Our guests today on The State of Education with Melvin Adams, are Eloise Smith and Lauren Bowen of Freedom Foundation. Following their first annual teacher’s conference, Eloise and Lauren are excited to talk about the incredible support their attendees found in coming together and learning. They also discuss the problem with teachers unions and how teachers can find their freedom, despite overwhelming pressures and aggressive ideologies.
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Our guests today on The State of Education with Melvin Adams, are Eloise Smith and Lauren Bowen of Freedom Foundation. Following their first annual teacher’s conference, Eloise and Lauren are excited to talk about the incredible support their attendees found in coming together and learning. They also discuss the problem with teachers unions and how teachers can find their freedom, despite overwhelming pressures and aggressive ideologies.
RESOURCES:
GET CONNECTED WITH NWEF
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nwef.org/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NWEF_org
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nwef_org/
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtdHayyOqPftVoiGEqxYdsg
To hear more from NWEF, subscribe to our other podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1898310
– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –
Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.
Website: https://www.nwef.org
Reach out: info@nwef.org
KENT: Hi, everyone. This is Catherine, the content manager here at Noah Webster Educational Foundation, and I will be guest-hosting this episode of the podcast.
I would love to introduce the lovely ladies Lauren Bowen and Eloise Smith. These ladies are part of the Freedom Foundation, which recently hosted a conference in Denver called A Teacher Freedom Conference. Its purpose was to give teachers the opportunity to learn how they can stand up for themselves against some of the leftist ideas that are coming out of unions like the AFT and the NEA.
Ladies, I am so delighted to meet both of you today and to have you here with us. It's a pleasure, and I would love to get to know you a little bit more, so can you tell me a little bit about yourselves and what led you to the Freedom Foundation and starting this conference in the first place? Because I'm sure that was a little bit of a journey.
BOWEN: Sure, Catherine. It's a genuine pleasure. I just can't thank you enough for having me be a part of this today.
I worked in state government for seven years on a project called the Ohio Checkbook and I would go to hundreds of school board meetings across the state. It was amazing to me the lack of transparency I observed for both parents and teachers and the general taxpayer who, of course, is a genuine stakeholder in that district.
We were simply asking them as a part of this project to publish their expenditures online so that everyone could understand how that hard-earned money the taxpayers sacrificed to sustain that school district—how that money was being spent. The lack of response and eagerness to embrace this tool for the public good and the parents' good really alarmed me. I got really concerned.
Fast forward to COVID. Matters just deteriorated. Let's face it. School systems were not serving the best interests of students and parents. I already knew there was a lack of transparency pre-COVID because of my work on that project. I just simply had enough. One day, it would happen to be that the good Lord helped me stumble upon a LinkedIn posting about the Freedom Foundation.
One of the main points of the job posting was government accountability. I said, “That's all I've ever wanted.” So I applied and I told my husband it was my dream job. I was just anxiously hoping it would work out. Three years later—almost three years later—here I am.
KENT: Yeah, that's so awesome that you had this journey and this need and you were able to find something. A lot of people see needs, but they don't choose to make a difference. It's quite admirable that you saw a need and you chose to do something about it despite the backlash and even the fight to get it heard. So amazing.
All right. What about you, Eloise? Tell us about yourself.
SMITH: I'm the director of engagement for the Freedom Foundation. My job was to run the conference. This kind of evolved—just in the last year was really the inception of it. The Freedom Foundation only hired me last November, so I'm pretty new to this scene.
But they hired me because I was a former teacher. I've been in education reform for a number of years now, working with Young America's Foundation, and now, of course, the Freedom Foundation.
There's obviously a need for education reform to fix the very broken system. But conservatives, and the right in general, I think, have a tendency to just want to wash their hands of public education and say, “Let's start over, let's scrap the system and do homeschool or focus on school choice.”
While those things are great and definitely needed—I absolutely believe in those—ninety percent of all of our students in America go to a public school. We can't give up on them. We can't walk away and just seed that fight to the left and say, “Well, I guess they're going to trans all those kids, but they're not going to trans the homeschoolers.” That's just not a long term solution for the health of our country.
