

Students automatically qualify for free or reduced-price lunch if their families receive SNAP benefits, Steely said. Parents will have to return to filling out paperwork to get their children free meals at school — something that is an obstacle for people who have language barriers or are embarrassed about their income, she said.

“As we see these SNAP and Medicaid cuts play out and the impacts to free school meals access, I could see that burden falling to the teachers,” Steely said. 

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, told The 74 that student hunger continues to be a critical issue for members of the nation’s largest teachers union. She said schools already felt the impact of cuts this spring, when the in funding for districts and child care facilities to purchase food from local farms for student meals.

“We’re seeing more kids coming to school hungry,” she said. “We spend money buying snacks, we send things home to families in book bags. We do that because, at least as educators, we can’t look away.”

The latest report, filed in December, includes data from the 2023-24 school year. It shows that the nation’s largest teachers union had 2,839,808 total members, including educators, student teachers, retirees, NEA staff and other miscellaneous categories. That’s down from 2,857,703 the year before.

The number of working members — such as active teachers and support staff — was 2,471,782, a decline of 12,558. This drop was similar to the decline seen from 2022 to 2023, but there was a more significant decrease of 40,107 working members at the end of the 2021-22 school year. The union had lost 82,000 working members the year before that.

These declining numbers follow a relatively stable membership count. A decade ago, the union had 2.6 million working members and peaked at 2.63 million in 2018. 

This trend is reflected in individual categories. Active professionals — which include employees like teachers, counselors and librarians — hovered around 2.1 million from 2014 to 2020. In 2021, the number of professional members dropped to 2.06 million, and then to 2.02 million in 2024. 

Active support staff — employees such as bus drivers, custodians and cafeteria workers — fluctuated between 450,000 and 467,000 from 2014 to 2020. In 2021, support staff membership dropped to 435,507 before plummeting to 415,142 in 2023. Numbers shifted slightly to 415,992 in 2024.

Recent years have been rocky for the NEA and its members, from COVID-19 wreaking havoc on student learning and teaching environments to a strike last year that saw the organization lock out its own staff employees over contract disagreements. 

Union membership has also declined across the country since 2018, since the Supreme Court’s ruling made collecting fees from “nonconsenting” public sector employees unconstitutional.

Even with shrinking membership, the NEA’s dues income has increased over the years. In 2024, the organization received the most dues it had collected in at least a decade — $381.4 million, up from $374.2 million in 2023. 

NEA President Becky Pringle’s compensation in salary and taxable allowances increased to $449,305 in 2024 from $435,342 in 2023.

Linda McMahon, who co-chairs his transition team and previously led the WWE, or World Wrestling Entertainment, has known him for 30 years, served in his first administration, and since 2019, has been laying the foundation for his return to the White House. 

A former Connecticut State Board of Education member who led the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019, McMahon would likely shift the focus of the department toward workforce development while also pursuing key policy priorities, like . 

Those who defend traditional public schools see McMahon’s nomination as an effort to eliminate important civil rights protections for students and slash funding for high-poverty schools, but some advocates saw room for her to make a positive impact.

“I don’t hate it,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union. “Having an education secretary that is focused on economic mobility and getting our kids prepared for the jobs and the economy in the future is not a bad thing.” 

In choosing McMahon, 76, Trump passed over others who expressed interest in the post. They include Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, and Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters, who some say has been “auditioning” for the job for over a year by enacting policies in line with Trump’s “anti-woke” platform. Just last week, Walters mandated that schools show a for the president-elect.

Meanwhile, McMahon — as board chair of the America First Policy Institute, a far-right — has been integral to shaping the incoming administration’s agenda. The organization argues that parents should have over their children’s education, including the ability to review all curriculum materials. But Trump’s agenda also includes wiping out the U.S. Department of Education, a goal that could become McMahon’s primary charge.

In a statement, he said McMahon would lead efforts to “send education BACK TO THE STATES.”

Advocates who have worked to stem the conservative effort to win school board seats and limit progressive ideas in curriculum said Trump’s goals are clear, regardless of who he tapped to lead the department.

“They all seem identical policy-wise,” said Katie Paris, founder of Red Wine and Blue, a network of suburban women who support moderate candidates for office. She said she expects McMahon to be “less bombastic” than culture warriors like Justice or Walters, “but just as dangerous for kids.”

The nation’s largest teachers union said McMahon, like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during Trump’s first term, will undermine public education.

