Teacher’s Union “Extremely Proud” of New Policy to Lay Off White Teachers First

A Minneapolis, Minnesota teacher’s union has struck a new deal that will allow for white teachers to be let go or reassigned from their job first, before non-white teachers, according to a report by AlphaNews.

The union President has since doubled-down in her support for the policy after facing backlash once the report surfaced.

The contract, that deals specifically with “educators of color protections”, states that if the teacher whom is set to be laid off or reassigned is “a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers… the District shall excess the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population,”

Non-white teachers may also be exempt from “Layoff for Designated Programs/Staff” according to the contract.

“Teachers… may be exempt from district-wide layoff outside of seniority order to remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination,” it reads.

Simply put, the agreement seeks a form of equity by way of preferential treatment based on ethnic

origin/skin color which disregards the typical, seniority-based system.

“Past discrimination by the District disproportionately impacted the hiring of underrepresented teachers in the District,” the agreement adds.

President of the Minneapolis Federations of Teachers (MFT) Greta Callahan gave a statement regarding the agreement with the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) system:

“This contract language was something that we are, first of all, extremely proud of for achieving but it

also doesn’t go far enough… We need to support and retain our educators, especially those who are

underrepresented,” she claimed.

Vice President of the union, Marcia Howard, echoed similar sentiments, stating this was what

unspecified groups marched for, even going as far to say that the policy wasn’t a significant point of

contention:

“This is the language that we put in and that we went out and marched for… We voted on this, the

district and the union agreed upon this and now it’s coming out because some Minnesotan website

decided to put it out there and the MAGA media picked it up,” Howard explained.

While downplaying the seriousness of the story, union V.P. claimed that layoffs weren’t an immediate

possibility thus making it a “non-story”:

“It’s a non-story… we are nowhere near having layoffs this year. We’re down like 250 teachers. We’re

down. There are no layoffs. So I ask y’all why? Why is this a story?”

The question is: if this isn't a story, when does discrimination for the sake of discrimination become one? As far as legality goes - this is about as far from that as we can get.