KENT: Absolutely not. I mean, whether we like it or not, that's where the majority of kids are and we need to step up to the plate and reach that. So again, one of the reasons we wanted you on here is because we do want to support people that are going out there and fighting for our public school students.
So could you just expound on, as a teacher, maybe what you saw and what led you to moving from that into working for the Freedom Foundation?
SMITH: Yeah, so I taught at a school in Colorado Springs. It was in the poorest part of town, next to the airport. Seventy percent of my students lived in the trailer park across the street, actually. Really, really poor area. There was just not a lot of parental care for the students, they didn't care about school.
Education is the best way to get ahead in life. That's been proven over and over again. The best way to break out of poverty is through education and through knowledge. Equipping our students is really important. But if parents don't care, and the teachers don't care, then there's not a lot that can be done.
I then left that school and taught at a charter school, which had a totally different philosophy. Parents were very involved, teachers held students accountable. I just saw the difference between a government-run school and a parent-led school. Iit said so much. It said so much about the population, it said so much about the future of America, in a lot of ways.
I was teaching seventh grade at both schools. The kids shouldn't have been that different. But parental involvement really matters and hiring the right teachers really matters. Getting the right people in the classroom is so, so, so important.
That's why I'm really passionate about this union issue, because the unions are really set on keeping bad teachers in the classroom and kicking out the good ones. They don't reward the good ones, they give tenure to the ones that are literally lemons, and will shuffle them around districts. They'll ensure that those teachers who are predators or just are lazy—they don't want to be teachers, they don't care about their job—they can never get fired. In California, it costs about $3 million to fire a teacher that's in the union. “Well, it's just easier.” Yeah, it's easier than to just keep the teacher because it's so expensive.
They estimate that in California there's 85,000 teachers, about fifteen percent of them are inadequate and should be fired. Well, it's too expensive to fire them and that's because of the unions. That's the reason that there's nine percent of students who graduate in San Francisco with reading and writing proficiencies. It's keeping these bad teachers in place that's harming our students in the long run.
KENT: Those are some very alarming statistics, for sure. You know the problem's bad, but hearing you being able to say that is scary.
How does…and I guess this is a question for you both. How does the Freedom Foundation—in particular, the work that you do—how does that step in and help with this problem, especially with the teachers unions and getting parental engagement?
BOWEN: Honestly, we're telling teachers the honest truth about where their money goes. When they spend 70 to 100 dollars a month in some states—even a lot more than that, in Ohio that’s the average—is going to politics.
I did an analysis using federal reports. I think the NEA last year spent a little over $13 on every member for workplace representation and in the entire year of 2022.
If that doesn't tell you where the priorities of the teachers are for the NEA and the state level unions, I don't know what does. To spend that money and only get that level of representation in your workplace is not the point of a union.
When we tell teachers that, regardless of their political attachments or leanings, they want to leave the union.
KENT: Yeah, absolutely. You want to be somewhere where they're representing you and it's a partnership, especially if you're paying that much money. I mean, that's just a no-brainer.
SMITH: Yeah, I'll add to that. In 2021, the NEA collected $374 million in dues money from teachers around the country. That's so much money. And teachers like—my first job teaching, I made $28,000. If $1,100 of that was going to the union—I luckily was in a right-to-work state, where I didn’t have to join the union—but that's a lot of money to be taken out of very little money.
That's the teacher story everywhere. That's not just unique to Colorado. That's a teacher story everywhere. The NEA made $374 million from their constituents in 2021. Only nine percent of all of that money was spent representing teachers, which is the entire reason that they exist, the entire reason that they collect money.
They spent over $200 million of that on politics. Getting people elected, giving it to BLM, giving it to Planned Parenthood—groups that fundamentally do not stand for the same things that most teachers stand for. Most teachers are not interested in this woke ideology. They really just care about traditional American values and they want to help raise the next upright citizenry. Being involved with SEL, DEI stuff…that's not doing that.