“Rather than working to strengthen public schools, expand learning opportunities for students, and support educators, McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools,” National Education Association President Becky Pringle said in .

McMahon is also likely to face questions about , filed in October, in which she and her husband Vince are accused of knowing about and not stopping Mel Phillips, WWE’s ringside announcer in the 1980s and ‘90s, from sexually abusing young “ring boys” who ran errands related to . Vince McMahon has said the claims are false. 

He also as executive chairman of TKO, which owns WWE, amid allegations of with a former employee. He has denied the accusations. 

‘Consolation prize’

The fact that McMahon initially expressed interest in leading the was a red flag for Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

“Treating the Department of Education as a consolation prize demonstrates the low priority that President Trump places on the issue,” he said. 

It was during the years Petrilli served in the education department, under former President George W. Bush, that McMahon said she became interested in education. She learned that her local schools near Greenwich, Connecticut, weren’t meeting expectations under No Child Left Behind, the federal law that tied accountability to improvement on test scores. 

“I​​t’s a very wealthy community. We pay a great deal of our taxes towards education,” former football coach Lou Holtz, who hosts a sponsored by America First Policy Institute. “How can that happen?”

Through her connections with then-Gov. Jodi Rell, she began visiting public, charter and private schools. And in 2009, Rell appointed her to finish out a term on the state board, a seat she resigned in 2010 to run for the U.S. Senate, losing to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

“I said ‘I’m certainly not in the world of education. I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for,’ ” McMahon told Holtz. “[Rell] said ‘I’m looking for exactly who you are, somebody from the outside.’ ” 

Outgoing Secretary Miguel Cardona served as education commissioner in Connecticut from 2019 to 2021 but didn’t overlap McMahon’s short tenure on the state board.

In 2006, McMahon also launched WWE’s , in which celebrity wrestlers promote literacy through posters and public service announcements. 

She lost a second bid for the Senate, against Democrat Chris Murphy, in 2012. 

Like Trump in his first term, she touts , but has said force businesses to spend more money on training. And she has advocated for bipartisan legislation that would extend Pell Grant eligibility to students in workforce training programs, not just traditional colleges.

“Congress should recognize the effort and commitment of American workers by funding the skills training and technical education most laborers rely on,” she wrote in an .

Rodrigues, with the National Parents Union, described McMahon as someone who would be “an education secretary with some serious juice” and would also have a “direct line” to the president because of her long-time connections with him. McMahon is also a leading having given $ as of July.

“It’s going to be interesting to see an education secretary who’s going to have the ability, and frankly the balls, to call the president and get some things done in the education system,” Rodrigues said.

The country’s largest union, boasting more than 3 million members, is traditionally one of the biggest supporters of Democrats, lending both the power of its various political action committees’ purses for advertising and mailings, and its strength in numbers for boots-on-the-ground get-out-the-vote operations.

“Across the country, most of us want the same thing – strong public schools where every student, no matter their race, place, or background can grow into their full brilliance,” said NEA President Becky Pringle in a statement to The 74. “Educators know that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are tireless champions for students and educators, who will work to support strong public schools, expand school-based mental health services, ensure no student is hungry, and lower costs for middle-class families.” 

“As some of the most trusted people in every community, NEA members are knocking on doors, making phone calls, and talking to their communities about voting for Harris and Walz, along with pro-public education candidates up and down the ballot,” she said. “They are using their educator voices because they know that the future of our public schools and our students will be shaped by what happens in this election.”

Among the top 20 PACs based on contributions to Democratic candidates, total fundraising, total spent, and total spent in independent expenditures and communication costs, the NEA’s PACs place 11th, according to OpenSecrets, the non-partisan organization that tracks money in politics. It donated $3 million directly to the Harris campaign. 

The vast majority of the union super PAC’s expenditures – $6.9 million total this election cycle – went to other super PACs supporting Democrats. As of Oct. 8, the NEA Advocacy Fund had given $2.5 million to Future Forward USA Action, the pro-Harris super PAC and the biggest in American politics. It also doled out $1.5 million each to the House Majority PAC and the Senate Majority PAC in an effort to maintain Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the Senate and pick up seats to gain a majority in the House.

So far, NEA’s super PAC has spent $430,000 on media, including things like online, TV and radio ads, and mailings, and another $100,000 on campaign expenses.

It’s also on targeted federal election candidates, including $150,000 on Rep. John Mannion, a Democrat from New York, $130,000 on Raquel Teran, a Democrat running in Arizona’s 3rd congressional district, and $35,000 on incumbent Sen. John Tester, a Democrat from Montana who’s in a tough reelection bid.

