I posted a video last week sharing what was happening in Columbus City Schools and called for “legacy media to try to do their jobs and report on real things that are affecting real people in Columbus, Ohio”.

I did an on-camera interview at the request of 10TV Wednesday, September 23 at 3pm outside of the 270 E. State Street CCS administration building. Two hours later, I attended our union’s press conference at the same location, and afterward, ABC6 and NBC4 also asked for my on-camera remarks, which I gladly provided.

All of the news stations are conveniently leaving out the fact that CCS lost over 40 million dollars due to their negligence and mismanagement, despite me centering it in every single interview.

While frustrating, the reason is clear for anyone who reads independent political media coverage in central Ohio, because The Rooster broke a telling story the very next day regarding Franklin County Commissioner Erica Crawley.

Crawley was trespassing at a Post Malone concert this past summer and refused to correct her behavior when scolded by Columbus police officers. She then reminded them her political position presides over the Franklin County Jail. When 10TV’s Lacey Crisp started to investigate, political levers were pulled.

From DJ Byrnes at The Rooster:

According to our source, Crisp went to the Board of Commissioners meeting on Thursday to confront Crawley about the footage. Crawley is said to have immediately absconded from the building while claiming an unknown illness that was relegated to her appearance on Zoom.

On 10TV’s 5 p.m. broadcast, Crisp teased another hit at 6 o’clock with a legal ethicist to discuss the optics of a county commissioner receiving free tickets to a concert that her commission funded with $600,000 as part of the diluted America 250 celebration.

That story never ran because 10TV’s editorial team spiked it and removed the original reporting from its website after complaints from the County Commission.

The most exciting part about the billionaire class’s legacy media outlets plummeting credibility is following the reporters who have the guts to quit and venture on their own. One of my favorites is Local News International, driven by Dave Jorgenson, a reporter who worked for The Washington Post, who quit because of the corruption, and now does his own thing. It’s worth the money, but even just a follow on social media is a refreshing delivery of news.

Lacey, if you ever want to partner up and tell the real stories in Central Ohio, I feel like “Crisp and Gray” has a nice ring to it. In the meantime, I’ll keep teaching 9th grade English Language Arts.

About those paychecks, though

In a development seen coming around the world, Columbus City Schools has made deals with every single union/association in the district besides the Columbus Education Association (CEA - the teachers union, of which I am a member).

Because why would they not? The Columbus Schools Employee Association1, CSEA, (state affiliate: OAPSE) received news last week that some of their plans were increasing by $10-20 per paycheck, and other plans were decreasing.

I’m not part of that union and don’t have the details, but I would assume if the per-paycheck cost is going down, the out of pocket expenses and deductibles are going up.

That’s the deal that CCS brought to CEA, anyway, on Wednesday of last week. At the last Joint Insurance Committee meeting, the district brought an offer that increased out of pocket expenses by 260%, increased deductibles by 240%, and doubled the cost for coinsurance (which we were forced to take on just last year).

In addition to settling with the classified staff, the Columbus Schools Classified Supervisors Association (CSCSA, the bosses of the classified staff) and the Columbus Administrators Association (CAA, the principal’s association) have made deals with the district regarding health insurance, according to the agenda of an emergency board meeting scheduled for Monday, September 28th at 5:30pm:

As of writing this on Sunday night, members of the CAA had been sent the following information, which Shotgun Chelsea has obtained from an anonymous source:

This kind of messaging does exactly what it’s supposed to do: it paints CEA as an unreasonable entity, unwilling to negotiate, and suggests everyone who isn’t in CEA is lucky to not have this burden looming over them with open enrollment just one week away.

In actuality, we’re simply refusing to pay for our employer’s casual loss of $40 million to the tune of $140-700 per paycheck. That amount of money will bankrupt our members, particularly those who need life-saving and life-changing ongoing medical treatment.

I spoke with two administrators from suburban school districts this past week who told me they are gearing up to poach CCS teachers as soon as possible. They’re doing everything they can to make their districts the more attractive option, including trying to find ways to honor more years of service for mid-career teachers. They’re already making lists of teachers they know and want in their districts.

And why wouldn’t they? They’d be moronic not to do such a thing, at a time when recruiting and retaining effective educators is more challenging than ever.

The situation is actually quite simple to understand, it should be an easy win in the current climate of living conditions, but the messaging is being fumbled because the people in the positions of power and tasked with communicating are only familiar with tactics utilized in the early 2000s.

And honestly, it’s questionable if they were even effective then, as the profession of public education has been on the decline for several decades now.

That’s a shame, but it’s also the reason I started this publication and why I have been sharing information through short videos on social media.

During an emergency union meeting of CEA members on the evening of Sunday, September 27th, members were told CCS has no interest in helping workers overcome division they agreed to in 2009 getting rid of the grandfathered health insurance plan.

The boss doesn’t want to get rid of the greatest division tactic they ever created amongst union members? Huh, who could’ve guessed.

The previous mass member meeting of CEA was 10 days ago, and union leadership had promised the members they would compile an FAQ to address member concerns and questions about the health insurance criss and send it out when it was finished.

At the September 27th meeting, they shared the FAQ was done this past Friday afternoon, yet they had not sent it out or shared it with union representatives. They then presented members with an update of information, answered questions for an hour, and then presented members with a zoom poll to vote in.

Members had two minutes to digest the information they had just learned and to cast a vote. This tactic reminded me of something a CSEA member shared with me this past week. We were chatting about the health insurance crisis and I said I had read through their contract that was just ratified, as it was posted in the last Board agenda.

The member shared with me that CSEA members had a two-hour window, on a Saturday, to drive to 17th Ave (a CCS district administrator building) to vote on their contract. It resulted, understandably, in a 2% turnout of the 3,000+ membership.

It would appear union leaders want less member engagement and more agreement with the decisions made for them and about them. I do not want this to be true, but continuous evidence and happenings lead me to that conclusion.

Below is the public records request that was shared with me which contains CCS’s own investigation into this matter. You don’t need to read much further than the first 10 pages to understand the situation, but should you feel so inclined, you now can.

Read more

Despite the Columbus City Schools district administration being at fault for losing $40,000,000 by mismanaging the employee health insurance program, Dr. Angela Chapman and her cabinet are pushing 100% of the loss on to the backs of the workers.

To help readers understand what public school workers are enduring, here is a simple table that shows the amounts being taken out per paycheck for employees.

You’ll notice options are denoted as “grandfathered”, which is the direct result of a successful union busting tactic that the district executed and the union fell for in 2009. Creating tiered systems among union members is one of — if not the — most classic boss moves in negotiations.

Back in 2009, the district was in financial crisis (as it apparently always is) and made an offer to the union they could not did not refuse: take a pay freeze, but have a guaranteed low cost of healthcare for the duration of employment; everyone hired after this negotiation will have a different, much higher rate.

Grandfathered employees argue that they’ve incurred years of lost wages for taking the freeze in steps on the pay scale, and everyone hired after 2009 sees it as paying hundreds of dollars more per paycheck and thousands of dollars more per year than their colleague for the exact same healthcare plan.

Unfortunately, both groups are correct.

When unions are not militantly organized, succumbing to playbook tactics from the boss is inevitable. The damage is not only done to the wallet of the employee, but to the union as a whole, as this creates a division in the workers that is near impossible to overcome.

With the current situation, though, the hardest financial hit undoubtedly goes to the workers making the least amount of money. If you were hired after 2009, have a family, and are the insurance carrier for said family, you are paying $678—$711 for health insurance every two weeks.

And the Columbus Board of Education could not care less.

The district’s employee health insurance is self-funded, which means we only pay for what we use. Unlike car insurance where you pay a certain amount up front every month in hopes that you don’t have to use it, we only pay for the claims we have made.

…And we have a lot of claims.

It’s not the fault of the workers, it is the fault of the billionaires running the scam of health insurance on the American people. Cancer treatments do not need to cost $1,000,000. Your infant’s care in the NICU having a price tag of $1,000,000 is criminal.

This is well understood in our society, which is why the internet erupted with cheers when Luigi pulled the trigger on that fateful day in December 2024.

The district agreed to our insurance plan, and when we started using it, no one was keeping an eye on the bank account that pays for our claims. In fact, in the district investigation report, it says our HR department was under the impression it was flush with cash, to the tune of $400,000,000.

Well, it wasn’t.

CCS is now tacking “surcharges” onto its employees to make up the difference for their negligence. The district and the union are at odds with who is correct in this situation.

The district is arguing the contractual agreement between the union and the district is clear: any health insurance program increases which are 8% and under are split equally between the employee and the employer. Any increases over 8% fall solely on the employee (yes — that is actually negotiated language in our contract).

The union is arguing the district withheld information about the state of the health insurance program and therefore was not a good faith participant in the Joint Insurance Committee, which should essentially nullify the contractual language saying the increase should fall only on the employees.

Contract language aside, what Columbus City Schools is doing to its employees feels, and should be, punishable by law. It has many employees asking what our legal options are to fight this, and where is the legal muscle that our dues dollars so diligently fund?

That question was answered this past Thursday night when members from the legal team of the Ohio Education Association (OEA — the state affiliate of the CEA) took the virtual stage on a mass general membership union meeting.

They not only told members there was nothing they, as lawyers from OEA, could do; they also told Columbus members what they could not do: they are not legally allowed to withhold their labor in protest against this massive abuse of power being executed upon them by their employer.

This is due to an article in the educators union contract, known as the Continuous Performance Pledge. It says a work stoppage will not occur within the duration of the contract, meaning, only when the contract is expired and the union is in negotiations are members able to strike.

It’s not really an all-or-nothing situation, though. The fund needs to be replenished, and it does not and should not need to fall on the backs of the workers. The district should be audited and monies should be allocated to the fund immediately, the balance reassessed, and the fund further replenished by the district by as large of a percentage as fiscally possible.

This assessment of financials needs to be presented publicly to the Board of Education by the Treasurer, with an actuary consulted and present for questions.

After that, should employees need to increase their input into the fund, it should be done over the course of at least 24 months, not 12. The district is trying to cram the surcharges into one year, and their argument for that has never been presented.

Perhaps that’s because no one has asked the district a goddamn question about it besides the teacher’s union — including the Board of Education.

In fact, just this week, CCS Board Member Patrick Katzenmeyer posted the following on his Instagram story:

In case you aren’t painfully aware of the CCS administration buildings, this is 270 E. State Street, downtown Columbus.

The CCS staff is lying awake at night worried about how they’re going to make ends meet, updating their resumes, and looking into predatory money loaning companies to pay for their health insurance just so they can keep working.

Our board member is concerned about the lack of water features at a district administration building downtown. I highly doubt this publication makes it to the eyes of people in power, but on the off chance it does make it to a screen being gazed upon by Katzenmeyer: I’m sorry, but I had to. I believed in you as a board member, and you can win me back by supporting the workers that endorsed you.

I’m told the health insurance was once a major draw to employment in Columbus City Schools. With that gone, on top of the crumbling buildings, the unchecked administration, horrific list of grievances, illegality of the special education department, and the continuation of the closing of schools, I’m truly wondering why anyone would want to work in Columbus City Schools.

If you cannot retain your educators — especially your early career educators — and you have no incoming educators, you will have no school system. I speak not in hyperbole but practically: we will not have employees; the ones that do stay will be pushed out by the working conditions that are to come as a result of the exodus that will occur.

We are told we must pay for their mistakes.

We are told we cannot strike.

But there is an old labor saying, it hollers from the mine shafts in our very own Ohio, pulsing deep in the Appalachian range where the donned red bandanas crooned which side are you on: there is no such thing as an illegal strike, just an unsuccessful one.

The Columbus City Schools (CCS) Board of Education has once again demonstrated their lack of decency when it comes to the wellbeing of the district’s employees.

At the end of July, the news story broke of the district’s Executive Director of HR being fired by the district for losing $40 million. The short version of the story is that the district has been using a third party insurance broker by the name of Aon.

Aon’s job, in short, was to shop around for different insurance policies and advise the district on which policies were best for them based on how staff utilizes health insurance.

Aon instead convinced Courtney Hale, the district’s (now former) Executive Director of HR, to sign off on different policies, some which should have needed approval from the Board of Education, and some that included additional compensation for Aon.

The district also stared to cover GLP-1 drugs at a time when many employers were taking them off of plans due to the popularity of the expensive rapid weight-loss drugs. The costs for the district skyrocketed and the healthcare plans started burning quite the hole in the district’s pocket.

This, coupled with the defunding of public education from the state level and the Columbus City Council’s insistence on the use of gargantuan tax abatements at the cost of children’s education, accelerated the district into it’s inevitable financial plummet.

Employees who worked under Hale alerted others in the HR department, including Amy Grover, Chief Human Resources Officer/Chief Talent Officer (titles which have no real definition) to the issue in autumn of 2025, and the district hired an actuary to assess the financial health (pertaining to insurance) of the district.

The actuary, who is an independent, nonpartisan professional with decades of experience, reported in March 2026 that because of the unchecked behavior of Aon, which was either continuously approved or ignored by Hale, had cost the district $22 million in 2025, a projected $18 million in 2026 (totaling $40 million), with significantly increasing losses expected in 2027.

The CCS Board of Education President, Dr. Miranda, addressed the issue publicly in early August 2026.

From Thomas Cobb at NBC4i in Columbus:

[Dr. Miranda] said an independent actuary found the fund underfunded by $22.5 million last year and roughly $1 million through the first half of this year, totaling $23.5 million. She also addressed a separate $40 million figure, saying it combines the $22.5 million shortfall with the high end of a separate $7 million to $18 million projection for additional 2026 costs.

The Board President’s math against the actuary’s projections has never been explained.

The issue with Courtney Hale was first put on my radar in June, when her appeal for a public hearing regarding her firing was posted in the Board of Education minutes for the June 25, 2026 meeting.