KENT: Definitely. I've had many, many friends in education over the years and regardless of which side of the aisle they were on, I think they would all agree that at the end of the day, education and proficient reading levels, proficient math skills was ultimately what they wanted.
If politics came in, then it did! They had some views on ideology, but that was always second, regardless of which side of the aisle they were on. So it's a very valid point.
Speak to how you got from this background and then had this idea for a conference. And not just a conference, but a conference that would sponsor teachers that would be able to help them get there in the first place. Because like you said, unfortunately, we do not pay teachers hardly anything in this country.
SMITH: Yeah. They hired me with this goal in mind, thinking that this conference is going to be for teachers and so it needed to be run by a teacher.
I am familiar with teacher lingo, I'm familiar with the needs in the classroom. It was a pretty unique opportunity that just landed in my lap. The goal of the conference, like you said, was to get teachers from all over the country. That meant we had to pay their way because teachers do not make very much money.
An $800 plane ticket was obviously not going to be realistic for the kinds of teachers that we wanted to attend. So we were really lucky: we got 200 teachers from 26 different states, including two other countries. We had a teacher show up from Canada and a couple of teachers from Australia. We did have a teacher who was coming from the UK as well, but she had to drop out literally three days before, which was unfortunate.
Really cool opportunity. This is clearly an issue that's not just national, it's not just happening in all 50 of our states, but it's happening across the globe. Unfortunately, this wokeism, this stealing people's money out of paychecks, is not unique to the United States. But the good news is if it's happening elsewhere, there's been solutions that people have thought of elsewhere and we can collaborate with those people as well.
KENT: Yeah. Well, Lauren, do you have anything you want to add to that?
BOWEN: I think, too, one of the main ideas behind organizing this and getting these teachers under one roof is because they feel so alone. I just talk to teachers all day because of the nature of my work and helping to get teachers out of unions. We have some really honest conversations together, which is a huge blessing. It's so nice to be able to hear from them and get their honest feedback.
Almost every one of them mentions, “I feel so alone.” It's so odd because unions are supposed to be about camaraderie. You'll oftentimes hear people talk about unions in the context of a brotherhood. Maybe not so much in the school systems, but if you're talking about electric unions or the carpenters unions, those union members say, “Well, I'm part of a brotherhood.” The concept of unions were always designed to be about forming these really close bonds with your coworkers.
So how can teachers, who are a part of these quote, unquote “strong unions,” feel so alone all the time? That's really heartbreaking for us to hear at the Freedom Foundation because somebody who's doing such noble work and standing up for families and standing up for kids and going back to the future for America, how can we let them be lonely?
I think that's what meant so much to us is that we could get them together for meals, for some fun, for some lighthearted conversation in Denver. I think I didn't hear one teacher say that they would go home and not keep up with the people they met. That was a very rewarding part of the conference.
And to your question, that was the point of the conference—or a main point!
KENT: Yeah, and that's such a wonderful main point is just to build that camaraderie and give them that framework that unfortunately—a union should be at least according to the original definition of a union should be doing, right? When unions originated, it was to stand together and to fight for better circumstances and to really support each other.
You know, not to be a history nerd, but they were started before there were things like retirement benefits and workers comp. It really was to take care of each other. To hear that many teachers are experiencing the opposite is just so incredibly heartbreaking.
Now that we've talked, I guess, about getting them there and the camaraderie, can you speak a little bit—and give our audience—just a taste of some of the topics that were discussed, some of the exciting incidents that occurred. Just give them a little taste for this conference and then we'll talk later about how maybe they can sign up for next year.
BOWEN: I don't know where to start on that one, Catherine. That's really hard, because there just wasn't a dull moment the whole three days where we were together. It was one of those experiences where I came home on Thursday morning. I said—I told myself, “How did we fit so many positive things, so much good information into three days?”