In Ohio, where Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown is in a dead heat against Republican Bernie Moreno, a separate NEA super PAC, Educators for Ohio, has raised $1.7 million. 

Earlier this month, the NEA teamed up with the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees – the nation’s largest public service unions – in a coordinated, multi-state voter outreach initiative across battleground states.

“This joint action represents a significant escalation of labor’s political engagement, with the unions pooling resources and mobilizing their combined membership of several million workers and includes people of all backgrounds working across the public service – as nurses, child care providers, sanitation workers, first responders, teachers, education support professionals and higher education workers, among others,” the announcement of the effort reads.

Notably, labor unions play an outsized role in many of the election’s most crucial swing states: 21% of votes cast in Michigan in the 2020 presidential election were from union households, representing approximately one-fifth of the electorate, according to the union. The same is true for Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where union households accounted for 18% and 13% of votes cast, respectively.

Roughly 300 employees are not receiving pay or benefits during the lockout. The union, the National Education Association Staff Organization (NEASO), has been without a contract since May 31.

The NEASO launched the strike — its second walkout this summer — on July 5 in Philadelphia, during contract negotiations and the union’s annual delegate assembly. In response, the NEA canceled the remainder of the conference, which had been scheduled to go through the weekend. Biden was supposed to speak at the event but pulled out, refusing to cross the picket line.

On July 8, the day after the conference had been scheduled to end, NEA shuttered its office doors.

Hundreds of NEASO members rallied in front of NEA headquarters in Washington, D.C., on July 8 and 10, calling the lockout unlawful and punitive. 

“They have tried to paint the picture of NEASO as being disrespectful. They have tried to paint the picture of NEASO being individuals who are greedy,” Robin McLean, NEASO president, said at the July 10 rally. “They look at us like we are not humans. They have bars on the doors so you can’t get in. Who does that?”

Contract negotiations focus primarily on wages, such as an annual 4% raise, a return to annual salary step increases after a 12-year freeze and limits on when the NEA can contract out bargaining unit work. 

NEASO staged a previous strike in June, claiming the union has a history of engaging in bad-faith bargaining tactics and committing other unfair labor practices. The union has with the National Labor Relations Board this year, including allegations that the NEA withheld holiday overtime pay and failed to give information on the outsourcing of millions of dollars in bargaining unit work.

In , NEASO alleged that a manager physically assaulted a staffer and retaliated after the employee reported the attack. It also claimed that the NEA has unilaterally changed working conditions without bargaining them.

NEA officials have . In an email statement July 8, a spokesperson said the union has “always bargained in good faith and remain[s] fully committed to and respect[s] the collective bargaining process.”

“Over the past two weeks, NEASO employees have walked off their jobs twice,” NEA said in the email. “To best protect the interests of our members, the Association and our staff, we have made the difficult decision to institute a protective lockout of the NEASO-represented employees to safeguard NEA’s operations.”

In a letter to Kim Anderson, NEA executive director, McLean contested union claims that the walkouts weren’t covered under the National Labor Relations Act. She said the job actions weren’t unlawful because they weren’t a “a plan to strike, return to work and strike again” or a strategy of a “multiplicity of little ‘hit and run’ work stoppages” to harass the organization.

NEASO has repeatedly called for NEA to allow staff to return to their offices, saying the union’s decision to lock employees out is unlawful retaliation. 

“It is my sincere hope that NEA will start complying with the National Labor Relations Act, cease and desist in any further unfair labor practices and comport itself like a labor union, not like an anti-union corporation,” McLean wrote in the July 11 letter.

“NEA has offered and remains prepared to reach an agreement that provides raises and a competitive salary, maintains all aspects of a generous package of benefits, a pension plan that provides a secure retirement for all staff and accessible, high-quality health care for staff and their families,” the union said in a July 8 statement.

Erin Wagner, who has worked as a senior digital strategist for NEA the past six years, said at the July 10 rally that she has hardly seen any change in her compensation since she was hired.

“On the salary that I make, trying to live here, trying to raise my daughter in this city, it’s just not sustainable,” said Wagner, who lives in Washington. “I am one of the 25% of NEASO members who have to work second and third jobs just to work here.”

McLean urged members to stand their ground through the lockout and negotiations. 