Normally CCS administrators quietly resign on their own, so the notice of a public hearing was particularly interesting because it indicated Hale believed she was being wrongfully terminated.

The story originally broke from Columbus-based independent political blogger DJ Byrnes at The Rooster, and it was shortly picked up by major news networks across Central Ohio.

In just a few days, The Dispatch had the same disciplinary file, and Hale spoke on the record regarding the issue for the first time.

Ultimately, Hale told The Dispatch she had taken the fall for the district and was targeted because she spoke out in disagreement regarding a fellow CCS employee’s raises.

That fellow employee was Mike De Fabbo, CCS’s former Chief of Staff (often referred to amongst district staff as “Chapman’s right hand”).

It is an open secret in the district that Mike De Fabbo, who served prior as the supervisor of the HR department, was writing himself checks in addition to his base salary.

The Dispatch reported on this in July 2026 and found that, while ‘messy’, the raises for De Fabbo and an additional administrator, David James, were ultimately done above board.

Buried in Hale’s disciplinary report is a tidbit of information that fell by the wayside in this story. Probably because it’s nothing new, it’s expected, and it’s just the way “things get done” and “the way things have always been done”, but it’s this:

It’s not so much the off-color remarks that bother me, it’s that union officials were going out to happy hour with district officials after their Joint Insurance Committee (JIC) meetings.

An important fact is the JIC is made up of several unions with district officials — there are multiple unions in CCS, and the health insurance plans are discussed, altered, and agreed to by the JIC because they affect all employees, regardless of which union they are in.

Call me a radical, but I don’t think it’s appropriate or effective for union leaders to wine, dine, or hit up a happy hour with administration.

It’s doubly unacceptable when both parties are being swindled by the Vice President of a known predatory insurance company (Aon) raking in cash.

It’s honestly so embarrassing.

Nevertheless, we have a crisis on our hands and the people in power are refusing to even acknowledge it.

I streamed the the September 8, 2026 CCS Board of Education meeting from my couch, enjoying Trader Joe’s mac-and-cheese when, lo and behold, the last person to give public comment to the completely empty room was CEA President John Coneglio. His speech, which I recommend watching, is here:

30 seconds in I paused my loaded fork halfway to my mouth, and by 35 seconds in I had set down the whole container and was fist pumping the air hollering “Let’s go, John!” at my screen.

And then the Board of Education just moved on to absolutely nothing.

I understand the call to action from our union president being for the district to go after Aon litigiously and recoup the funds lost to their swindles, lies, and incessant contract breaches by withholding information and cherry-picking data.

But also, how does the Superintendent still have her job?

Courtney Hale told The Dispatch that she was instructed to behave in that manner with Aon because that is the way things had always been done. The district’s contract with Aon is not new, CCS has been utilizing the company for 18 years, and she was advised by people who had the role prior to her to sign off on things put in front of her.

Hale also told The Dispatch she was doing the job of five other people and I don’t doubt that one bit because I have seen what CCS does to us in our school buildings; I, too, am a victim of the district’s blatant disregard for appropriate and legal workloads.

Under her leadership, members have lost their jobs, schools have closed, we’re giving up art classes for “workforce preparation” academies that we can’t fund, and now we are short an additional $22-$40 million dollars due to sheer lack of oversight from her stacked cabinet.

Perhaps it’s because the Board of Education is not aware that they could actually solve a problem if they wanted to. Perhaps they actually believe it’s their job to sit there and perform for a Facebook livestream every other Tuesday until they get to move on to whatever political move they have planned next, or until enough time has passed for the “serving my community” box to be checked.

This is seen continuously from Brandon Simmons, the youngest board member always boasting about how he attended and graduated from the Columbus Alternative High School.

Simmons is infamous for typing up his diabolical plan to destroy our unions by pitting us against each other along racial lines so the developer-led task force our Superintendent had put together could close an onslaught of public schools and use the buildings however they please.

But he most recently used the district’s insurance debacle to issue a letter to Public School Hater #1 Senator Andrew Brenner (R-Delaware), Chair of the Senate Education Committee who runs into the nearest bathroom when he sees me coming through the statehouse halls, crying for help.

He sent the same letter to Representative Sarah Fowler Arthur (R-Ashtabula), Chair of the House Education Committee, whose last interaction with public schools was actually never because she was homeschooled and chooses to home school her adopted children.

Let’s address this in two parts, equally disturbing and incompetent:

First, any Board member, including Simmons, could put up a motion to have the Superintendent give a transparent report with accurate, current data pertaining to district financials broken down into different departments, operations, and/or metrics; yet they choose not to.

The Board of Education literally exists to solve these problems and provide a system of checks and balances for the general public (who elected them) to the district’s operations and, in this case, severe mis-handlings.

I am both continuously mind-blown and not surprised at all at the way people in power behave, particularly when they do absolutely nothing.

We are suffering. The students are suffering. The families are suffering.

And then when they do something, it’s a stunt like Simmons pulls.

Secondly, a letter to Brenner and Fowler Arthur? Be so fucking for real right now (pardon my language if you need to).

If we were in a somewhat normal society with a functioning government that gave the slightest amount of care toward public schools, I wouldn’t be criticizing Simmons so heavily.

Because on one hand, he does almost kind of have a point. His letter is essentially saying (with my colorful editorializing and paraphrasing) “Holy shit, this is on fire, can we please have some oversight?!” and when mismanagement is of this magnitude in the state’s largest school district, I can see the argument for more oversight.

Objectively speaking, if we had functioning governing systems that valued true societal gain instead of power over trans people and pumping out brain-dead screen scrollers as a workforce that end up training robots that are probably going to wipe out the human race anyway, I would’ve understood the letter.

But we don’t. We live in Ohio, and we have a government that has run public education into the ground on purpose so they can continue to fund white nationalist churches and billionaires by making vouchers and charters the only options for families.

And we have a board member who reached out to people who are undoubtedly two of the biggest ops public education has seen in years, saying “please come in with overreach from the government that has a proven record of slaughtering public schools” — all because he apparently has absolutely no idea that he himself is in a role that is built to intercept and correct the district behavior he is whining about.

The sour cherry on top is his actions are objectively understandable.

If you are on the CCS Board of Education and you want more political power, which is what I believe Simmons wants, this is how you are supposed behave. It has been documented thoroughly by Simmons’ predecessors.

Assuming he wants to continue a career in politics and gain power over more people, harming children, educators, and families is what gets you there.

The saddest part here is that Simmons is the only Board member who has even done anything at all. No one has made a statement, no one has presented a solution, no one has even asked the Superintendent for a report on any of this.

In fact, in the 20 minute Board meeting that proceeded Coneglio’s comments, the Superintendent, the Internal Auditor, and the Treasurer all said they had no report to deliver to the Board, despite the district’s blatant financial crisis and heightening crisis with the staff district-wide.

I find it fascinating that the above three people, with their salaries reflected below, offered no report or insight to the Board of Education:

Kevin O’Conner: Internal Auditor, $200,000

Ryan Cook: Treasurer, $206,000.06

Angela Chapman: Superintendent, $275,121.60

Keep in mind the numbers above are simply their base salaries and do not include bonuses, stipends, reimbursement for travel/electronics, their allotment of vacation days (35), fringe benefits (retirement contributions are paid for), or memberships to clubs and organizations.

Meanwhile, while I make a salary of $65,090 and am expected to write a “learning objective” on the white board in my classroom just in case a district official decides to do a walk-through, earn 15 sick days a year, and pay 14% of my paycheck into my retirement.

The CCS Board of Education has their next meeting this Tuesday, September 15. Will they find their spines, vocal chords, or hearts? I’ll let you know.

A “boss narrative” is a story told to workers which pits them against each other rather than at the boss. They can be debunked by asking yourself a few simple questions and thinking critically about your own answers; one can then easily see they were fooled into thinking the boss had the worker’s best interest in mind.

There’s no shortage of boss narratives in any working environment, especially public education, and there’s one specifically I’d like to point out this Labor Day. It paints me as a radical and voicing it on the union presidential campaign trail would’ve brought an early nail in my coffin. Many union members would say I’m crossing into enemy territory, but hear me out:

We must organize with the charter schools if we are serious about fighting for a public education system.

Unionized public school educators, like myself, are taught to hate charter schools. We are told they are filled with unqualified and unlicensed educators, they don’t service special education students, they take our school buses, they take our funding, they take our students, and if they wanted to be A Real Teacher With A Union Contract, they could just quit their charter school and come work with us.

I’ll start with the whole “unlicensed teacher” thing.

Teaching licenses are a joke because the state makes a joke out of it.

I do not have a degree in teaching and I am a better teacher for it: I spent my college years diving deeply into literature and analysis, and the last year taking graduate courses in Literary Theory & Criticism. It was in those classes I first met hooks, Locke, Marx, Freire, and Anzaldua.

I was able to spend my higher education feeding the love and curiosity I have for literature and writing, and that is what makes me an effective teacher.

There is nothing more exciting than guiding teenagers through literary discourse and getting to see them love a character, a story, or watch their perspective deepen and world widen from a book.

There is nothing cooler than helping a 15 year old find their voice through writing, or have them unlock an emotional depth because they’ve finally found the words.

And that is not what a teaching license is. That is the freedom and beauty that education brings when you have access to it.

A teaching license is annoyingly difficult and incredibly expensive if you don’t obtain it through an undergraduate or graduate program. If you have an undergraduate degree in a specialized content area (like myself), but you complete a laundry list of education courses from an accredited university or college.

Most of mine were checked off by a masters degree I started a decade prior, but the price tag of an additional $10,000 in courses on top of being a full time teacher kick many early career educators out of the profession.

You could argue that teachers need to be specialized and have all of those additional courses completed and I would agree with you. But the debt alone is not worth it when you consider how vastly underpaid teachers are to begin with, on top of having to give 14% of our paycheck to the State Teachers Retirement System.

Couple that with the fact that you’re often too tired after work to take the courses seriously and you’re being taught by professors who haven’t been in a classroom in 20 years, and the option to continue in the profession gets less and less practical.

Enter, stage left: The charters and their attractive ability to short-circuit licensing mandates, and now, their lure to pay for the alternative licensure program itself.

The problem, we are told, is that this allows charters to hire virtually anyone. But I have met many teachers from charter schools and they’ve always been similar to myself: holding at least one degree in a content area, passionate about teaching, but not willing to fork over the thousands of extra dollars for the slip of paper that says Great Job You’re a Teacher.

Moreover, most districts (mine included) are hurting so badly for educators there are long-term substitutes in positions that demand credentialed professionals.

For example, there are substitutes in contained special education classrooms: those special education students are not being serviced by a licensed professional.

I’ve had administrators send letters home to parents to alert them their kid didn’t have an actual science teacher teaching them content, they were simply on a computer clicking through modules and googling answers while a substitute monitored behavior.

My school is not unique in this, it is a common practice.

I love and respect substitute teachers — there is no way in a frozen hell I would ever be one — and our system cannot operate without them, but this application of those employees is a disservice to students and them. It’s also supposed to be illegal.

When it comes to special education, a talking point against charters is they can turn students away, or they don’t have to adhere to the laws regarding special education services.

But as I wrote in last week’s post, public school caseloads are so out of control that students in our system aren’t getting proper services, either.

Pot, kettle, black, and what not.

According to Ohio Revised Code, public school districts must provide transportation for students who attend charter schools within our district boundaries. If you’re reading this and you don’t live in Ohio, this creates the disaster you’re imagining.

When the school district cannot complete this task, the district has to pay for failing to transport students that aren’t theirs. The amount is the calculation of transportation cost per student and it is paid directly to the family of the impractical-to-transport student.

And yes, they do also take our funding, because charter schools are considered public schools. The unfair part is that they are also eligible to take funding from other sources, such as billionaires or groups with specific ideological agendas, because charters get to play by their own rules.

This extra funding is often what allows them to fix up buildings that public schools close and sell due to being “too expensive to upkeep”.

This is what happened with a school in my neighborhood. Built in 1912, it was Dana Elementary School in Columbus City Schools (Columbus Public, at the time) for its first 100 years.

CCS Board of Education records show it was purchased in 2014 by Columbus Collegiate Academy West for a mere $300,000:

As noted in the “background” section, it is Ohio law that if a public school district closes and sells a building, they must offer it up to charter networks and private schools for 60 days and if they receive a bid, they must take it.

This past spring I was at the Ohio Statehouse sitting in on a Senate Education Committee meeting and actually met the owner of Columbus Collegiate Academy West, which has rebranded and is now United Schools, Andy Boy.

Boy was providing testimony on was SB 311, which escalates the current Ohio law in regards to who can get their hands on public school buildings first if a district deems a building inoperable.

SB 311 expands the list of eligibility from charters and community schools to include parochial schools, other private schools, Education Service Centers (ESCs, which I find to be the most alarming part of this bill, but more on that at another time), higher education operations/programs, etc.

Sitting through a Senate or House Education Committee meeting is painful because often the only people testifying are those from privatization efforts (i.e. Forham Institute, who happens to be United Schools sponsor), Christian Nationalist churches and groups, and the homeschool grifters.

Once in awhile Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers will be up there giving testimony in person, but other than that, it’s pretty empty, all things considered.

Andy Boy got my attention when he introduced himself as the founder of the charter network United Schools because I can see their middle school from my house.

He then told the Senate Education Committee that United Schools works very closely with the public school district which United Schools operates in, in order to ensure communities are served appropriately.

I’ve known for quite some time that Columbus City Schools has a cozy relationship with charter schools, but I was interested to hear from the charter founder himself what he meant by this.

Boy exited the room after his testimony, and I followed him out. I was nervous to talk to him, but I was genuinely curious in what he had to say.

