I spent eight years on a school board watching the teachers’ union abandon pay and working conditions for social justice campaigns, grim reaper theatrics, and the claim that biology is optional.
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The National Education Association (NEA) is America’s largest teachers’ union, and it holds a rare federal charter issued in 1906. Its mission has changed. Rather than advocating for better working conditions and pay for teachers, it’s focused on gathering activists to further its social justice causes. Should its charter be revoked? My answer is an emphatic YES!
Teachers’ unions don’t care that American children continue to fall behind in reading and math. Instead, they’re focused on abortion rights, protecting sexually explicit materials in schools, and pushing social justice activism. They align themselves with Godless Marxist groups like the Zinn Education Project, which pushes its sacred religion of self-actualization and vilifies capitalism.
As a former elected school board member, I watched the union’s strategy up close. Its priority is electing its chosen candidates so it can control elected officials and advance its far-left extremist political agendas. On Election Day, it passes out literature for its favored candidates, falsely claiming, “this is who the teachers want.” In my district, less than nine percent of school employees are union members, according to tax filings.
During my eight years on the school board starting in 2017, I watched the transformation of our local union, the Virginia Beach Education Association (VBEA). Initially, it attended meetings to advocate for more time off and higher pay for teachers. While I didn’t always agree with it, I could understand and even sympathize with some of its requests.
Then came the COVID shutdowns, Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots, forced masking, and forced experimental vaccinations. The union pushed the Godless Marxist BLM narratives and recruited activists to attend school board meetings. Conservatives were branded white supremacist Christian nationalists, and one rage-filled speaker regularly referred to me as QAnon—a term I had never heard. At one meeting, the union sent someone dressed as the Grim Reaper to stoke fear that teachers would die if schools reopened.
The union led the effort to keep schools closed, and after schools reopened, the union wanted to keep little children muzzled with snot-filled masks for seven hours a day. The Democrat-led, union-backed board voted to allow daycare for city employees inside school buildings while blocking classroom instruction. Apparently, COVID spread during instruction but not during babysitting.
Then came the transgender mafia. For more than a year, dozens of speakers, including leftist teachers and students, regularly attended our board meetings to falsely claim kids would commit suicide if we didn’t lie and affirm that sexual biology is fluid.
I was doxed, threatened, and called every name in the book simply because I opposed the false ideology that boys could become girls and believed the use of private spaces should be based on biological sex, not perceived gender identity.
Under the union-controlled school board, it was rare that we discussed how to improve academic achievement. Our agendas were filled with social justice and equity narratives promising equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity. Employment and achievement data were always presented based on the racial makeup of the students and staff—a practice I recognized as racist.
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I prioritized advocating for better classroom conditions for teachers. Student discipline problems were out of control. I received multiple messages each week from teachers struggling with the behavioral model imposed by the far-left board and superintendent. It was called Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS)—a restorative justice approach to discipline. Teachers would relay that they would send misbehaving students to the principal’s office, and the kids would return with a reward, such as a lollipop. Their bad behavior was reinforced. PBIS only stoked the fire, creating a dangerous environment in many schools. My colleagues refused to acknowledge there was a problem.
I persisted and finally convinced the board to at least distribute a survey to gather teacher input on discipline. The results justified my concerns, but when I shared the data—which was a matter of public record—the union attacked me. The VBEA falsely claimed I revealed privileged information that identified teachers, even though it was an anonymous survey and anyone could request the data and receive it through a public records request. The VBEA president even called for the board to discipline me—which it had no authority to do.
The union wasn’t happy that a conservative board member was advocating for teachers—I was a threat to their power and control.
The NEA and its state and local affiliates continue to become more radical and more political. It voted to “publicly stand in defense of abortion” and just raised its dues this year by $10 annually to be distributed to its “Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises and Media Campaign Fund.”
In 2024, the NEA bragged about using its Read Across America to “acquire new parent and grandparent activists.” They boasted about acquiring “over 50k activists with a petition fighting against book bans driven by conservative agendas nationwide.” In 2025, the NEA spent $100,000 opposing a 2025 Maine ballot question that would require voter ID.
A recent bombshell U.S. Senate report exposes how teachers’ unions are harming children and prioritizing radical ideology over student success. Congress has all the evidence it needs to revoke the NEA’s charter.
I advocated for teachers when the union would not. My experience isn’t unique—the same thing is happening in districts across the nation. The teachers’ union puts activism at the forefront of everything it does. That tells you whose side it is on—and it’s not the children sitting in the classrooms.
Revoke its congressional charter and take away its access to public schools. Its extremism should no longer be tolerated.
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