“Remember we can’t get weary. We have to stand the course. We have to see this to the end. The very end,” she told the crowd at the July 10 rally. “Some may say that how do you do it? I do it because of you. I worked with all of you for almost 23 years as of August. I don’t take this role lightly. We are making a difference. Stand the course. We’re going to win.”

In the last five years, teachers unions have taken a double hit. The first was the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling in June 2018, which eliminated the practice of charging agency fees to nonmembers. The second was the COVID pandemic that shut down schools in March 2020.

The effects have been detrimental to teachers union membership across the country, but perhaps nowhere more so than in the ranks of the California Teachers Association.

That union’s roster reached its apex at the time of the Janus decision, with more than 326,000 active members working in the state’s public schools. It has been a slow downward slide ever since.

The first big blow was the loss of 19,000 members when the California Faculty Association seceded from the state union and the National Education Association.

The Janus decision did not lead to the mass exodus of members that its supporters had hoped for and unions had feared. CTA internal documents indicate that only 2,631 school employees have dropped their membership in the last four years.

The union hoped to mitigate further losses by successfully lobbying for legislation that requires school districts to allow unions to make a 30-minute membership pitch during new teacher orientations. It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of this measure. In the last 10 months, school districts have hired 3,700 more employees who are eligible to join, but the union has 1,727 fewer members.

Just as the union was coming to terms with the post-Janus world, COVID hit and schools shut down. The union once again won relief from the California legislature, as districts were forbidden to lay off teachers until July 2020.

Nonetheless, membership continued to dwindle to the present day. At the beginning of March 2020, the union had 304,509 members. Internal documents show that figure dropped to 293,444 as of Jan. 13, 2023, a loss of 11,065 members.

Comprehensive numbers for the union’s 995 local affiliates are of less recent vintage, but official as of Aug. 31, 2022. I have constructed a table based on those statistics, culled from internal union documents. I included the comparable membership figures for Aug. 31, 2019, and Aug. 31, 2018. The figure for United Teachers Los Angeles is a best estimate, due to the difficulty of reconciling the numbers of members affiliated with NEA and those affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers Local 1021.

Losses appear to be indiscriminate across all local sizes. Eight of the state union’s 10 largest locals lost members between 2019 and 2022, while overall, 587 locals lost members during that period.

The cure for the union’s ills, once again, lies with the state legislature. The union will work to ensure funding is made available for as much hiring as possible, so membership will grow even if the percentage of new teachers who join isn’t what it used to be.

The health of the California Teachers Association and other large state affiliates is critical to the overall health of the National Education Association. Their membership dues help subsidize the continued existence of sickly state affiliates in the South. If California losses continue, it will have a domino effect across the country.

Ingrid Gant was the president of the Arlington Education Association from 2016 to 2022, a period during which, , she “provided herself with multiple bonuses and used debit cards for unauthorized purchases” in the amount of $410,782.10.

Gant and her entire executive board were removed from office by union members in early 2022 after they with the Internal Revenue Service.

The board had also from the Virginia Education Association and the National Education Association. This decision was reversed by a vote of the Arlington union’s building site representatives. NEA established a temporary trusteeship over the local until new leaders were elected.

The new officers hired accountants to audit the union’s finances. Investigators reportedly discovered that Gant and used union debit cards to purchase gas, food and other personal items.

Virginia Education Association President James Fedderman that the local owed the state and national unions $732,000 in back dues.

Gant ran against Fedderman for the state union’s presidency in February 2020. for sending a letter to the district superintendent that was filled with grammatical errors.

The Arlington Education Association saying it “is pursuing all legal channels to recoup any lost funds and hold those responsible accountable” and “has already implemented stronger financial controls and transparent reporting practices to ensure sound operation.”

Gant was and did not respond to requests for comment.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

Just 6% of private-sector workers belonged to a union, along with 33% of public-sector workers, both down from 2021. Even local government employees, a category that includes most public school teachers, fell to a record low of 38.8%.

While those numbers have declined almost unabated for more than a generation, unions are doing their level best to convince the public otherwise, and are having some success doing so.

“With the resurgence of union organizing and unprecedented federal investment in job creation, the labor movement is poised to grow significantly in the coming years,” after the bureau’s report was released.

The touted a report by the union-financed Economic Policy Institute that claimed “.”

Where did the institute get that number? It took a of 3,915 self-selected respondents, 48% of whom said they would join a union if they could. From this, the institute , “While 2017 is the most recent year the survey of nonunion workers was conducted, we presume that the share of nonunion workers who would like to unionize was at least 48% in 2022, if not higher. Assuming that to be true, that means that more than 60 million workers in 2022 wanted to join a union, but couldn’t.”

