Idaho Education Association president Layne McInelly’s presentation to the House and Senate education committees this week got very little legacy news attention, except for a mere six sentences from Idaho Education News, which reported how “excited” McInelly and the rest of the education establishment is about Gov. Brad Little’s education plans.
The real story, however, is how McInelly admitted that the labor union is helping push radical leftist ideology into our classrooms through teacher training sessions. We knew it was true already, but it was nice to have it on the record.
Sen. Scott Herndon, R-Sagle, asked McInelly about teacher training sessions mentioned on the IEA’s website, including “Equitable and Just schools,” fighting “institutional racism,” and, “teaching the rainbow and creating safe space for LBGTQ students in Idaho.”
McInelly answered that the training is voluntary and covers a wide range of topics from classroom management to mental health services.
But Herndon pressed: Does that mean these lessons wind up being used in classrooms?
Said McInelly, ““There are things that are taught to me that aren’t necessary going to be taught to students … and then there are things that I’m going to take directly back to my classroom and implement the very next day.”
Meaning, yes, Idaho school teachers are being trained in wokeism and that wokeism is making its way back to Idaho schools. We have already documented this in practice. And we’re constantly finding new examples every day in Idaho from classroom assignments to school board decisions.
To those of you who are new here or just new to watching Idaho politics, it might seem really strange that the president of the Idaho Education Association, a leftist labor union, can make such an admission without it being “front page news,” if you will. It’s also probably strange that the Idaho Education Association gets top billing at two legislative hearings on the same day as the president of the State Board of Education and the newly-elected superintendent of public instruction.
This is because the union is in bed with the media and with some Idaho lawmakers.
The media would rather go on telling readers that wokeism magically missed Idaho so that it can continue the narrative that more money for schools will one day translate into tangible results. The media couldn’t care less whether our schools are being used to indoctrinate kids, even when one of the key participants in Indoctrination, Inc., is standing right in front of them.
That gives cover to Republicans like IEA-supported Senate Education Chairman Dave Lent, who in 2020 voted against repealing the law that forces school boards to negotiate with the IEA and its subsidiaries.
In 2018, the labor unions dumped money into Brad Little’s race for governor by creating a new group: “Independent Republicans of Idaho.” Even though the group had nothing to do with Republicans and the money came entirely from leftist sources, this PAC went about telling GOP primary voters that Little was the most conservative candidate for governor. The rest is history.
Maybe now that the IEA is being open about what it’s teaching our teachers, and that such trainings are making their way into Idaho’s school’s it’s time for some of the politicians who have benefited from the union’s largess to pause and ask whether this is the direction our state’s education system should be going.