I told him it’s interesting to me that public schools and charter schools are often pitted against each other, because in my recent research, I had found that they do in fact work together more often than not.

He told me how charter schools within the CCS district had been in communication with CCS district leadership for far longer than I, or even he, had been around. He was able to list several superintendents that had worked with charter networks on many things, including school closures and the pick-up of buildings.

The more I learn about public school corruption in Ohio, including from our own employers, the more it seems that educators are the only ones in the dark about it.

I started to ask him about the United Dana middle school in my neighborhood, because I’ve actually been inside it. I had a running friend who taught there and she would often commute to work by running. Once or twice a week we would meet after school and I’d run with her to her house and then back home. It was such a convenient and fun way to get in 7 miles after school.

We would often talk about the days we had teaching, and despite me being in a unionized public school district and her being in a charter, we pretty much had the same working conditions, including wins and complaints. One time she had forgotten something inside and I went back with her and got a quick tour of part of the building.

Our friendship is what started to make me realize the weakness of our unions and the false narrative of public vs. charter. We sometimes talked about it and she would challenge me on some of my talking points (rightfully so, I’d learn), but mostly we talked about running, relationships, and being women in our 30s.

I told Andy Boy the school building which now houses United is absolutely gorgeous inside, and I was sad that CCS had actually let it go. He told me it took a lot of money to get it back up and running to an operable condition for students and staff, no less than $3,000,000.

He also told me that when United takes over an empty school building, the neighborhood has more children, and families are more engaged in the community.

I have no idea if his assessment of neighborhood activity is true or not, especially because his company has been operating that building for the entire time I’ve lived here, but it would makes sense.

I also find myself thinking about the $3,000,000 price tag of updating the building. It seems like a lot of money, but all things considered, it’s not.

The problem is I’d be willing to bet the vast majority of CCS buildings need at least $3,000,000 of updates, and charter school networks are generally just a tax dumping ground for the rich who then have access to an incredibly amount of information about children (side-eyeing KIPP here, who has Abigail Wexner — wife of Leslie Wexner, widely known as Jeffrey Epstein’s #1 unindicted co-conspirator — in a prominent Board position) and a fast-track to further privatizing education.

We will not be able to beat the charter school system and it is a waste of time to keep peddling the idea that we could. The only way forward is to band together and organize with the charter schools.

If you’re experiencing a visceral reaction to that idea, take some time to dismantle it and think about where that comes from.

It probably comes from your union, telling you that charter schools are our enemy: they’re undeserving, they’re not real educators, they work for the people convincing our legislators to destroy public education by funding them and not us.

News flash: The people working in charter schools are real educators. They love teaching, just like we do. They are also workers, and all workers deserve the right to organize with and for collective action.

The students in those buildings are also children, just like our students. They deserve access to an equitable, safe, and appropriate education, just like our students do.

When we organized for a union at my last job, we wanted a say in our workplace, and a massive part of that was because we were doing the work. We knew how to do it best, how we wanted to improve, and we believed we deserved access to the tools to improve.

The professional development talking point of teacher unions is the most boring, and in my union, we have almost zero control or influence over the professional development that we receive.

We almost had it in CCS in the Secondary English Language Arts department, but then the district RIF’ed all those union positions, just as we were starting to get somewhere (this is by design).

If we truly care about elevating our profession and serving our students, which I believe all educators do, we must start to operate as one and disavow the division. Charter school educators work directly for the billionaires, and public school educators work for the government.

The government is owned by the billionaires. We all have the same boss, you don’t have to look hard to see it.

They treat us as if we are the same, so let’s start acting like it.

We cannot wait any longer.

*Two charter schools in Ohio are unionized: KIPP Columbus and Menlo Park Academy. Both are under the state affiliate of the Ohio Federation of Teachers.

The second workday for some Columbus special education teachers delivered much more than the predictable District professional development communications: some had an offer for a new job.

Asha Mall-Graves, the Assistant Director of Talent Acquisition for charter school conglomerate KIPP Columbus sent the following email to a select group of Columbus City Schools special education teachers on August 19:

The email was shared with me from educators across the district, but it appears not all special education teachers received it. While the rhyme or reason of the recipient list is unclear, it prompts a troubling question: how does KIPP Columbus have access to our work emails?

I won’t go as far as tipping my hat to the recruiter, but I will say I understand the strategy, and it’s not a bad one if you’re hurting for special ed teachers.

Special ed teachers in Columbus have not only some of the worst working conditions, but they’re continuously treated with a severe lack of care and basic respect from the district. If they’re lucky, special ed teachers have building leadership that actually understands their job and the needs of the children they serve, but that’s rare.

The vast majority of special ed teachers in Columbus have far more students on their caseload than legally allowed. The legal limits for caseloads are made clear in the Ohio Revised Code, but public schools cannot turn students away, as every child in the country has a right to a free public education. This is further clarified for students with disabilities in the Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) section of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Education laws were made because public schools were discriminating and causing massive harm to students with disabilities, and these laws are actually why the federal Department of Education was established in 1980.

There’s nothing acceptable about being over caseload for these teachers. They serve our most vulnerable students and families, including children who need incredibly specialized care. Special education teachers are also some of the most physically assaulted: they are bitten, spit on, hit, kicked, bloody from fingernail clawing, I have even seen their hair get ripped from their scalp.

They are overworked to the extent that laws are broken, and it’s clear students are not getting the education they are legally entitled to, much less deserve. That’s not me being hyperbolic, that is what the special education teachers have been saying for years.

The district blames the teacher shortage, and there is some truth to that, but it is widely known that HR drops the ball with hiring. This isn’t surprising, considering it was recently reported that the district’s HR department just lost a casual $40 million due to sheer negligence.

Every year staff members share they know colleagues from the neighboring districts apply for our open special ed jobs and they never even receive a phone call from Columbus HR. Many Columbus special education teachers who leave the district give HR a heads up that they are thinking of leaving if the special education district leadership don’t get their act together. They don’t get their act together, and then teachers leave for the suburbs or quit the profession.

Despite HR knowing exactly why our special ed teachers leave, and then fumbling a basic interview and hiring process, they sent this email to special education staff 2 weeks before the start of school:

As if asking the most exploited and overworked employees to do HR’s job and recruit people wasn’t bad enough, they had yet to start the “involuntary transfer” process. On the other side of things, last year I knew of at least one special education teacher that got involuntarily transferred in May! The district found it appropriate to relocate a teacher, causing them to have to leave their caseload of students that they had built relationships with all year, and attempt to build new relationships and service a whole new caseload of students with four weeks of school left.

The union has tried to help in the past year, but the new efforts have amounted to less than nothing and virtually no change in working conditions.

Last year was the pilot of a joint committee between the union and the district regarding special education issues. Meetings were sparse (in my opinion, with the state of special education), and while it helped some teachers to feel heard, it only showed how little the top district officials know about special ed.

At our last union rep meeting of the school year, I asked leadership if the special education joint committee had anything in writing regarding the issues in special ed, or any kind of plan. They didn’t. They had ended the year with nothing in writing.

Union leadership started a special education caucus and encouraged members to join. The caucus communication was a large group chat which includes the union leadership. Six members have told me teachers are quickly quieted and/or reprimanded by leadership for raising special education concerns in the caucus chat.

The union caucus has not brought any issues or actions regarding their working conditions to the union’s legislative assembly.

The union also negotiated pay for special ed teachers over caseload. They are eligible to receive 8 hours of supplemental pay ($41/hr) once a semester per student on their caseload. This is pennies for that amount of work, the teachers service those students for 8 hours a day every day, not 8 hours in one semester.

I have been told by two people on the union’s governance board they feel members are ungrateful for the extra negotiated pay, but these teachers are not ungrateful. What they say over and over — at union meetings and to me privately — is that they don’t want the measly pay. They want better conditions for students with disabilities. They want legally compliant working conditions.

The pay is only an incentive for the district to keep overloading the special ed teachers. Paying them $328/student over their caseload once a semester is far cheaper than hiring a full-time, licensed special ed teacher to comply with the law.

It was smart of KIPP to recruit on the second day of school because many special education members had a) just gotten their illegal caseload numbers for the year and/or b) were in the middle of being involuntarily transferred when they could have been setting up their rooms and getting ready for students.

The odds that a recruitment email would have been the straw that broke the back of employment were high.

I myself couldn’t resist reaching out to Asha from KIPP. I sent her a quick text last week to see if the recruitment email had worked.

I didn’t show up to the 3:30 meeting and she predictably didn’t answer my last question. I checked the website and KIPP Columbus indeed has many special education positions still open, though I’m not sure how many they started with. I wonder if “reasonable” is also “lawful”.

CCS punks staff with phishing pay raise

The district tests its employee’s digital literacy skills multiple times per year with phishing tests from a raccoon named Cyber Rick. They’re generally easy to spot and are meant to look like your principal asking you to fill out a form or join a loyalty program.

It would seem Cyber Rick wants to rumble with some educators this year, as they were mocked right to their faces by their own bosses about how underpaid they are.

I can imagine a group of vastly overpaid and underworked district employees sitting around a table in the old ECOT headquarters wondering how in the world they’re going to stump employees this time.

“They’re getting good at this phishing detection. We need to really stump them.”

“What kind of carrot can we dangle in front of them that would be so tempting they would risk getting reprimanded by raccoon Cyber Rick?”

Oh, right. Money.

They pretend-scammed us with telling us we’re appreciated for our “dedication, professionalism, and commitment to our students.”

They crafted a message telling us our “dedication over the past year” was worth something to them and made it a joke.

They hedged a bet we’d click a link because we’re so underpaid.

And if you fell for it, if you believed for just one second they valued you and that you were worth anything extra, you’d get a raccoon pop-up saying “Do better next time! That was so obvious!”

You’d get to sit at your district computer for an extra minute, after contract time, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, surrounded by a crumbling infrastructure filled with:

• broken furniture rigged with hair-ties, masking tape and a prayer

• a Smart Board that works 40% of the time

• a coverage sheet to substitute for a class on your planning period

• a classroom library you purchased yourself

• a list of parents you haven’t called yet

• a stack of papers that need to be graded

• and a lesson plan for tomorrow that’s half completed.

I didn’t get that email, but if I had, I’d’ve thrown my laptop straight through the goddamn wall.

I have great interest in talking to both of these people, so the decision to shlep myself to my state union headquarters on the Friday at the end of the first full week of school was irritating albeit easy.

I was never counting on being excited by a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the state of Ohio, so I have not necessarily been disappointed in Amy Acton’s candidacy or campaign, because there was never anything invigorating from the platform to start with.

However, she’s now straddling the line with many voters, including me, after fumbling many stances this summer and pivoting to the right, most recently this past week with ICE and mass surveillance.

From Morgan Trau at Ohio Capital Journal:

Democratic candidate for Ohio governor Dr. Amy Acton is breaking from her party to support local police in working with federal immigration enforcement. This comes as Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy raises concerns about mass surveillance due to Flock cameras.

“It’s an honor to fight for the people who are first responders,” Acton said at a news conference Tuesday.

She had just been endorsed by the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, a police union representing about 8,000 officers.

Now, Acton is breaking from her colleagues.

“We always work with the federal law enforcement, and we will do so — whatever it takes to keep Ohioans safe,” Acton said when specifically asked about federal immigration officers, or ICE.

Unlike other liberal leaders, she said she wouldn’t prevent local law enforcement from helping out with immigration raids. However, she expects ICE to follow laws.

“We need to hold anyone who comes to our state to the same standards of professionalism that we expect of our public safety officers, and I will always fight for that,” she said.

ICE has been utilizing Flock Safety cameras amid growing distrust over privacy concerns. The devices are typically, and supposed to be, used as license plate readers. Some Ohioans have chopped the cameras down.

“I absolutely know that we have had, as Governor DeWine said, many crimes solved due to the use of technology,” Acton said. “When I come in, we’ll be doing a very comprehensive overview of all our public safety and emergency response.”

Educators around Ohio are increasingly scared for our immigrant students and families who are enduring the waves of terror ICE continues to send through our streets, which is why I believe she needs to answer the question that I posed to her.

This article from Tiffin Ohio ran with the headline “Fact check: What Acton actually said about ICE and immigration enforcement” and, if you just read the headline, you’d think other news outlets led you astray. However, the article simply details how Acton has always said Ohio should support federal law enforcement.

Acton can expect ICE to follow the law all she wants, but they aren’t, and they won’t. Just this week the family of Alex Pettri, the Minnesota nurse who was shot 10 times in the back by ICE while trying to protect immigrants with nothing but his phone in his hand, did an interview with CBS saying they have heard absolutely nothing regarding the investigation into the stone cold murder of their son committed by the government.

ICE has recently kicked up their operations in Springfield, Ohio yet again and the local government is doing nothing about it. The Springfield News-Sun reported that residents showed up to speak out regarding ICE during public comment at this week’s city council meeting.

Community members shared concerns with Flock data being used to track residents as ICE is detaining people while on their way to and from work. ICE is also slapping ankle monitors on innocent people, and it has been reported Butler County Jail is now detaining at least 30 Haitians for ICE.

After public comment concluded, council members held a moment of silence and proceeded with their planned agenda, which held no actions or conversations regarding citizen concerns.

Acton’s recent comments regarding local police working with federal officers is troubling enough, but the idea that a “comprehensive overview” of public safety will result in anything changing is laughable at best, and Springfield residents are telling us why.

I understand her campaign manager and consultants think the middle messaging is best, but the reality of what we’re living through will continue while the “comprehensive overview” occurs, and it will end with “Well, the cops said they need it, so, we’re keeping it.”

Even if ICE did “follow the law” Acton’s words still fall short, because Senate Bill 172 is clipping through the Ohio legislature. The bill says federal law enforcement will be able to lawfully enter our school buildings to apprehend and detain any person who is or suspected to be unlawfully present. The bill language also notes that it supersedes any policy of any other governing body (read: school board policies).