You know what happens when you assume.

Last Labor Day, unions also lauded a Gallup poll showing that 71% of Americans approved of unions. They conveniently ignored the additional finding that 58% of America’s nonunion workers were .

Despite the bad news, unions have been able to sell a resurgence narrative for . Just a few weeks prior to the release of the bureau’s report, , , and all ran stories touting a union comeback. posted a piece doing so even after the numbers came out.

Let’s add some context to the current situation for unions.

• The overall picture is probably worse for unions than the statistics indicate, since they exclude the 16.5 million self-employed American workers. I cannot find even estimates of what their unionization rate might be, even though I’m one of them. But I would be astonished if it is an appreciable number.
  
• The number of union members working in the private sector in 2022 was roughly the same as it was in 2011. During a period in which the U.S. economy added 15.6 million workers, unions added zero members.
  
• Even if unions were able to recruit every single worker of the top 10 U.S. employers — that is, every employee of Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, FedEx, Target, Kroger, UPS, Starbucks, Berkshire Hathaway and UnitedHealth Group — it would get them to only 10.2% of the private sector, which is where they were in 1996.

The public sector is what has kept the labor movement alive. Its membership rates were remarkably steady until about 2014. Now, government unions are following the trajectory of their private counterparts, and only massive political intervention will rescue them from the same fate.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

Biden, who made student debt relief part of his presidential campaign, also extended a on student loan payments through the end of the year.

“Education is a ticket to a better life, but over time, that ticket has become too expensive,” the president said at the White House. “The burden is so heavy that even if you graduate, you may not have access to the middle class life that the college degree once provided.”  

The decision could lift some of the financial burden off teachers who took out loans to fund their education. A from the National Education Association showed that 45% of educators were student loan borrowers and over half of those still have a balance, averaging almost $59,000.

“Nobody goes into teaching for the money, but you have to survive,” said Joshua Starr, managing partner of the International Center for Leadership in Education, affiliated with education publisher Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt. Previously, he served as CEO of PDK International, a membership organization for educators. 

Making college more affordable, he said, “is one part of a larger fabric that we have to consider when we want to promote the idea that teaching is a sustainable job.”

The president gave himself an Aug. 31 deadline to announce his decision — the date that the pause on federal student loan payments was set to expire. His announcement from Republicans, who have said the policy gives borrowers will make inflation worse and ignores the law. Earlier this month, the GOP introduced that would limit loan forgiveness. But Democrats largely applauded the move, with Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, chair of the education committee, calling it a “milestone moment.”

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education provided an update on the $32 billion in student debt relief previously approved since the Democrats took office. That includes $10 billion for over 175,000 borrowers in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program since last October. 

Under former Secretary Betsy DeVos, the vast majority in the program were even though they took education and other service sector jobs that they believed would qualify. To be eligible for forgiveness, borrowers in the program had to submit a waiver, which expires at the end of October. Democrats Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to extend the waiver until at least July 1 of next year.��

‘Struggling to rebound’

As the cost of a has increased, the NEA report showed that educators 35 and under were more likely to take out student loans, compared to older educators. Student debt is also more common among Black than white educators — 56% compared with 44%.

Some advocates said the president’s action doesn’t go far enough. 

“Canceling $10,000 in student loan debt merely puts a Band-Aid on the real problem of reforming the system that has landed us in this mess — and within years we will be right back at the same point,” the National Parents Union said in a statement.

Kim Cook, CEO of the nonprofit National College Attainment Network, noted that Pell grants for low-income students — at an average of about $4,500 — don’t cover even half the annual cost of higher education. 

“Fast-rising and unmanageable levels of student debt are the result of a broken system for financing higher education in which many parents and students are forced to take out loans they cannot reasonably be expected to repay,” she said in a statement. The organization advocates for doubling Pell grant awards.

Experts say loan forgiveness would especially benefit early educators, who make far less than those in the K-12 system and often kept their programs open when schools were closed.  

“The pandemic shined a light on the low pay for child care providers who are leaving the industry in droves, causing a shortage of child care options for families,” said Alexandra Patterson, director of policy and strategy for Home Grown, a nonprofit advocating for home-based providers. Loan forgiveness, she said, would benefit “a workforce that is severely underpaid and is still struggling to rebound from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic while wrestling with the challenges of inflation.”