I am going to, honestly, have a really hard time answering that question about my favorite speaker or my favorite thing that I learned while I was there. Because even though I work at the Freedom Foundation, I genuinely did learn things from this conference that we hosted.
I would say that one of the biggest highlights for me was when we had this mom come and talk at a breakfast session about her experience of being sued by the teacher's union because all she wanted was transparency in the curriculum at her school. She went to the administrators, and she genuinely asked, “What content is my kindergartner going to be exposed to this year? I'm just a genuinely curious parent.”
I think a lot of times schools think, “Well, you're just being nosy, or you're trying to catch us doing something wrong.” I think this mom just genuinely—or the way she framed it—she's just like, “Well, if I know what my kid is learning at school, then I can strengthen what we do at home as in-house activities to complement that curriculum that she's exposed to day in and day out.”
Well, because the administrators were so cynical and suspect of her asking about this, they got very paranoid and just outright refused her and made her submit thousands of public records that went unanswered. And finally, the teacher's union recognized it as quote unquote harassment on her behalf and organized to sue her.
I think it really shocked a lot of people in that room because I don't think some of those teachers realized the nemesis that teacher's unions are in pitting educators against parents. I kind of think they thought, “Well, I'm in the classroom every day. I'm a genuine ally of these parents. I do everything I can to serve them and their young ones.” I just think it was a rude awakening for them.
Sometimes you do need that rude awakening because there was a teacher that stood up during question and answer time and she's like, “I just don't understand how teachers couldn't be your ally through all of this and how the teachers in that district were distanced from her in providing her the information that she wanted. I mean, it's just shocking to hear some of these stories. That was probably a big highlight for me.
KENT: Yeah, that's an absolutely heartbreaking story, but it really does highlight the disconnect because, at least where I'm from, probably a decade ago, that could have been a very simple conversation between parent and teacher. “Hey, what's my kid learning?” “Oh, well, they just learned their ABCs…” And it would have been a really sweet conversation, not a lawsuit.
That is absolutely heartbreaking, but I think it speaks to the time that we live in.
BOWEN: Right, Catherine.
SMITH: Yeah, some other topics that we covered—we had very full days, very full days. We started with Mark Janis, who is the guy behind the Supreme Court case that allowed people to opt out of unions, public employees, to opt out of unions in all fifty states and not be required to pay dues.
It was kind of like meeting a huge celebrity for a lot of these public workers, for these teachers, to see a guy who went all the way to the Supreme Court and won, fighting for their First Amendment rights. Pretty special.
We also had a surprise guest in Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. She was able to join us virtually on the opening night. Unfortunately, it just didn't work out to have her come in person—maybe next year. But she was wonderful. She talked about school choice and the importance of it and why public school teachers should actually be excited about school choice.
That it really is, all it's going to do is reaffirm that they're good teachers. Bad teachers should be scared of school choice because it opens up the free market, of course. But good teachers should be thrilled by it because it actually means more opportunity for them. Also higher pay, which is great. Everybody wants higher pay!
We had Ryan Walters, who is the Superintendent of State of Oklahoma. He is a fiery, passionate dude. If you have not seen him speak, I encourage you to go look him up on YouTube. He's wonderful. He was probably everyone's favorite speaker, honestly.
He kicked things off for us on Monday night and just had a lot of words of encouragement for how to battle these unions. He's been taking it on the chin over and over again in Oklahoma. To see someone that's willing to stand up for teachers and do right by teachers, he's started a program there that literally can triple your pay in Oklahoma up to $80,000 and then double it based on some incentive programs that he's built in.
He's really fighting for teachers, which means he's fighting hard against the teachers unions, unfortunately, because they are, as we've already said, not fighting for teachers. Kind of on that point, we had another session that was about where our dues money goes. We could follow it exactly—how much of your money that you pay every month actually stays in your local, versus goes to the state, versus goes to the national.
We talked about lies versus the truth the union tells, talking about liability insurance and the scare tactics that unions use around those things. They say that if you get sued by the school or sued by a parent, you're not going to have any protection. Well, that's a great lie that the union has sold to all of these teachers. They actually have the policy, the insurance policy that you are paying $1,100 a month for—which is a very expensive insurance policy.