When I saw the opportunity to actually ask Acton about her views on ICE and schools, I took it. I recorded it because this is the kind of accountability that I believe needs to exist with politicians, which includes people actively campaigning.

And she ignored me. Her campaign staffers answered instead, with “We’re just going to do backpacks today!” and “We’re not doing interviews.”

Politicians are meant to be accountable to the people, and I believe our country and especially Ohio is in the position it’s in because we, the people, have failed to hold them accountable.

The internet backlash I’ve received has been predictable yet interesting. For the most part it is what I expected it to be, but what has surprised me is the amount of people that share the basic principle of believing politicians should answer questions from constituents.

There is one criticism I cannot ignore, though, which is:

“We need to get her elected first and then we can hold her accountable.”

That is not how that works, it has never worked like that. Democracy brings the notion that politicians are elected into office because their platform and campaign is popular and agreeable among the electorate.

We the people hold politicians accountable to things they are proposing in their campaign, this is similar ideology to getting things in writing from your boss: You said this at a certain time and now I am holding you accountable to it, for better or for worse.

When issues rise up during the campaign window that are important enough to a big enough base of the electorate, the campaigning politician will add the issue with their stance to their platform in order to maintain their popularity among the electorate.

Acton has actually showed us this in her campaign already with data centers. She did not have a stance on data centers until very recently. It was absent her platform until July, when the Ohio EPA announced it was acceptable for data centers to dump their pollution straight into Ohio lakes and streams.

This was her initial message regarding that issue:

Versing that to what Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno said one day earlier:

Don’t get me wrong, Bernie Moreno will never do anything about data centers, full stop. But he bested her here when it comes to simple rhetoric — maybe I’m the only one that took notice, and maybe it’s because I’m an English teacher, but it stayed with me and I think of it often.

The general population in Ohio caused such a ruckus that the Ohio EPA walked it back and attributed their retreat to being a response to the public.

Because the electorate had shown this was an issue they cared about, Acton actually did add it to her platform. I find it to be largely toothless, but my point here is that she responded to public pressure and outrage.

And I’d like her to respond to the public pressure and outrage regarding her ICE comments from this week. More specifically, I’d like her to address to issue of how the terror of ICE impacts our school communities and what she is going to do about it.

This should be a no-brainer for Acton because she often touts “As a kid, public schools saved my life.” Public schools are still saving the lives of children, but her stances on kids with marginalized identities — a.k.a. different than hers — are causing question as to whether she thinks all kids in public schools are worth saving, because immigrant students aren’t the only ones she’s thrown under the bus lately.

Earlier this summer the Supreme Court ruled Title IX does not support trans people, and Acton told the Toledo Blade “I do not support boys playing in girls sports. This is already settled law in Ohio, and as governor I will enforce and uphold the law.” White people have been using oppressive laws to justify their own bigotry since committing the genocide and enslavement that formed this country in the first place, and though it’s not surprising to see it coming from moderate Democrats in 2026, it is exhausting.

It is especially exhausting for educators, because it then falls on us to protect our students, no matter their identities, because they are our students and we see the brilliance and beauty they bring to our classrooms, our communities, and our lives.

But we can’t keep doing this dance. That is why, in my social media clip I asked her if she is aware of the suicide statistics among transgender youth.

After Acton voiced her dedication to upholding anti-trans laws, specifically governing the youth (with her terminology of “girls” and “boys”) the Progressive Caucus of the Ohio Democratic Party, which has emerged over the course of the last year, put out a statement saying her views will cost her both votes and volunteers.

The Ohio Democratic Party forced the Progressive Caucus to take it down, citing that the caucus didn’t have the party’s permission to put up communication regarding the issue (lmfao).

The caucus took the statement down, and the Acton campaign scheduled a meeting with the caucus to ‘listen’. That meeting didn’t go so well, as reported by Erin in the Morning:

Inside sources who have gone public now say the “listening session” was a debacle. Acton did not show up, her campaign manager barred Arienne Childrey—Vice Chair of the party’s Pride Caucus, a transgender candidate for the Ohio House, and Ohio’s first openly trans city council member—from even entering the Zoom call. When another advocate demanded to know why Childrey was barred, she was ejected. The Chair of the Progressive Caucus, Kim McCarthy, was locked in the waiting room during the entire “listening session.” And in the end, the campaign ultimately refused to apologize for calling trans girls “boys,” refused to retract Acton’s support for a transgender sports ban, and ended the meeting with no plans for what come next.

We need to push Amy Acton now. I know what happens when you don’t because I moved here from Denver and if I had more time and more energy to fight the good fight in more than one state I’d take another hour and type out the story of tech-bro-millionaire-but-gay-so-he-was-progressive-enough Colorado Governor Jared Polis who has not helped the people (or the public schools) of the Colorful Colorado.

It won’t be my fault if Vivek Ramaswamy gets elected governor, despite what a small chunk of the internet is claiming. That ideology is preposterous, but highlights the unwillingness that people still have to holding politicians accountable for their own words and actions.

I will be 38 years old next week, I have been voting for 20 years. For two decades I have been told every election is the most important election of my lifetime. …and it’s been true every time.

If Amy Acton loses, it will be because we had yet another corporate Democrat who gave nods and handshakes to the right, thinking it’d get her votes from people that were in “the middle” instead of being willing to answer questions and develop policies with registered democrats.

Either that or straight up voter fraud. But it won’t be because a teacher asked her on camera to make a statement on her ICE stance and how that intersects with public schools.

There’s nothing wrong with asking candidates questions that concern you. It is their job to answer to the people, and Acton doesn’t get to escape the essential duty of a campaigning politician.

There are so many ways Amy Acton could have handled me at that event. Here are three options off the top of my head:

1. “Thank you for telling me that’s important to you. I have to stuff these backpacks first, and then do a little stump talk, but I’d like to talk with you about this after the event is over. Do you have some time to stick around?” And if I had said no, Amy, I don’t have time because I’m exhausted and I want to go home, she could have set a time for a 15 minute phone call at a later date.

2. At the end of the event, she could have said this to the group: “I know many of you have been scared for your students regarding ICE. If you have time, I’d like to hear some of your experiences so I can think about how we need to move forward.” And then she could have listened intently and asked questions while her campaign staff took detailed notes.

3. “Thank you for bringing that up, I know you’re not alone with that concern. I want you to know I’m working on addressing this publicly and you can look for a statement in the next 72 hours.”

Any of those options would have been acceptable to me, and it’s what I would’ve done. This is also how I manage my classroom: I acknowledge, validate, explain why I can’t do the thing right now, but I do the thing, because the student matters to me.

I almost didn’t post that video on the internet, and what gave me the biggest pause was that it was at a “backpack stuffing event”. I welcome that criticism, I understand it and I waffled with it myself. But I have been trying to engage with her and I have had no opportunities except for this one.

And honestly, an event like this should have been the opportunity for me to speak with her. Unions need to be putting on genuine candidate engagement events with their members, especially if they have a PAC, and especially if that PAC has endorsed or is considering endorsing a politician. I firmly believe this genuine engagement is a duty of a union.

A brief word about the backpack stuffing event: We were never told what school or classroom or district the event was benefitting. The backpacks themselves were the cheapest material I’ve perhaps ever held between my fingers with the zippers already jamming on the first pass. While I was filling them with two-pocket folders, composition notebooks, pencils, pens, glue sticks, and scissors, I thought about my own 9th grade English Language Arts students who don’t have notebooks.

The event was never set up for anyone to actually attend with it being on the Friday of the first week of school (teacher-tired is a different level of exhaustion, especially after the first week), from 3:30-4:30 (elementary teachers in Columbus don’t even get out of work until 3:45), and it was downtown (traffic and you have to pay for parking).

Rather, the event was set up for very specific people to attend. It was billed to me, a CEA member, as a “CEA-member-only event” but the invite also went out to a special list of pointed union members around central Ohio.

The invite was only sent out to union members two days prior, which was apparently because that’s when our local union found out about it.

…Probably because the Acton campaign realized they needed some good press after her remarks earlier in the week, and what better press is there than a bunch of teachers, especially during the back to school season?

Some comments have asked me “What’s the point in posting this video?” or “What did you hope to get from this?” and I want people to see the reaction I got from asking a campaigning politician about an issue I care about.

I want other people to know there’s a regular person asking questions. I want other educators to see you can question people in power.

I did it because I know other people are too scared to do it.
I did it because I am not too scared to do it.
I did it because every time I do it, it gets less scary.
I did it because I worry there might be a time when I am too scared to do it.
I did it because I think that time is coming quickly.

…and that scares me most of all.

It took months to realize what it truly did to me, and I’m still having those realizations in quite inconvenient and devastating moments.

We went back to work last week, with staff reporting Monday - Wednesday for three days without students. I went into the building the previous Thursday and Friday to get my classroom together, primarily because I need many days in my room to put my things back in their place, decide I want a new start and change the entire configuration of the room, and then finally realize I had it the way I started for a reason and move it all back, sans a change or two.

But the quieter reason was I knew I was vulnerable to a breakdown as I recreated the environment that was unjustly stripped from me, kept from me, and then returned with no resolution. When the district finally brought me back to work, seven weeks after I had been pulled and five weeks after I was deemed innocent, I was informed they planned on moving me from my school for the following school year.

This was first proposed to me immediately after my investigation interview concluded, while I was still sitting at the table for eight but set for four. I was told I’d likely be given a list of schools with openings I could choose from, that this happens with members who go through extremely harmful situations with their building administration.

But my extremely harmful situation hadn’t been with my building administration. It had been with my union.

Nonetheless, I agreed. I’d like to see the openings available and possibly take a fresh start. …But that opportunity never came. Our internal transfer process started while I was on leave, and members around the district interviewed and accepted positions while I laid on my couch staring at the ceiling, closing my eyes and sighing with deep annoyance every time the record needed to be flipped. It was in these moments I understood the evolution of and excitement around the Compact Disc.

The day before our district’s “job fair” (which is the last round of job postings during our internal hiring/transfer process) I finally heard from the district via my union rep. My only choices for next year would be what was left at job fair, internally known as the bottom of the barrel, and I had to decide that moment, on the phone, what I wanted to do: commit to taking a job off the board at job fair, or stay in the position I was in. They needed to know right then because if I committed to attending job fair, that meant I was vacating my current position, and it would be at job fair for other members to take.

So I chose to stay with the devil I knew instead of a devil I didn’t.

After job fair concluded I was told they’d be moving me anyway: involuntarily transferred, and they could (and likely would) wait until August to tell me where.

I asked how they could do that to me? We have contract language around involuntary transfers, I am not in a high needs position, but rather a dime-a-dozen secondary English teacher, and I did nothing wrong. I said if they were going to do that to me, we would file a grievance immediately, right?

I was reminded that even though yes, it would qualify for a grievance and we could file, the reality is I would have to comply with the directive while the grievance process played out, and would I really rather start at a new school and then move back to my current school after the school year had started, provided I eventually win the grievance? Which process was actually more disruptive?

I was told to stop fighting. I had been on paid vacation, after all.

The day of Monday, February 23, 2026 moved so fast I could barely keep up, which is really saying something. My feet move almost as fast as my brain, so when my environment shifts become waves impossible for me to surf, I am left beside myself.

The student-led ICE protest at my school was Friday, February 20th.

I did not hold the library door open, like the news reported.
I did not lead droves of students out the front door, like the news reported.
I did not lead the student ICE protest, like the news reported.

I did not block the exit doors of the building, like other staff did.
I did not give the protesting students the middle finger, like other staff did.
I did not lock scared students out of the building for the rest of the day, like my bosses did.
I did not split the groups of students, like other staff did.
I did not tell students they could protest for weeks and then change my mind the morning of, like my bosses did.
I did not buy the students the poster board and markers for their protest signs, like my bosses did.
I did not record students on my personal cell phone, like other staff did.
I did not keep student cell phones and backpacks locked in the school over the weekend, like my bosses did.

I didn’t even know that all happened until my investigation interview.

The end to the Friday of the protest was uncomfortable for everyone, but I don’t remember it very well because I went straight to the headquarters of my state union, Ohio Education Association, for a meeting with our state union president, about something completely different. Our caucus had been in touch with the Massachusetts Teachers Association leadership and we wanted to start the work on passing a Millionaire’s Tax to fund our public schools, libraries, and transportation, and I wanted to see if he was going to be supportive or if he was going to fight us on it. I needed to know the organizing effort that was ahead of us on the statewide front.

In that meeting I told him we could not wait for a solution to come to us with school funding. The state of our schools is so desperate and deplorable, we have to act now, we can’t afford for our jobs to get worse. He asked me to tell him about my job, about my school. It was a genuine question, I thought and still do think he wanted to hear about it, and I remember staring down at the table and just… not being able to. Where would I even start? And after the day I had? And in the middle of the campaign I was in?

My principal would send me three emails over the weekend, which I wouldn’t see until Monday morning. The first one would be sent on Saturday to me and one other person, saying we needed to have a meeting with him first thing Monday morning. He would reply “Disregard.” shortly thereafter.

The third email would be sent just to me, saying I had a meeting Tuesday morning with him and it was disciplinary in nature, and I would be needing a union rep. I’d read this when I got to work at 7:15, and walk myself straight into his office and say “Are you kidding me? Are you so for real right now?” and narrow my eyes and throw my hands up and say “What makes you think I actually have time for this?”

The relationship between my principal and I perplexed most, especially other union reps, but we understood each other. It took two years for him to realize I wasn’t going to back down when it came to worker rights, and when I fight, I win. When I organized my building to fight for more staffing, we both saw what was possible when we fight the bigger fights together.