Adrienne Briggs, who runs Lil’ Bits Family Child Care Home in Philadelphia, earned her master’s in early-childhood education in 2013, but she still carries over $50,000 in debt. She didn’t qualify for relief though the revamped Public School Loan Forgiveness program because she owns her own business.

Through an income-based repayment program, her $650 monthly payments have dropped to $150, but that just stretched out the debt over a longer period. The administration is also relaxing those repayment terms, lowering the percentage borrowers have to pay from 10% to 5% of their income. And it will forgive original loan balances of $12,000 after 10 years. 

“Even having my master’s did not change my position,” said Briggs, who serves families who receive child care subsidies and wouldn’t be able to pay higher rates if she raised them. “All I ended up getting was a bill that has been haunting me all this time.”

During a press call Thursday, leaders with Everytown for Gun Safety, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association bemoaned a return to campus gun violence after a year without mass school shootings. There were 30 reported instances of gunfire on school grounds between Aug. 1 and Sept. 15, resulting in five deaths and 23 injuries, according to a tally by Everytown, a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes gun control measures. That’s the largest count during that back-to-school period since the group started keeping track in 2013 and comes amid a larger surge in violence outside of schools.

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“For the past 18 months, we’ve been focused on keeping our students and educators safe, getting them back together in classrooms,” NEA President Becky Pringle told reporters. “Now, as students across the nation are returning to school buildings, we not only face the threat of an ongoing pandemic, we face record levels of gun violence on our school campuses.” 

The most recent high-profile incident unfolded Wednesday at Timberview High School in Arlington, Texas, where four people were injured and an 18-year-old student was arrested and charged with carrying out the attack after a reported fight with another student. The suspect’s family . Mansfield Independent School District spokesman Donald Williams said the school system is investigating the incident and its potential motives.��

Earlier this month, on Oct. 1, charter school in Houston was injured after getting shot in the back on campus. A 25-year-old man who reportedly graduated from the school in 2017 was charged in the shooting.��

Even before the pandemic swept the nation, America faced a gun violence epidemic, Pringle said. Yet, time and again, she said policymakers have failed to reach tangible solutions. She promoted gun control measures like expanding firearm background check systems and improving youth access to mental health care, but argued that other responses like arming teachers, active-shooter drills and school-based police could further traumatize kids.��

The latest tragedies confirm the fears of criminologists and school safety experts who warned about the potential for heightened violence in schools as students repopulated classrooms after a year of isolation, economic hardship and social unrest during the pandemic. The carnage follows a year without a single mass school shooting, according to data from The Violence Project, a nonprofit research center focused on reducing such tragedies.��

“As the mom of a teacher in Indiana, I was worrying a lot about what back-to-school would look like,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of the gun safety group, . “Sadly, back-to-school has meant back-to-school shootings for too many communities across the country.” 

Though mass shootings happen elsewhere, the U.S. is a clear outlier. School shootings remain statistically rare and federal data suggest that schools have grown markedly safer in recent years, but there has been an uptick in campus gun violence leading to injury and death in the last several years. During the 2019-20 school year, there were 27 campus shootings that resulted in death and 48 in injuries, .��

During the press call Thursday, advocates and union leaders said a comprehensive strategy is required to prevent gun violence in schools, 

President Joe Biden to back new gun control measures and for an increase in funding for police officers. Yet many of the proposed solutions highlighted Thursday — gun control, in particular — have long faced fierce opposition. Congress is already juggling several high-stakes, contentious issues including a potential budget impasse, an infrastructure bill and a long-term resolution of the debt ceiling.��

AFT President Randi Weingarten specifically called for moderate lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, to support measures like red flag laws, firearm storage rules and background checks for all gun sales.��

“It shouldn’t be controversial,” she said. “There’s huge bipartisan support [among voters] for these common-sense safety measures.” 

The National Education Association has expressed its support for the Biden administration’s “” agenda, which includes the American Rescue Plan, the American Families Plan and the American Jobs Plan.

, NEA Director of Government Relations Marc Egan presented a long list of spending priorities that the union hopes to see enacted, as well as a desire that “corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.”

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To that end, the union wants to see the following changes to federal tax law:

• Restore the 39.6 percent top marginal income tax rate — the level in effect before the 2017 GOP tax bill lowered it to 37 percent.
• Raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent — still well below the 35 percent in effect before the 2017 GOP tax bill lowered it to 21 percent.
• Set a 21 percent minimum tax rate for corporate offshore profits, applied on a country-by-country basis.
• Institute a 15 percent minimum tax on corporate profits reported to investors.
• End special tax breaks for fossil fuel production.
• Make it tougher for U.S. corporations to dodge U.S. taxes by adopting a phony foreign address.
• Strengthen IRS enforcement.