It's actually not even in the teacher's name. It's in the union's name. So the union gets to decide, “Oh, yeah, we don't like your case. We're not going to take it up,” or “Actually, yeah, that sounds like something we will defend.”
There's been numerous cases recently coming out of, specifically, Southern California, where teachers have been in the union, they've been lifelong union members, and they get sued either for the vaccine, or because they didn't follow the district's policy and not telling parents that their student was being transitioned behind their back in their school. And so they've been fired.
Well, the unions decided not to stand up for those teachers. They've sided with the district, which is just insanity. But if you use an alternative, like Association of American Educators or Christian Educators—there's also some local state groups that do similar things—you can get double the amount of liability insurance, $2 million instead of $1 million for $230 a year. Not a month, just a year.
It's literally 20% of what you'd be paying for union dues for double the amount of liability insurance, and it's in your name. It's really important that teachers know about this sort of resource. The unions don't want them to know about this resource. But when teachers know about it, they have no use for the union anymore.
It was a lot of really good information sessions like that. We were just equipping teachers to go back to their campuses and spread that news that, hey, the best way to take out this progressive ideology is to not pay union dues, and you can still have liability insurance through that.
KENT: Yeah, and not just liability insurance, but liability insurance in your name, which is pretty important in the grand scheme of things. That’s common sense. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to hear that that’s not actually how it goes down.
You already touched on my next question a little bit. Which was, what tools were teachers equipped with when they went back home? You spoke to the union, but were there other things that—what’s the follow-up, here, I guess. These teachers, they come together, have this wonderful camaraderie, learn a lot…and then what happens when they go home? Is there also a support system when they make it back?
BOWEN: Yep. Actually, for the last two weeks, I've been thinking very deeply about how to keep inspiring these teachers and keep equipping them and keep them empowered so they don't fall back into the same routines of feeling alone and isolated when they get back into the classroom this fall.
Actually, the conference was so positive and cultivated so much warmth and friendship that following up with these teachers has been, honestly, after the conference, incredibly easy. It feels like we've known each other for so long when we just met two weeks ago.
That makes it very easy, when you have that level of trust, to come up with a plan of how they can help us get teachers out of the union when they get back into the classroom and how they can be a proponent of the truth and stand in the gap.
I don’t think any of them left this conference feeling like they’re lacking tools at all. One thing that we are going to do right before some of the Ohio teachers enter back into the classroom is—we have a meeting scheduled in Columbus already where two or three of the attendees of the conference are inviting up to twenty of their friends to someone's house. We're going to have food and visit, and it's going to be laid back.
But the truth of the matter is, I'm coming with materials to have them reconsider their union membership for next year. The idea is that those twenty people will come and be impressed by their coworkers and the group of people there and want to go to their friends at the school that they know are like-minded and get them out of the union.
This growth of activism and our grassroots approach to this is just going to mean exponential losses for the teachers union.
KENT: That's amazing that you are willing to go to where they are and not just bring them to the conference once a year, but be able to go out and meet them where they are and share that information as well.
You've both spoken a lot to leaving the union. Is that what you feel is the, I guess, the best thing for teachers as—or the top best thing for teachers as far as protecting themselves and advocating for a better future for themselves?
SMITH: Yeah. Oh, definitely. I think it's an immediate action that all teachers can take that will actually have a snowball effect. Because if you're paying $1,100 one year, you're paying $1,100 next year. If you're not paying that, then the next year you're not paying that. It's just a snowball effect of your dues.
We did an analysis of how much money a teacher would pay into the union by the time they retire, if they have a thirty year career and it's over $40,000. That's a lot of money. If you decided to put that instead into your retirement every year—$1,100 into your retirement every year—you would be sitting pretty pretty!
It doesn't make any sense to be paying the union this kind of money when you're not getting any sort of benefits back. They're not doing anything for you except for harming our students.