But his bosses would pressure him to come down on me and retaliate for organizing, and everyone has a game to play. He would throw me under the bus every time, but he would give me a heads up about it. Twice I looked him dead in the eyes and asked “Are you doing this because you truly feel you have no other choice?” and we would dance the dance accordingly, me gaining another feather in my cap with every win.

He was very much in favor of our union campaign. The obvious reason to this is because he wanted me out of his hair1, but I think he really did believe in me, and he really helped me at an important part of my career.

Years ago I was struggling with not knowing what to do, I told him I was having a hard time managing graduate school, the union work, and teaching, and I started to cry in his office, which I found deeply humiliating in the moment because I had sat down to talk about simple English Department necessities, and the conversation had evolved.

“Kelsey, you have a gift. Do you know that? Not many people have what’s inside of you, and most of the people that do, don’t have the words the way that you do, they can’t move people like you can. Go, girl. If there is something standing in your way, you need to figure out what it is, and move it.”

And still, after that, he would create situations in our building that would cause me to hate him.

But people are complicated, myself included, and the ways in which we are intertwined in the struggle for liberation is intricate, maddening, and real.

I’d never doubt a boss telling me I needed a union rep, but when he put that in writing, I really fucking believed it.

And he tried to keep that union rep from me. That Monday, February 22, 2026 started with that email.
Then I called my union rep and told him I needed him.
He wasn’t available until later that week, so I emailed that back to my principal.
My principal said it didn’t matter, we’d be having the meeting anyway.
A little bit later, during my lunch, I’d see my principal in the hallway, as we were both on our way to my classroom from opposite ends of the hallway, and I’d throw my hands up at him for the second time that day and holler “You can’t do that! You KNOW you can’t do that, what are you thinking?! You can’t deny me my union rep.”
And he’d tell me listen, in lieu of a meeting, send me a statement.
A statement about WHAT?! Because it still hadn’t been made clear to me what exactly I was “in trouble” for.
“About Friday.”
What about Friday?!
About the ICE protest.
“I didn’t DO ANYTHING, there’s nothing to write a statement about. You want me to write a statement about where I was and what I saw between the hours of noon and 2:30?”
Yep. And send it to him before the end of the day.
I told him send me that in writing! and he did.
So I wrote my statement.

And as my union rep was looking over the statement, at 2:30pm, my principal walked through the door and handed me the letter.

My mouth dropped open and I looked up at him, that I remember clearly, and I think I asked him if he was serious. Maybe something like “Are you fucking kidding me?”, or I might not have said anything at all. I can’t remember if words actually came out.

What I do remember is erupting in sobs as soon as he walked out. I would not cry about this situation until months after February 23rd. I would not properly start to grieve until July. I would not properly start to heal until writing this series.

My hands shook as I took a picture of the letter and sent it to my union rep, I also sent it to my two work friends. Two things happened:
My two friends walked in and I told them to get out, I told them I couldn’t talk about it, I told them to leave me alone, and I told them I was serious.
My union rep called me, and I can’t remember the conversation. I think he told me about sub plans, I think he told me it was okay, I think he told me it happens to a lot of people, I remember a comforting tone with no comfort, without feeling at all like my situation was understood — this is how I believe most people feel, I don’t think it’s really possible for anyone to feel any other kind of way in that moment.

And then I drove to the Columbus Gifted Academy, because I had booked a visit there to speak with their union members after their staff meeting.

I could not stop crying. While accelerating onto I-70 I started talking out loud to myself in my car.

“You have to get it together. Shove it down, forget about this entire experience right now, you will not get another chance with these members. Get it together. Shove it down. Focus.”

And I did. I rolled down my windows and the frigid February air cooled my puffy eyes, and I took slow, deep breaths. I walked into the building and had a great visit with incredible educators. My campaign pitch came smoothly, it did every time, it’s not hard for me to speak on what I believe and know is possible. I spoke with members individually for a long time after the meeting ended.

I love speaking with members. I am in my element when I am connecting with workers, the rest of my world stops. I also didn’t want the visit to end, because the end would bring my new reality. I wanted to stay in that moment, in that conversation, with those teachers, in that library, forever.

But the world doesn’t stop for anything.

I was told I didn’t need a lawyer, and when an outside friend forced me to come face to face with my circumstances and realize I needed one, I lost confidence in my union. I have not regained that confidence.

I didn’t know what to do. I almost called my state union president for advice, but as my thumb hovered over his name, I made a game time decision and called my state union’s immediate past president, SD.

SD and I are vastly different, but he’s delivered mentoring advice when I needed it before, and I knew he would tell me what I needed to know. I couldn’t call my union office because they were hostile to me, and I truly did not think they had my best interest in mind. I couldn’t call my state union president because that would probably be weird for him (and me). SD didn’t have a pony in this race, and he had the institutional knowledge, answers, and context that I needed to guide me.

He’s currently running for a political statehouse position, and at the time his campaign announcement had been somewhat recent, so when he answered with “Hi Kelsey!” I asked him how his campaign was going, and told him I was running one of my own.

I told him something had happened and I wasn’t sure of my rights as a union member, in my local union or my state union, so could he tell me? And when he said yes, what’s up? The words caught in my throat and as I clenched my jaw I felt the tears build up and I knew when I opened my mouth, they might fall.

“I’ve been pulled from my classroom and put on administrative leave” tumbled from my lips in heaves and choppy inhales, and in that moment he said what no one else had.

“When a member is put on administrative leave it is just horrible. It’s so hard, I’m so sorry. It just really is so difficult.”

Those words were the hug I needed. I stood at my kitchen island and nodded, and with my eyes closed, “Yeah, yeah it really is”.

And he answered my questions. He told me my rights in my local union, my rights in my state union, we went over the role of specific union staff members, and what their responsibilities are, and if I, as a member, felt that I wasn’t adequately represented in my case, what do I do?

This wasn’t the first time I’d called on SD. I had called him in the spring of 2025 for advice, how he was able to sustain himself in this work. I asked him quite personal questions on how to balance passion, work, drive, and various elements of life, and he gave me honest answers. That remains one of the smartest phone calls I have ever made.

Chris and I observed the ballot count for the election simply because we could. Our union’s Constitution and Bylaws say officers have the right to observe, and I thought that was there for a reason, so we might as well take advantage of it. I, obviously, was free to attend without needing to use paid time off, but the same was not the truth for Chris. He used a day to sit with me as we watched the ballots amount to our loss.

We knew we’d lose. We had hope for a win, because we are capable of the job, and that is how you have to get through a campaign. But we’re not stupid. Most union reform efforts take two election cycles.

It rained the whole day, and as we walked from our street-parked cars to the union office, I told him I was glad we had campaigned the way that we had: with class, with dignity. With our vision and platform at the forefront, always, perhaps to a fault, as he pointed out. I told him I was glad we didn’t go low on the Facebook Coalition page, and he said if a Facebook page is really how members want to receive their union news and communicate, our union wasn’t ready for our leadership in the first place.

Chris is talented at many things, and one of those things is slapping our reality in my face when I am fixated on What Could Be. It is one of the countless dynamics that make us a strong team.

We are friends, but friendship is not what keeps us working together in labor organizing. We have had to learn what frustrates us about the other, and we have chosen to work through those frustrations instead of letting it build animosity between us. We have chosen to embrace our differences because they are what force us to listen to each other, to reach complete understanding, because it allows us to see our Whole Reality as educators and union members and leaders, and ultimately, it informs us on how to move forward.

And that is hard. And it is exhausting. But it is worth it, and I believe it is how a powerful and effective leadership team operates.

During the candidate debate nights, the incumbent vice president2 of our local union spoke well about how he has been vice president to three different presidents and effectively carried out different leadership visions. Chris had said he thought he had the harder job in the campaign, and I didn’t fully understand what that had meant until watching them that first debate.

But that is one of the powers of a slate: if members believed in one of us, they would have to trust us that we needed to be elected as a team to deliver the platform.

Our vote tallying system is archaic: our state union staff member, who fed the ballots into the machine and ran the software system, reminded the room of that several times during the course of the 7 or 8 hours it took to deliver the count. We are the only local union in the entire state that still votes in this manner.

It was so boring.

My only real memory of those hours is standing at a window, watching the rain fall, and wondering if anyone else in that room besides Chris was aware that I was spending my days at home instead of in my classroom.

I moved through those days in a complete haze. I did not know what to do with myself, so I did nothing. I slipped into a dark depression, having to force basic hygiene routines, mindlessly scrolling social media. I was laying in bed when I scrolled past this post on the union Facebook Coalition page:

Most news articles had the name of my school in the headline.
Most people knew it was me.
The person who posted this knew it was me. He had been very vocal about supporting the incumbents. You can imagine what the comment section looked like, from a page where most people found my existence and my campaign repulsive.

I rolled over and stared at the wall. That is how I spent most of my days until my investigation interview.

I first began to heal from teaching when I had been out of the classroom for about a week, and I felt it in my muscles, in my bones. It felt like my joints had been made of rubber band balls, bound tightly, at capacity. One by one, they started to snap. I started to be able to move better, to move with ease.

Trauma manifests itself in the body, and our public schools are traumatic environments. Educators hate to admit that because it eclipses the beauty and joy in public schools, but it’s the truth. School shouldn’t be like that for children, and work shouldn’t be like that for workers.

After my innocence was proven, spring weather came to Central Ohio. With a healing body, proven innocence, and warmer weather, I returned to running, and I realized the ways teaching and union work has taken my life from me.

I’ve been a long distance runner for most of my adult life, spurred into the sport by heartbreak in my early 20s. It has always played significant roles in the chapters of my life, taken me up and over mountains, along ridges from southern Colorado to northern California, from the painted desert to surfing in Ventura.

But I have to be at work at 7:15 in the morning, which means I have to leave my house at 6:50, so my alarm goes off at 5:30 because a calm hour with coffee is a mandated start for me. I prefer to run in the morning because of the way it helps my brain, because of the way it improves my days, it is a very serious quality of life factor for me.

For years I let teaching take that from me because I chalked it up to privilege. I moved my running time to after work and learned how to hate the sport and how to hate myself with the sport. I am exhausted after work. The sun is set to broil from 3-5pm well into October in the concrete jungle of my running routes, my brain is begging to turn off instead of wake up, my muscles are tired from taking in the stimulation and harsh environment of school for 8 hours.

I love to bake. I also love to cook, but I really love to bake. There is no time for baking while teaching, there is no time to explore recipes when you take a second unpaid job as a union member, and a third unpaid job as a labor organizer.

I love to write. There is no time to write when there is no time to heal.

So when teaching was taken from me, I got all of that back. I went out for 10 and 15 mile runs on back to back days. My mileage went from 10 miles a week to over 40. I stretched, I hydrated, I rested, I nourished to avoid injury because I had the time to do so.

A few days after I was placed on leave, I told my union rep I thought we needed to organize around this because our local union had taken a public stance against ICE, and our union president had been at other student ICE protests, so it made sense to defend a member who was (wrongfully!) going down for an allegation of supporting one.

But I was told the public wouldn’t be in support of me. The public would think I was complaining about being on paid vacation, I should think of the optics.

Teacher unions play into these narratives against us so often that I honestly think we, as in the union institutions, are to blame for the narratives themselves.

“I’m not on paid vacation! I want to be back at work! I teach TWO tested subjects, my students need me!” Alas, to no avail.

So I healed from teaching. I started to get the wholeness of my life back, and I started to realize I didn’t think I had friends. With every day that I was kept from work, I expected to hear a plan for action from our election slate, from people I had organized with for years, that I had categorized as friends, but I never did.

I had spent years bringing people together, building relationships, articulating a shared vision for a better profession, a better public school system, and I got lost in the middle of the Venn Diagram. I had hosted organizer trainings in my living room, made meals and mugs mistaking the foundation of a movement for friendship.

And then I paid the price when the cost was me.

I was a failure. I had failed in my union campaign, I had failed at being “on the inside” of the union, I had failed at protecting myself, I had failed at having friends, I had failed at responding to my family’s group chat for months, I had failed in training organizers, I had found a way to fail graduate school despite having a 4.0.

I had failed at being worth fighting for.

That was so painful that I wouldn’t be able to fully acknowledge it, to really look at that part of my life, until the later part of summer. I knew I would have to deal with it that pain eventually, but I had to get through the end of the school year. And then I had to go to Denver for a wedding. And then I had to be on a panel at Labor Notes. And then I had to go back to Denver for national union work.

So I shoved it down and told it to wait, but it couldn’t all wait. I addressed the part I could compartmentalize, the part I knew how to do, the part I knew had to be addressed for the movement to continue: The organizing part.

If I was going to be teaching people to organize, I could not let it be acceptable for retaliation to fall by the wayside. Because if we were going to reform our unions, I would not be the only one to be retaliated against, and if members don’t learn how to stick up for each other, how to know when and how to act, we will lose and we will lose people. And we can’t afford to lose people.

One evening into the late spring, after I went back to the classroom and had been attending end-of-the-year union meetings, Z and I sat on our front porch sipping tea, watching dusk turn to night and quietly chatting about our days. I shared that I was struggling being in union meetings, watching silence perpetuate amongst members as people lose their jobs, as more schools close, and as my reality goes unspoken, unacknowledged, left to drift into the book of dark union secrets, undoubtedly a reason behind a barreling resignation.

I told him I was starting to feel the pain of the inaction of others, what I thought was work rooted in justice. I was wondering if a wagon had been hitched to my name, was it really all just me doing this work, was I really doing any work at all, if this is what my reality was?

Was I even worth fighting for in the first place? What made me think I was anything special, that I deserved to be protected, that I deserved to be fought for? What if I wasn’t even a good teacher?