These recommendations come from an organization which, together with its state affiliates, rakes in almost $1.7 billion annually and pays no corporate or capital gains tax.

Corporations and the wealthiest Americans have their own lobbyists and congressional influence, so tax policies will be enacted or not in the usual ebb and flow of political maneuvering. It’s the last recommendation, to “strengthen IRS enforcement,” that deserves some context.

The price NEA and its affiliates, along with all other nonprofit entities, pay for all that tax-free revenue is the requirement to file annual financial disclosure reports to the public. The Internal Revenue Service has a Form 990, which is the equivalent of a tax return, except that no — or very little — taxes are paid.

As with tax returns, 990s come in short and simple versions for small organizations, and more detailed long forms for larger ones. They require an accounting of all revenues and expenses, salaries of key officers and itemized assets in broad categories. Filing the report is not especially onerous, considering the benefit of being tax-exempt.

IRS enforcement leaves a little something to be desired, however. Tax-exempt status is not revoked until an organization has failed to file a 990 for three consecutive years. Technically, an organization could file a 990 once every three years and not see its tax-exempt status automatically revoked. If it is revoked, the organization can have it reinstated simply by paying a fee and reapplying. In most cases, the reinstatement is retroactive to the revocation date, meaning there is no other penalty for failing to file.

Despite extended deadlines due to the pandemic, dozens of NEA affiliates have seen their tax-exempt status automatically revoked since March 2020. They include at least 20 local affiliates of the California Teachers Association, 15 of the New Jersey Education Association and teachers unions in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

By far the largest offending local affiliate of both NEA and the American Federation of Teachers is the Hillsborough County Classroom Teachers Association in Florida, which had its status revoked last September. It is not listed on the IRS website as having applied for reinstatement.

In its last filing from February 2017, the Tampa-based union reported more than $6.3 million in revenues.

So by all means, let’s strengthen IRS enforcement. Union affiliates that lose their tax-exempt status should have to pay taxes on the millions in revenue they collect. This should occur after only one year of failing to file disclosure reports, not three. And the IRS should assess penalties for each additional year of failing to file 990s. That would only be fair.

For the second consecutive year, the National Education Association was compelled to organize a virtual representative assembly in lieu of the mammoth in-person convention it customarily holds. Last year’s agenda was extremely limited. Delegates could only listen to speeches and presentations online, and then vote by mail on union officers and the budget.

This year, improved technology enabled NEA to schedule a full slate of business. Delegates were able to wait in a phone queue to debate or ask questions, and an online system allowed instantaneous up-or-down voting on all measures. Pursuant to federal law, voting for officers cannot be conducted online, and so delegates will choose union officers by mail during the summer.

Certainly there were difficulties in trying to manage such a large crowd online, but the proceedings were no more confused than is the norm at the union’s annual in-person events, and overall, the technology seemed to work satisfactorily.

Other problems, technology couldn’t fix.

Delegate attendance at NEA conventions has been falling for years, from a high of almost 10,000 at the 1998 assembly to the low 6,000s more recently. Without the need for travel, out-of-pocket expenses or even a brief absence from home over Independence Day weekend, the time was ripe for attendance to improve. The numbers looked good initially, as 6,702 delegates signed up.

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But when opening day arrived, only 5,591 logged on. Even this number was inflated when it came to debating and voting. .

At least publicly, NEA chose to ignore the relative lack of interest.

“Nearly 8,000 delegates from across the country gather to fairly and democratically elect officers, approve resolutions and consider amendments, paving the way forward for our union,” .

That’s making “nearly” do some heavy lifting.

Delegates submitted 160 new business items in 2019. It wasn’t surprising that a June 15 deadline this year reduced the number to 66. However, considering the ultimate outcome, one wonders if the money and time spent on the technology to hold a virtual assembly was worth it.

Of the 66 items, 11 were ruled out of order or withdrawn. Ten were voted down. A full 22 were referred to an NEA standing committee without a recommendation. That left only 23 that were approved. Of those, nine called on NEA to use its print and social media outlets to publicize something.

The substantive policy initiatives were generated by the union’s board of directors and executive committee. NEA formed a “” and released a set of five principles for “ensuring that all students have access to an equitable, robust system of designed by educators in partnership with stakeholders that values the full breadth of their knowledge and skills.”