Here's a very tangible example of that: every year, the National Education Association—which is the largest teachers union in the United States— they hold a conference. They hold multiple conferences throughout the year, but their big one always happens in July. Last year in 2022, they had 6,000 attendees in person, eighteen online. Before COVID, they had about 25,000 teachers attending in person.
They've got a huge reach, obviously. They're touching a lot of hearts and minds. But at these conferences is when the most radical ideologies are being passed. Last year, they had 110 resolutions that they voted on and passed. Only four of them had to do with education—four of them. All the rest of them, 106 of them, had to do with Social Emotional Learning, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It had to do with CRT.
They've literally had a session on how to “talk queerness” in conservative areas. This is just not what education is about. This is not why people became teachers. People become teachers because they're really passionate about their subject. I was an English teacher and I wanted to talk about literature and have a captive audience. It was great! Being a teacher was wonderful for me.
They want to share their passion with their students, they want to encourage them to be deeper thinkers and critical thinkers. But that’s just not going to happen if you’re studying the 1619 Project. There’s no critical thinking in that.
KENT: Yeah. I think, again, I agree with you: most teachers just want to fix the terrible reading proficiency levels and work on math skills and all the other academic skills.
Maybe when we had them all up to 100% we could start thinking about other things. But when they’re so abysmally low, it’s kind of hard to swallow the—what did you say? 106 resolutions that did not address the problem? The many problems. That’s a lot.
We’ve spoken a lot about the conference. Is this something that appears to be on the horizon for next quarter or next semester?
SMITH: It’ll be on the horizon next year. We, unfortunately, are not quite able to do it every quarter yet. It’s going to be a once a year national conference until we’re able to start to draw the numbers of the NEA conferences.
When we have 25,000 teachers attending, we’ll start to look at more little ones in between. But next year you can definitely look for this conference. We’re really excited to be able to offer it to teachers and to equip them.
On top of all expenses being paid, we were also able to offer the teacher twelve professional development hours which helps them keep their licenses, of course. This isn’t just a fun conference to go network with people. It’s still a working professional conference, which is very exciting.
KENT: Where can any teachers or educators that are listening in on this today, where can they go to find information regarding the future conference next year and sign up for updates?
SMITH: We haven’t posted anything on our website quite yet about next year’s conference. We’re just two weeks out from the last one so we’re still kind of getting our bearings.
But if you want to be put on the list for next year, you can email me at esmith@freedomfoundation.com or you can call the Freedom Foundation, go to freedomfoundation.com, sign up for our email list, and we’ll make sure you’re included on next year’s list when information about that starts going out, which should probably be about October.
KENT: Alright, well, thank you so much. So, audience, now you know where to go sign up.
I know we have some teachers that watch our stuff. I was super excited especially when I heard that you were on the queue to come on the podcast because it’s like, hooray! We have something to offer teachers.
While it’s a recognized issue, sometimes finding solutions to make their lives better is a difficult and a convoluted problem.
SMITH: Yeah, that’s true.
There’s a lot of advocacy groups out there for parents, for students, but there’s not a lot for teachers. The only one out there, really, is the union. We want to make sure that all teachers are being heard, all teachers are represented, and all teachers have a place to kind of commiserate with the workplace.
KENT: Alright! So, following up. You’re coming off this high of the conference two weeks ago, so what’s—maybe it has to do with the conference, maybe not—but what’s something that you’re excited about moving forward? Maybe an upcoming project, maybe a topic, maybe a shift in the political scene.
Lauren, do you want to answer this one?
BOWEN: I’m most excited about teachers working together and me being able to be a part of what they’re doing. Their heroic work. Being an advocate for the right things in their districts for families and children.
Re-prioritizing what goes on in these school systems. I’m really excited to work with them to rebuke what the teacher’s unions are doing to their own careers, to these young people’s lives and futures. Before 2018, they had no choice. They could’ve really disliked the union and strongly disagreed with everything the union was doing, but in order to keep their teaching job they didn’t have a choice.