Z doesn’t comment on my union work stories unless he can speak with certainty. He likes to know all angles, every piece of relevant information, before forming an opinion or expressing an emotion. It is equally frustrating and valuable.

My existential questioning led a long pause filled with the sounds of our neighborhood: barking dogs, the hum of I70 traffic, distant music, a police chopper, crickets, the wail of an ambulance, soft rustling of the plants in the breeze.

“If what happened to you had happened to anyone else, you would have ripped this city apart.”

I knew what he meant, but I asked him anyway.

“You would have figured it out. Nothing would have stopped you.”

—

I am set up to have a successful school year in my building. We have an entirely new team of administrators, my old principal left the district and took others with him. I have never met a boss I’ve liked but I’m open to the chance that they do exist, and so far, the odds are in the favor.

On Tuesday of the first week, I was caught off-guard by a trigger from one of our new administrators. They were using data from the 10th grade English OST scores this past spring and highlighting that the scores are low, kids weren’t confident in the writing portion of the state standardized test.

“Maybe that’s because their teacher was taken from them for 7 weeks before the test.”

There was no way I could’ve stopped myself from saying it, and not many people heard it. But I was cut deeply, and I didn’t see it coming.

I returned to my room and was visited by an unexpected colleague. A colleague that also went down for administration decisions. A colleague that also might have felt a certain way about that data being used.

Or not. It could’ve been a random conversation, a pop-in out of convenience, perhaps they were strolling through the hallway and just saw my door was open. We talked briefly about how to set boundaries with work, I sought their advice on how to keep teaching when you’ve taken a fall that hard for the bosses. It helped. But it also broke me.

I spent the next two hours in my room with my door shut and locked, sobbing on and off. At one point I was on my knees, crying so hard there was no sound coming out (thank god! those walls are so thin). I had never grieved in my classroom, I was too focused on getting through my conditions when I returned that I couldn’t confront my sadness. But I did on Tuesday, and I continued to cry. I cried my entire drive home. I cried when Mackensie called me, and I cried myself to sleep.

And Wednesday was a little bit better.

People ask me if I think there was collusion between my employer and my union, and my answer is yes. I will never be able to prove it, and I’m not really interested in proving it, I am interested in having a democratic and transparent union to improve my job. But my answer is still yes.

Chris once told me, and I think of it often, “Do not attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence”. But my answer to that is, which is worse? To me, it’s incompetence. I’d rather things be done the dirty way, with “the politics”, aimed at taking me down, than believe the people above me are truly just so fucking stupid that they don’t realize the reality of workers, of students, of our conditions.

Right? Or is it worse that people would be so low, so vindictive, so scared, so hell-bent on making me quit, frothing at the mouth to keep their power?

I thought about that a lot when I was on leave. Our union leadership was not shy in telling us, all year, there were a record number of people being put on leave and investigated. I wanted to believe my experience was unusual. I felt my union didn’t care about me, I had no idea if they were sticking up for me, I was never given updates about what was happening with my situation unless I reached out, no one even checked in on me.

After speaking with many members who have been and are on leave, this is the norm. Many, many people feel this way, the experience is not unique to me. People feel alone, depression comes, anxiety stays with you every single moment.

And that is not okay.

But I’ve also found that people are put back to work after their investigations are done. They aren’t kept from the classroom for five more weeks with no communication.

There is also the famous quote that comes from the Teamsters reform, which is what I will close this post, and this series, with:

Aim for the boss and you’ll hit the union.

I did not help with the student-led ICE protest at my school.

But it would be completely on-brand for me to do so, I was an easy target and there’s certainly an argument to say I’m the preferred target for both the charging party and the defense party.

Several students asked me to help them organize the protest, but I declined, as I was on my best behavior for the campaign.

The district I work in has 18 high schools and most of them had student ICE protests. No other educators had been disciplined in any capacity, despite adults doing some heavy lifting to carry out the initiative students had started (…or so I had heard).

In the summer of 2025 our caucus, CORE, put on an ICE Defense Training for educators, put together by me. It wasn’t just for educators, we had some workers from other industries and some parents join us, but it was mostly educators. We held it at the IBEW union hall, a connection that I believe I initially made in a roundabout way through our union president, though I can’t quite recall.

Our union members were not very engaged in union work that summer, despite being in contract negotiations. The organizing committee (that I still chaired, at this point) had no assignments from leadership, so I reached out to our president and asked if I could utilize the committee structure (that I had built) to advertise the training. He said yes, until someone from our Governance Board asked if it was “CEA approved” and he said no.

And it was always like that. First yes, and then no.

Over 60 educators showed up from our union. I was surprised at the turnout, as it was the middle of summer and most people were slow to respond to the ask. But this shows what I’ve always said to be true: members will show up if it’s something they care about.

That’s why the rank and file must always lead the direction of the union. If it is going to work for workers, it needs to be led by the workers. But our union has a top-down decision making model, often referred to as a “service model” of a union. We said this often in the campaign, that we must flip the model of our union to an organizing model instead of the service model, and that top-down decision making was not working.

On the second candidate debate night, our union president told one of our campaign supporters “you can’t lead a union from the bottom, from a committee” and I looked at Chris in the parking lot and screamed.

“A COMMITTEE IS NOT THE BOTTOM OF THE UNION! OH MY GOD THAT’S MY WHOLE POINT!”

The “bottom” of the union, when you have the top-down leadership, is the rank and file membership, the members that pay dues but aren’t reps or necessarily “involved”. I would go so far as to say, theoretically, in a post-JANUS world, the “bottom” of your union is actually the people you are forced to represent that aren’t members, and you should think about them when organizing, if you’re really trying to bring people in.

The top-down decision our union president made regarding ICE and public schools was to send members whistles for their lanyards with next to no instruction on how to use them, just a blanket “this is for reverse evacuation” (which is when you’re outside with your students and you must rush into the school building due to an emergency).

In fact, when ICE descended upon Columbus in December 2025, our union leadership canceled union meetings.

December District Union Meeting: Canceled
January Legislative Assembly: Canceled
January District Union Meeting: Canceled
February District Union Meeting: Canceled

The February district meeting was canceled due to a longstanding event that our union puts on in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. When our union president and I still had an amicable relationship, he told me when he ran, he bought a table at the MLK event.

He and his friends got put at a table in the back, but he went, and it was a specific move to show the establishment you are a serious candidate, even though the incumbents run the show.

So I spent $600 on a table for the MLK dinner. And there was no question in my mind on which dress I was going to choose.

The dinner is not at all for our members. It’s advertised to membership, despite the incredulous price point. It’s also on a school night! Not only was I still in the classroom at this point and had to teach the next day, but I had three building visits booked.

The dinner does not honor Black students and educators the way that it could (and in my white-ass opinion, should). Chris and I talked about, in a world where we won, how we would want to continue the MLK tradition but center it on the Black excellence and joy in our district, at a price point and time that encourages member participation.

Instead, one member is honored (who, hilariously, was one of my biggest haters on the internet during the campaign, and here I am cringing while I charge $600 on my credit card because like most educators I do not have that cash on hand to hear a speech from her) and a handful (and I mean a handful) of student tickets are comped.

The highlight of the evening is the guest speaker, and that year it was Roland S. Martin. He was notably introduced by Joyce Beatty, who said to the audience, (emphasis mine) “Tonight, I hope you remember: we are trying to make you feel empowered, to make you feel that you are important, to make you feel that you have value, and if we stand together, […] and get out the vote, we can change this world.”

And that is just about what every union event I go to is: a massive price tag footed by members’ dues dollars to make people feel important for one night in exchange for their blind allegiance to the Democratic Party political business-as-usual machine.

I wish it wasn’t. It doesn’t have to be. There is another option, but members have not chosen it. Not yet, anyway.

Roland S. Martin delivered a phenomenal speech, and when he called out the hypocrisy in the room: the expensive dinner, honoring elected officials bought by billionaires and AIPAC, not actually doing anything for the sake of liberation, and it all being put on by a teacher’s union, the loudest cheers came from the table in the back.

I spent three years serving on the board for my local union’s Political Action Committee (PAC). It ended up being the catalyst for when I truly split from union leadership. In hindsight, I should’ve split sooner, and nearly everyone I was organizing with was telling me to. Our committee actually lost people because I wasn’t willing to go against him.

I knew that when I made that decision it had to be when I truly felt like there was no other choice. Because I knew there would be no coming back from it, and it’d hurt. I’ve never broken a bone, but I did once take a 30 foot whipper leading a 5.10b in Clear Creek Canyon, which ripped every article of clothing I was wearing along with several layers of skin and shook me so hard I never really recovered.

I knew it’d somehow be worse than that, so I really had to be sure.

I served on the board for our local union PAC for three years. I never missed a candidate screening, I never missed a vote, and I made the motion to financially support a union member running for school board in Pickerington (she won!). When we were screening city candidates on September 20th, 2025 for the upcoming November election, the issue of school vouchers came up.

They first came up with the endorsement of City Attorney Zach Klein. Klein sends his kids to private school utilizing vouchers, which was enough for me to voice that we not endorse him.

One particular PAC board member said she thought we should endorse him. The table had a robust conversation regarding this issue. When it came to a natural close, I raised a question to the member that wanted to endorse him: After hearing the discussion, does that move your opinion at all, or no?

She sincerely responded with: “I just wanted to endorse him because I think he’s attractive.”

She got re-elected to the PAC board this past May. She also serves on our union Governance Board.

I couldn’t bring myself to join the table in laughter at her response. It was a new depth of “Does anyone take any of this work seriously?”

Our members deserve more than that.
Our students deserve more than that.
Our city deserves more than that.

Zach Klein did not receive the endorsement, and there was more to deliberation than solely the utilization of school vouchers.

…But I can’t say the same for City Councilman Emmanuel Remy.

Remy received the endorsement from the PAC Board (though I voted against for separate reasons), and it was mere minutes after the PAC Board meeting ended I learned Remy also uses school vouchers to send his kid(s) to private school.

Not wanting to cause turbulence without proof, I reached out to a well-connected friend to see if he could confirm the allegation. By happenstance, the well-connected friend saw Remy on a rooftop the very next day and popped the question to confirm.

The endorsement approval process is three steps. It starts with the PAC Board, then proceeds to the union’s Governance Board for approval, and finally to the union reps at the Legislative Assembly. I attended the Governance Board meeting to a) give my committee report and b) inform them of the information I had obtained regarding Remy.

The Governance Board had a spritely discussion on whether the school voucher piece mattered for a political endorsement from a PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATOR’S UNION IN OHIO, but what I noticed even more, was this: they disagreed so seldom that multiple people didn’t know that to “abstain” in a vote does not equate to neutrality.

Leadership gave the talking point of “How many of you drive a union-made car?” — A talking point I find incredibly layered and rooted in blind allegiance to unionism instead of worker-power unionism — and used to remind everyone in the room that they’re not as union-strong as they think they are.

It’s a weird way to whip votes, to belittle with a verbal lashing regarding the ways in which a teacher undermines the United Auto Workers on their commutes to their jobs and union meetings, but it works.

Leadership also said school vouchers are lawful in Ohio, and we can’t fault our elected officials for following the law. The Remy endorsement passed our union’s Governance Board.

The caucus I’m in, CORE, had started list-building a few months prior, and I emailed our CEA members regarding the vote that had taken place. The caucus has specific language around school vouchers, and it is every single union member’s right to list-build and communicate with other union members. Here is the email I sent:

Our Governance Board had a pretty big problem with me sending that email. First, they aren’t aware of the democratic rights that union members have, and second, they had a problem with me saying that slavery was law, and that Jim Crow was law, with the context of their political decisions and actions.

In hindsight, perhaps white educators do need a bit more of an elaboration on how the unchecked school voucher system in Ohio propels the systems of society we still have in place from enslavement that are keeping people of color, specifically and particularly Black people, oppressed, and how the underfunding of city schools are a key part of that operation. I’ve made a note to have a blog post in the future dedicated to that explanation.

Union leadership called in Remy’s spouse to speak to the union reps are our Legislative Assembly and convince them to vote for the endorsement. It didn’t work.

Our caucus members had literally no organizing plan for the Legislative Assembly. I had sent the email to some union members, so they knew the issue at hand, and what happened in the meeting happened naturally. Members got up to share their thoughts and made the motion to strike Remy from the endorsement just based on the fact that he uses school vouchers, and the union reps overwhelmingly agreed.

For lack of better words, this made me feel less crazy. I needed to know it was not outlandish to think maybe our educators union should not be backing political candidates that take part in defunding our profession and institutions.

This is, of course, a great game of political hypocrisy of our union, which is covered in my next and final piece of this installment.

But I told members in our union what was happening and I paid the price. I’m still paying the price. Most people think that I’m the writer behind CORE’s The Member Action Tea, but there is truly a team of people behind it, and I’m neither the head writer nor the head editor. I did, however, write this piece about our PAC.

At the next Governance Board meeting, I would get my own verbal lashing from our president, and everyone around the table would agree that I deserved it. They would also go into executive session for 1 hour and 45 minutes and come out with exactly one new business item: to make sure our organizing committee had no communication or meetings without a representative from Governance.

They wouldn’t address it to me, though. They would write it as "all ad-hoc committees” (of which there was only one). However, they also included the directive to the Early Career Educator committee, which is chaired by two people on our slate (and the organizing committee).

The Early Career Educator committee is not an ad-hoc committee, it is a ‘real’ committee, it is listed in our union’s Constitution and Bylaws (the organizing committee is not — or at least wasn’t at the time, Chris and I put up a motion to change that before we ran).

The co-chair of the Early Career Educator committee attended the next Governance Board meeting to clear the confusion with the directive, and when she pointed to the evidence of not being an ad-hoc committee (in our union’s Constitution and Bylaws), she was pulled aside by leadership and told it was a “misprint”.

