(This is a press release.)

With Governor Phil Murphy set to visit the White House to brainstorm ending the teacher shortage with President Biden, Senate Republican Leader Steve Oroho offered some tips that could save him the trip:

#1 – End remaining COVID-19 mandates that do nothing. Why should teachers in Newark who have a tough enough job have to be the mask police for another year?

#2 – Stop forcing teachers to be woke warriors in the progressive strategy of using schools to indoctrinate kids. Let teachers focus on English, science, and math instead of gender identity and sex.

#3 – Tell the NJEA to stop trying to encourage teachers to wade into controversial issues unnecessarily that only increases conflict with parents and leads to burn out. Maybe stop hosting programs for teachers like “Teaching Is Political: Advocating and Organizing for Social Change.” The NJEA should be encouraging teachers to partner with parents, not attacking them as extremists.

#4 – Restore school funding to the nearly 200 districts that had their state aid cut in the Democrats’ budget. Cutting the number of teachers those districts can afford to keep on payroll is one way to artificially reduce the teacher shortage, but it isn’t a solution that helps kids or improves education.

“If we let teachers focus on core subjects and stopped pushing them to be social justice warriors and COVID-19 police, they’d be more likely to have positive interactions with students and their parents and find satisfaction in their jobs,” said Oroho (R-Sussex). “Instead, New Jersey Democrats and the NJEA are pushing teachers into unnecessary conflicts with parents over controversial issues while the administration is cutting funding to hundreds of school districts. Governor Murphy doesn’t need to visit the White House to understand the problems he’s creating in Trenton for our children’s teachers.”