Well, now they do have a choice and this is a big piece of accountability that has been missing for decades. Now they have the ability to use their voice and their money to say, “Hey, look. We don’t like what you stand for. We don’t like what you’re doing. We don’t like the direction you’re taking education. And we don’t like the outlook of public school systems and the trajectory that public school systems are one. Enough of us are going to leave the union that it’s not possible that teacher’s unions will exist in the form they do now.”
That’s a very exciting thing because now the teacher’s unions will have to reprioritize workplace representation and go back to what they originally conceptualized to do, which is stand up for teachers and be their true voice.
That’s what I’m most excited about.
KENT: Absolutely. That’s wonderful.
To ultimately empower teachers and improve the state education, I think, all of our goals, right?
Eloise, what about you?
SMITH: Yeah, similar. I think there was a lot of energy coming out of the conference. 96% of the teachers surveyed said they would come back and bring at least three friends next year. That’s really exciting. That’s about to triple the size of our conference pretty immediately.
I think there’s a lot of appetite for this. After COVID, parents and teachers alike saw exactly what was happening in the classroom and they were like, “Whoa, hold up. This is not what I signed up for.” A lot of teachers that I’ve talked to started teaching in the nineties, and the classroom is a very different landscape today than it was in the 1990s. Even just in 2013 when I graduated from high school.
It’s a very, very different landscape. I think probably, Lauren and Catherine, you guys can both agree that it looks very, very different than it did. That’s solely due to the unions. They’ve really decided to push in on this radical agenda. You can go watch Becky Pringle’s speech, the President of the NEA—she just had it last week—and it’s like Dwight Shrute when he gets his reward and he’s like, “Blood alone will move the wheels of time!”
She is going off. It’s insane. It’s insane. They’re clearly pushing an ideology. They’re not pushing education. Everyone is starting to wake up to this. The whole country’s starting to wake up to this and that’s really, really exciting.
KENT: Absolutely. It is.
Before we wrap up here, let’s pretend that maybe I’m a teacher, I wasn’t able to come to your conference, but I want out. Can you give some resources or some next steps where that teacher could go?
BOWEN: Yep. optouttoday.com. There’s an interactive map, you choose your state, you have the option of choosing which union you’re part of, whether it be the AFT, which is the American Federation of Teachers. There’s a state extension of that. Then there is a state extension of the NEA in almost all of our fifty states.
You’ll have both of those major teacher’s unions represented. You choose which union you’re a part of and you’re sent paperwork. If you don’t have a printer, we send it by mail.
And my email is lbowne@freedomfoundation.com. If you really want out of the union, that’s the thrill of my life, to help people with. Don’t hesitate to reach out. Feel free to. I will gladly hop on a phone call with you to help you navigate the process.
KENT: Thank you so much. That’s awesome. Especially to have you as a person they can contact and help with that. Amazing.
Well, thank you so much, both of you, for being here today. If either have some closing remarks or things you’d like to leave our audience with before we wrap up here today…
BOWEN: Catherine, you all are doing amazing work. You offer so much in-depth knowledge. The quality of your work is profound. It means the world to us to be invited to be a part of what you’re doing to help clear the air with some of these complicated issues that go on in education.
Thank you for standing for the truth.
SMITH: Yeah, I’ll just follow that and say thank you so much for having us on. We’re really thrilled to be able to share this with your audience and hopefully get more teachers to come next year.
I think it’s a really important issue and we’re really grateful that you guys are willing to give us a platform. Thanks so much for your time.
KENT: Thank you both for joining and for the shoutout. Was not expecting that, but thank you so much! That’s what we try to do. Research and find the truth, and sometimes the truth is uncomfortable, politically, for all parties.
But that’s ultimately the goal: to help our educators, to help our parents, and help our students. Whatever that takes. Find the research, find the truth, and give it a platform.
Thank you ladies for coming on board and doing that today, with us, and sharing the truth that you have found and supporting education the way that you do. We appreciate you so much and thank you for your time.