The rules only exist for some.
The rules only exist sometimes.

Were there other misprints? How much of our Constitution and Bylaws is real? Questions remained unanswered.

My verbal lashing at that meeting ended up being one of the most powerful parts of my campaign pitch. Our local union president told me if I “wanted to change our union, [I] had to do it from the outside and not the inside”. Because that’s what you get with a top-down model of a union, you get a small group of people on the “inside”, and everyone else is on the “outside”.

And I just don’t believe that’s how a union should operate. I don’t believe there should be an inside and an outside, it has to be everyone.

I would explain that as the “fundamental difference” between our current president and myself, it is the base of the understanding of what the union is and how the union should function.

At the second candidate debate night, the last question posed to myself and my opponent was from a member that wanted to hear us say something positive about the other. She said she had seen a lot of negative things on the Facebook Coalition page, and she wanted to know what we admired about each other.

He said “I think she has, you know, she might have some good ideas”. And that was it. He took the rest of the time to talk about himself, and about the work he has done as president.

I didn’t speak about myself. I spoke about his tenacity, I spoke about the strike, I spoke about how I admired his determination to keep going. I didn’t bridge any of it to our campaign.

At the conclusion of the first candidate debate night, we shook hands. After I concluded my remarks, I backed away from the mic, and turned and walked directly off-stage. I did not shake his hand.

I returned to my seat, with my eyes full to the brim with tears, and as they started to shoot down my cheeks I looked at Jacquia.

“He couldn’t say one nice thing about me. He couldn’t think of a single thing.”

“It’s the fundamental difference. That is the fundamental difference.”

It always shocked me how similar we were in aspects not related to union work. I also had a nomadic time, living out of my car for some time in my 20s, driving up and down the west coast, surfing, rock climbing, and running mountains. I also spend time sitting and listening to vinyl, I too love baseball, dogging on the political system we’re caught in, and recharge best in the wilderness.

But the similarities end there. And unbeknownst to him, I was the last one to admit it.

I spent an unreasonable time believing the people in positions of power in our union would get on board with organizing and teaching members how to protect themselves.

The first year I was chair of ‘The Committee’ (of one) the building substitutes organized to come into our union. I worked with a union staff member of our state affiliate to help accomplish this feat. I would meet with the building substitutes organizing committee and I loved it, it was like putting on a new pair of your old favorite shoes. It’s organic organizing with people who want a union, not people who happen to be part of one. Those are two very different types of workers to organize with.

The task was far more difficult than it should have been because the structures of our union are weak. They are very rarely utilized for organizing, they are generally used to relay information that rarely matters or affects a member’s job or wellbeing. And that information, the vast majority of the time, isn’t relayed effectively.

I say that with no animosity or judgement, it is simply a fact. It can be corrected, this can change, and that was the basis of our campaign. It is impossible to communicate that information objectively, because many members hear that they’re doing something wrong and get defensive.

Educators are told all day every day, in their classrooms and at their worksites, that they’re doing things wrong, so when they hear that they’re doing their union job in an ineffective way, the job that they’re volunteering to do on top of every other task that administrators demand of them, that students demand of them, that parents demand of them, that they demand of themselves, it’s understandable why that message doesn’t go over well.

Punching across is easier than punching up. It is easier to hate the person who is pointing out the ineffectiveness than it is to take criticism, evaluate the system, and then be open to being taught something new.

It also feels good to punch stuff.

Educators are always on the defense, and that’s generally in direct conflict with the personality traits that draw them to the job in the first place.

My second year chairing The Committee I was adamant on finding my people. I was going to build This Committee, and I was going to teach people how to organize. We would build the army of workers we needed.

I found people in a variety of ways. Some I reached out to from organizing the strike, some I found on the inside of the institution, and some a combination of the two methods.

We (The Committee) met on the top floor of the union office for two years, keeping official union business in the official union building, at a time that ran concurrently with our union’s Governance Board meetings. It created the vibe of “put the children upstairs while the adults speak about the grown up issues downstairs at the table”, and that was undoubtedly intentional1.

The Governance Board meetings are catered, and while we were told we could “help ourselves”, the eyes-like-daggers as we took a paper plate and waited in line were noticed.

But I’ve never met a cheese pizza I could say no to, and no one’s glares will take that from me. My confidence and self-respect? Sure, but cheese pizza? Get real.

They thought about us so little that they left and locked us out. Twice2. To them, we were nothing, and they made sure we knew it3.

Our union president wasn’t always like that, though. He tried for awhile. He’d come up after their downstairs meeting and chat, but it was only chat. Every time we tried to ask about utilizing The Committee to do something, to improve our jobs, it was communicated to us that we didn’t understand enough of the system to do so. When we pushed back, the best we got was a variation of “I’ll think about it”, and when I would follow up (which I believed was my duty as Chair), it was a “No”.

About a year after the building substitutes won their recognition to be union members, the district tried to fire them. That was the only campaign we got a green-light for, and I had to be the one to initiate it. In a functioning union that fights for workers and has an internal organizing committee, that should have been a direct phone to call from the president to the chair with the directive to mobilize members to protect those jobs, to help protect those members.

We recorded two podcast episodes about the organizing campaigns we did. I suggest a listen, but I’m bias. Because those stories already exist on the internet, I digress from sharing them here. We successfully saved the building substitute jobs (at that time).

But it’s been 8 months since those episodes were recorded, and the building substitutes have since been fired through RIF (reduction in force).

When Trump took office for his second term in 2025, two of our union representatives reached out to me for help in an organizing effort. I had just led a successful campaign at my own workplace, and they were looking to do something similar, but with the goal of our school board passing a resolution barring ICE from entering school buildings.

It was a pretty tame resolution, all things considered, and was penned and endorsed by our national affiliate union. I readily accepted the invitation to help.

I worked with them to talk about how to organize such an effort and draft language for an email campaign from union members to school board members. I then asked them if I could share it with others from The Committee, because I knew members around our district would want to partake and support. We were terrified for our students, families, and communities, and wanted to act.

We had a remote working day in our district, and I sent out a calendar invite for a committee meeting. Over 40 people showed up, and I invited two Governance Board members. The union reps leading the action explained our organizing campaign, and the group talked about how best to execute it in our union. We ended the call in complete agreement on the strategy, timeline, and measurable outcome.

I hadn’t been told to not help with this effort, explicitly, but my union president had told me to let him handle the issue, and that they were “working on things with the district”. I had met with the union representatives from the effort anyway, but I did give it one week until amplifying the effort. There had been no movement on the leadership side of things, so I moved.

The day of the virtual larger committee meeting, I received 8 phone calls from our union president. Most of those 8 calls he was raising his voice with me (5), and the calls he wasn’t (3), was because I didn’t answer. He kept calling and yelling because I would not back down from helping our members organize around this issue. I told him about the big virtual meeting, how well it went and that this was a deeply and widely felt issue in our membership, it checked all the boxes for a successful campaign. It didn’t matter.

What he didn’t know was that I wasn’t the only person who heard him yelling at me. We had a smaller organizing committee meeting scheduled for later that day on Zoom, and he happened to make phone call #8 right before it started.

As the 7 other members came into the Zoom, they stayed muted and I put my phone on speaker. For the first time, they heard how he spoke to me. He screamed.

This wasn’t an isolated issue. This is the communication method that is used. It is one of the worst kept secret of the union’s inner circle.

This same behavior happened in front of our Governance Board later that month. He was angry I had told members they could4 call a union meeting in their building and tell their colleagues about the organizing effort to pressure the school board to pass a resolution barring ICE from our school buildings.

BREAKING NEWS!
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.
Union members have every right to call a union meeting at their worksite.

I responded to his tantrum by saying “I know there will be growing pains, but I am not your punching bag.” Not a single person in the room said a thing about his behavior.
Not.
One.
Person.

I had attended that meeting of the Governance Board to give my Committee Report, and when it was over I went upstairs with a union staff member to switch gears and discuss our upcoming contract negotiations campaign.

I tried to help it, but once I got upstairs, I lost it. I sobbed. Between tears and rigid breaths I said I just could not understand why they wouldn’t want members to organize themselves, why they wouldn’t want more people doing the work of our union.

That is the most vulnerable I have ever been in that triple-storied building and I made sure it never happened again.

I truly did not understand why I was being screamed at by our union president. I know now that is just what happens when you confront institutions of power, and to be fair, I knew that then; but at the time, I didn’t see my union that way. I genuinely thought everyone on our Governance Board would be in support, and that they would be glad, they would be proud of our members for stepping up and taking action.

Because I was. I think about that campaign and the very difficult conversations rank-and-file members had with each other because they cared so much and it makes me weepy. At the end of the day I have and always will be a true solidarity sap.

Three people who were in that room contacted me after the meeting. I received two phone calls, one I answered, one I missed but had a voicemail, and a text.

Two people mentioned the treatment I had received during my Committee Report was not okay. All three mentioned “that’s just how he is”.

Abuse is normalized in our workplace.
Abuse is normalized in our union.
Abuse is normalized.

It wasn’t always like that. If it was, I wouldn’t have kept going.

The following month, in March, he took me to Chicago for the first organizing event, spearheaded by the Chicago Teachers Union and the United Auto Workers, which would evolve into the MayDay Strong coalition. He paid out of his own pocket for me to go, I assume because he didn’t think the Governance Board would rubber stamp the expense. I didn’t get union release time from work, I had to use my own accrued paid time off. He knew I wanted to be there, he knows I utilize every single opportunity I get to the fullest extent.

In the fall of 2023, I lost my first student. He was missing for weeks before his body was found, murdered and left in an abandoned house on the north side of the city. The car he was murdered in was set afire and the parents of the person who murdered him helped cover up the crime scene.

I learned that information on the 5:30am report of NBC4, with the day’s first cup of coffee. There were only two people that reached out that morning, before contract time began. One was V, a friend and veteran teacher at another school, who asked “Is this your first?”

I’d learn over the course of the week this is how veteran teachers gauge early career teachers’ traumatic experience level when a student dies: Is this your first?

The other was my union president. I was headed east on 104 and sitting at a red light at the Hamilton intersection when he called, 7:08 in the morning. He had read the news and was sorry, he knows how much it hurts, he has been there. Was this my first?

The red light was blurred and I could not properly see, scared to blink because I Did Not Want This To Start Right Now. I eeked out a tiny yeah and he probably heard the hiccup in my sharp inhale and he knew I was now crying and I was crying quite a proper bit.

And he said you want to know where I was last weekend? And I said where? And he said this organizing event down in North Carolina and I asked him if he talked to anyone from Durham because had he seen the Durham educators lately? They were doing really incredible things and he asked me like what? And we went on like that for a few minutes.

It could have been happenstance of the conversation, but in my bones I think he knew organizing is the only thing that was going to get my mind off of my broken heart, so I could regain my composure because he knew I had to walk into that building and be something stronger, a different version of myself, a new version of myself, a version of myself I was just now meeting and would never be able to say goodbye to, for the kids, always for the kids.

Teaching hardens you. No one tells you that because no one talks about it. They talk about the kidney infections from holding your bladder, they talk about the dehydration, sometimes they’ll talk about the constant stimulation but only in coping methods: silent commutes home, disassociating during planning periods. But they won’t teach you how to find your softness, they don’t tell you it gets covered with armor you didn’t ask for, custom-fit but uncomfortable, hard to live in.

I got used to the way I was treated by our union president, a second custom armored suit that I did not ask for, an expense that wasn’t in my budget. I found myself having to don this armor far more often than my school armor. After every eruptive encounter it was always me that reached back out to repair and move the union relationship forward.

At the end of the school year in 2025, I answered a call and he started with “What does our contract say about summer school?” and I said “I honestly don’t know I’d have to look,” and he repeated the same question, with his voice raised, and I said “I think we have language around the selection process but that’s it? I don’t know, summer school is supplemental, aren’t you on your own?” He then asked “Then why did you post on [the Facebook Coalition page] asking about it?”

“I didn’t.”
“You’re not Kelsey Ann(e) on Facebook?”
“No, I’m Kelsey Gray. Ann(e) isn’t even my middle name.”

His tone switched, absent apology, and offered to be my ‘mentor’ at our national union assembly later that summer.

“The work can’t wait for my feelings to catch up” is what I would repeat to myself. It is not a mantra I recommend to anyone, but admittedly it is still a mantra I use.

Many times over the years many my fellow organizers would suggest we confront union leadership in a more public way, would suggest we start to tell other members what we were coming up against. I always rationalized a reason not to, I always came back to believing they would see the work we were doing, that our local union president would simply recognize the union that we have and start to respect us.

I knew how hard it would be when we finally went against our leadership. I knew I wasn’t ready to go through it, I kept getting just enough evidence that he still saw me as a person, still believed in the work we were building, I still had a few glimmering threads of hope.

Because I didn’t want to be union president, I wanted to teach members to and help members effectively organize. I wanted to continue to teach English Language Arts and bring more members into our committee, I wanted to strengthen our union into a member-driven force to be reckoned with in this city of corruption.

I would need my own solid evidence that our leadership could not be moved by worker power, I would need a clear point of no return to be willing to do the amount of work needed to reform our local union.

In August of 2025 I would be working through this tension with a mentor, a person who had reformed their union and now helps fellow educators around the country make their unions more democratic.

I said I was scared.
They asked What are you scared of?
After a few moments I said: I just don’t want them to come for me.
They said Kelsey, it sounds like they already are.

A month later, in September 2025, I would get my own solid evidence, my clear point of no return, which CORE wrote about. I share how I was treated during and after that issue in this coming Thursday’s post.

Shortly after the strike and I was appointed chair of the committee, but before the committee was full with others, I was asked at a union social event if I was interested in running for delegacy for our state union and/or national union.