Evaluate NEA’s principles for yourselves, but I think the key phrase is the one seeking a system that “decouples student assessment from tracking, promotion/retention and graduation decisions.”

Another new business item created a task force to identify criteria for “safe, just and equitable schools, including exploring the role of law enforcement in education.” It also called for a campaign to teach critical race theory in classrooms and oppose efforts to ban it. That resolution was posted on the NEA website delegate page but later taken down, along with the budget document, membership reports and everything else.

Perhaps the task force will do some good work, but initiatives like these are also a way to forestall more immediate and radical measures. from an Oregon delegate called for NEA to form a committee to “make recommendations to the labor movement on what role we should play in putting an end to police unions’ ability to protect violent cops, harmful policing practices and racist policies that too often lead to the terrorizing and deaths of our students and their family members.”

NEA has been riding the fence on the question of police unions and the presence in schools of sworn officers, many of whom are NEA members.

It’s also useful to note that back in 2015, NEA passed a new business item . Six years later, I defy any education policy person to identify a single NEA accomplishment relative to it.

It won’t be the policies coming out of NEA headquarters or from delegates that will determine the immediate future of public education. It will be whether 1.5 million K-12 students return to the fold after missing more than a year of school. Not a single new business item mentioned this startling enrollment drop or what to do about it. As long as the teacher hiring continues, the unions are not worried.

The National Education Association will hold its annual representative assembly in a virtual environment beginning June 30. The assembly brings together several thousand union representatives from each NEA state and local affiliate to set the policies for the national organization.

Last year, NEA’s agenda was severely limited. This year, the union will attempt to conduct a full array of business over four days. As always, the last item the delegates will vote on is NEA’s strategic plan and budget.

The details the spending priorities for the nearly $371 million in revenues the national union expects to receive in the 2021-22 school year. However, the details NEA provides aren’t always enlightening.

For example, Secretary-Treasurer Noel Candelaria gave a short briefing to delegates on how the union plans to spend the additional $13 million in dues it projects for next year. His presentation included this slide:

It shows the union will spend 23 percent of the new revenue to “support professional excellence” and 22 percent to “advance racial justice in education.”

NEA likes to describe its budgeting in programmatic terms, but a deeper dive into the budget’s numbers gives a better sense of where this money will go.

With the $13 million in additional revenue, plus a small amount of savings from some budget cuts, the union will allocate an additional $5 million to salaries and fringe benefits, bringing the total to $114.4 million for a staff of about 600 employees.

The union’s three executive officers will each receive a 3.1 percent raise, bringing the president’s base salary to $320,783 and the salaries of the vice president and secretary-treasurer to $281,997. The executive officers will also receive a combined total of $588,562 in allowances and benefits, much of which is taxable as income.

NEA will budget an additional $2.8 million for technology and equipment, while $6.1 million more will be allocated to “outside services,” which the union defines as “fees paid for professional legal, audit and tax services, consulting services and building maintenance. It also includes costs for Educators’ Employment Liability insurance premiums, membership forms and cards, promotional materials, and advertising.”

The membership projections that produce the budget don’t always coincide with reality. Last year, NEA expected to finish the 2019-20 school year with 2 million active (full-time equivalent) members, meaning those currently employed in public schools. The union budgeted for substantial membership losses in 2020-21, expecting to come down to 1,875,000 active members.

Those projected losses did not occur. Contrary to some predictions, teachers did not leave the profession in droves during the pandemic. This year the union is budgeting for 1,920,000 active members. Much of the $122 billion in additional federal K-12 spending from the American Rescue Plan is likely to go toward hiring more school employees, which would bolster the union’s ranks.

NEA already has new members in mind, budgeting almost $7 million to recruit teachers and then engage with them to “increase their connection to the association.” The union traditionally has had in its activities.

With midterm elections coming up in 2022, political activity is not ignored in the NEA budget. The union plans to spend almost $33 million to elect friendly candidates and to “shape debate in states about education funding, taxes and revenues.”

One last item that doesn’t appear in the budget but has emerged as an NEA priority is a plan to “reimagine” student assessments. The union appointed a task force to develop this new vision.

“We know that standardized tests aren’t fully measuring student learning and they are rooted in institutional racism,” said NEA Vice President Princess Moss, who co-chairs the task force.

We’ll have more on NEA’s assembly in the coming weeks.