I thought our national union was a colossal waste of time and energy, but I obliged to run as a delegate for the state union.

I didn’t have to be elected. I still don’t. The elections aren’t competitive, which makes them not real. Our local union, being quite large, gets several seats for representation in the state union. Our membership is so disengaged that we can’t even fill the seats, let alone have enough interest for the need for a real election.

Everyone who fills out the form to “run” is awarded the seat by acclimation, and every year there are several people that fill out the paperwork, get the seat, and then don’t even attend the event. They fail to represent their members.

Members are disengaged for good reasons. Working is exhausting, public education gets worse every year, and the state union does not serve as a means for change, it does not actually solve problems or improve our working conditions.

My first state representative assembly was incredibly boring and I audibly laughed when they followed up the union’s “land acknowledgement” with the pledge of allegiance and the star spangled banner.

The allegiance and celebration of the country that committed genocide of the people who were just “acknowledged” was a bit too much for me to stomach silently. Surely educators must see, hear, and feel the hypocrisy there, no? The latter negates the former.

I ran to be a delegate to the National Education Association, our national union, after the NEA union staff went on strike during the 2024 representative assembly in Philadelphia. I was viscerally appalled the institution I give my fucking money to would drive their own staff to a picket line. I read the staffers’ bargaining demands on their social media, they were far from outlandish.

But educators have so little, the boss (NEA) is able to use that to their narrative advantage. These people don’t deserve decent conditions or wages! Look at what you all have to suffer through! What’s more, I found my own local and state union’s silence on the staff’s picket line to be disgusting. So the following winter, when the delegate forms circulated, I thought okay, put me in, coach.

The last effort my union president and I collaborated on was, oddly, what became the start of a statewide caucus: Central Ohio Rank and File Educators. When we attended the first national organizing event for May Day, in March 2025, we started a mass mobilization effort together: we were going to lead a protest at the statehouse on May 1 for public education, and we were going to get as many locals active in the effort as possible.

Happening concurrently was our local union contract negotiation campaign. Just as it got off the ground, the Ohio legislature started pushing their biannual state budget bill through, which was defunding public education to the tune of $2.8 billion. We didn’t have a shot at a raise if our district was going to take a hit of that size.

Organizing that contract fight had its own set of problems, isolated from the state budget crisis. Our slate members talked about that on this podcast episode, listening there will supplement your understanding of how this compounds, should you be interested.

The local union president reached out to other local leaders, suggesting the organizing chairs get together with me and plan this protest. We needed as many locals and districts in on this as possible if we had a shot.

We were dead in the water, but I have a knack for getting people together and talking about how we can solve problems. I was back to my Big Green roots: holding weekly virtual calls to gather ideas on what to do.

I went with our local union president to meet with our state union leadership about the mobilization effort. I was, true to my nature, blunt about what I expected: this is what we’re planning, and I need you to stay out of it and let rank and file members come together and organize, it is the only way union work will be successful. I also told them both I had no interest in escalating to a position of power, I simply want workers to be able to gather and organize without leadership getting in the way.

“You know, it’s good that you tell people you’re not coming for their job, but you just shouldn’t do it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like that.”

I waste no time telling people in power exactly what I am doing and what my desired outcome is. This is for three reasons:

1. I think what I’m doing is a good because it will improve working people’s lives, and it is usually the work that the people in power are supposed to be doing.

2. I need to know if the people in power agree with what I’m doing or not. If they do, we can organize faster and with more resources. If they don’t, I will need to schedule some meetings and build an issue campaign, which demands more time, buy-in, and brass tacks organizing structures.

3. People in power don’t get to cry about it when I do exactly what I say I’m going to do.

I am aware that I can make people uncomfortable with this approach. For a long time I tried to sand down my edges to make it more palatable, but public schools are simply in too bad of a spot to be frivolous with time, children and educators are suffering. Members are generally either with me or not, and most of the time they are.

When there are people on the edges, or disagreement within, I thrive. I want to know, genuinely and quickly, what their hesitations are and why, because that is how you make any collaborative effort better: you collaborate, you adjust, you include. It is never just one person’s decision when you are organizing labor, if it is, you will fail.

But I have learned to identify the baseless hesitations that slow down organizing: I don’t smile enough, I’m not old enough, I don’t drink enough, it’s “not my time” (my favorite).

I don’t move in the shadows. I don’t move behind closed doors.

But I do move. And I’m not sorry about it. Things are too bad for children and families and workers for me to not organize for change, especially within the structure I pay to be a part of. The structure only works if there is movement, but it has been stagnant for decades, and sometimes I point that out.

So they put a spotlight on me, thinking it’ll blind me, make me sweat, make me run for cover. And I do sweat, but I don’t run for cover. I grab a microphone and I keep talking, even if my voice catches the shakes.

Through planning the May 1 protest I learned that I forget most union members have a different understanding of “organizing”. I call this the “omg organizing!” experience, which is they have done something within the structures of the institution that the union has labeled as ‘organizing’. And those ‘organizing’ tasks are not built on real connection, they are not built on solving the problems in our working conditions, and most importantly, they have no measurable structure tests or risk, there is no definable win.

That is the opposite of my organizing experience. I have, quite literally, only done high-stakes organizing. The kind that involves getting fired for wanting a union, the kind that involves testifying in court, the kind that involves a picket line, the kind that involves retaliation from your employer, the kind that involves retaliation from your union.

For a long time I did not realize the two kinds needed a bridge. If people were going to come over to the nitty gritty labor organizing, I was going to have to create the mechanisms so I could reach them, and they could reach me.

Organizing the May 1 protest started as a joint effort and ended with division. The protest was sabotaged by state union staff members, and recovered only because, when I was distraught over it happening, a dear friend and fellow organizer kindly told me to stop crying and start putting things in writing. “They’re doing this to you because they can. So show them they can’t.”

They’re doing this to you because they can. So show them they can’t.

When you organize well, you have the right people together, you have a team that can handle situations.

After the May 1 protest, I asked educators from other locals if they wanted to keep going. Did they want to fight for public schools in Ohio? And did they want to use our union to do it? N. phrases it as: do we want to actually use our labor union for what a labor union is for?

Did we want to fire up this group of people after they’ve been complacent for decades while our profession has backslid into the dredges of political corruption and oppression?

They did, actually. They were in.

I consulted the Association for Union Democracy for definitions, laws, books, and support on how to start a caucus. That is how the Central Ohio Rank and File Educators (CORE) was born. Four teachers from different unions sitting on a Zoom, exhausted at the end of the school year, committing to lighting our torches, mounting our ponies, and trotting into the darkness to fight for a better world.

Our next caucus action came in the middle of June. Our state union was doing absolutely nothing to fight the state budget bill. We planned another protest at the statehouse, but this time, inside the building.

We had the support of my local union president during the planning stages of this action, until he changed his mind. He cited that our state union’s legal department had told him they had concerns, though none of the concerns could be articulated.

The institution that was not fighting for us, nor were they going to support us in fighting for ourselves. With raised eyebrows, we made notes, and kept going.

This is why CORE is not technically affiliated with our state union. When you affiliate, they own you. They control what you can and can’t do, what you can and can’t say, and how you operate.

Productive caucus leaders will tell you this. The Association for Union Democracy will tell you this, it is not a secret. Caucuses that change how their union operates, that use a union structure to fight for workers and push for change, are largely not affiliated.

Three months later, sitting in a Governance Board meeting of my local union, a Governor will say she wants to help members start a special education caucus. She will ask leadership how members can do so, and leadership will not have an answer.

I will say, from my chair on the sidelines of the meeting, “You just do it” and she will quip back “My members want to do it the right way”. What she will mean by “the right way” is to be affiliated, and one year later, the affiliated caucus that was started will have done nothing, and CORE will have passed New Business Items for actual change, organize on our union’s national floor, and continue to grow our membership.

We issued press releases, made some social media videos, and billed our protest inside the statehouse as a “field trip”. We guided attendees as though we would students, stopping to read snipets of our favorite profound pedagogy theory, knocking on the doors of legislatures, and most notably, distributing our iconic burn book.

My local union president, while pulling our own local union support from the action, showed up to our protest. He thought it was a good action and enjoyed it; he would also properly ignore the fact it could have been much larger if he wouldn’t have pulled his support.

Two weeks later, at the end of June, our state union had a “rally for public education” on the steps of the statehouse. They paid the statehouse for a permit, for permission, to rally on the day the legislature was going to take nearly $3 billion from our schools. They are nothing if not consistent with their performativity, from land acknowledgements to rallies. But I went.

I spent the morning at the OSU Nurses Union informational picket, to as they were nearing a strike and garnering community support, before I went to the statehouse.

That is why, in this video from The Rooster, I’m holding a poster with a Venn Diagram of “Teachers and Nurses” working conditions that is nearly a single overlapping circle on one side and “Teachers <3 Nurses” on the other while scolding a legislator for torturing public schools.

When I sent the video to my local union president I felt the need to apologize for confronting such a monster in a union shirt.

That scenario is the personification of the relationship between me, my unions, and the politics that control us. The state union is paying the institution that oppresses us to gather outside their doors and speak softly about how “important” we are, while my local union president is there, albeit off to the side, and I am wasting no time getting to the actual decision makers, the people with power, calling them out for what they are doing: defunding schools, harming children, lying to the people and taking public services.

CORE grew in numbers over the summer, and the complicity in our unions became even more apparent.

That came to a head in October, when I attended an “Educator Town Hall” that my state affiliate put on with four legislators and was “moderated” by a union staff member. I not only wrote up an article for CORE about it, but I posted this video on my TikTok.

It was an epic crashout, it went viral overnight.

And it really pissed people off.

I thought about deleting it, and in the video I debate even posting it in the first place. But every single thing I say in that video is true. I’m not wrong, they just don’t like the way I say it. They just don’t like that I say it.

When we launched our campaign, at 5pm on January 5th, it took less than 30 minutes for someone to link that video on our campaign launch post on a ‘closed’ “[District] Coalition” Facebook page.

“I just don’t want someone like this representing me.”

Which I found kind of hilarious, because I have been representing members for years.

And we expected that. We talked about how to combat that video, if we combat the video, what we do about it.

I hate that Coalition facebook page. Many members do, we would hear that at school visits and in conversations with educators. Like the medium of Facebook itself, the page is sick with toxicity, bullying, and AI slop.

For months the toxicity firehose would be shot directly at me, dialed up to full blast. I would sometimes lean into my bathroom mirror, nearly touching myself nose-to-nose, look deep into my own eyes and coach myself.

“Do not let them bait you with this stupid shit.”

“They are 50 years old and cyberbullying, you are better than this.”

“Stay rooted in what you believe. Stay on message.”

The posts on the Facebook Coalition page were almost always lies. One post, from the page administrator, was several paragraphs long, saying that the language on the CORE website was divisive and “frames this moment as 21st century teachers needing to replace or push aside older educators.”

I commented and said I was troubled to read that was her takeaway, as the CORE messaging had been developed by educators from year 4 to retirees, and our slate itself was multigenerational! My comment got buried with “Very well stated”, “Well said”, and “Amen” from the usual haters.

I was never able to be visible enough on that page. It was the strategy that worked.

I wouldn’t be able to cry about it until now, until July, when I decided to write about it. I had to lay my forehead on my desk’s edge and sob.

At the time, it hurt so much that not allowing myself to feel it was the only way to survive the election. I spent months thinking that made me weak, and that was likely their intention. It worked. If it wasn’t their intention, I think that’s worse.

That is the culture in our union, the culture that leadership upholds and rewards. I think it is how they get through their jobs and knowing that no matter what they do, our jobs are getting worse.

They work incredibly hard, but they do union work in the only way in which they know how, which is to manage the decline of our public schools, the decline of our worksites, and the decline of our membership. I truly believe they know that, and that is why they are so hard, so cold, and so unwilling to feel.

And that’ll never be me.

The Facebook behavior hurt so deeply because none of them would say it to my face, despite having plenty of opportunities to do so. They hid behind their screens and keyboards and agreed in their groupchats on strategies, watched my every digital move, finding ways to bury me.

Our district had a week of snow days in January which was devastating to the campaign. I had building visits scheduled that I missed, most I wasn’t able to reschedule, members I’d never be able to reach. We held virtual campaign events in substitution. The first day went well and many members showed up, engaging in good faith.

The second day our opposition’s campaign committee co-chairs showed up — 9 of them, most of whom also serve on our union’s Governing Board. My heart slammed against my sternum as I clicked “accept” on every name, and I stared at our campaign flyer to steady myself.

When I feel backed into a corner I remind myself there is always more than one option out, I just have to look for it. To my left, I saw the option to be intimidated, to let tears swell up, to pray for the end of the event, to see my own failure reflected back at me through their presence.

My eyes stayed on that option, moving them was akin to ripping apart the velcro Command strips that hold a whiteboard to a classroom wall. But to my right, I saw the option to pitch a more productive union to people that are in power. I saw my one chance to show them who I am.

Despite knowing the room was filled with people counting on me to veer left, I went right. Only one person had their camera on and asked questions, and I do not believe it was in good faith. Everyone else had their cameras off and stayed muted, one person put a question in the chat toward the end.

Tiny black boxes with names of my biggest haters stared back at me while I gave my campaign pitch and fielded questions from their sole spokesperson. It was meant to remind me I was not good enough for them, they would not let me in, they were there to watch me, to make sure I knew they were banded together, they were circling their wagons.

Who does that? I think back on that specific experience even now and think, what the fuck? What kind of leaders behave in that manner? I was not engaging in my opponent’s campaign in that way, no one on our slate was.

Not only do I see that behavior to be cowardly, but I didn’t want to win votes that way. I wanted to win votes on our platform, on the vision of a stronger union. To do anything else was simply a waste of time to me, and I could not give one second to those tactics.

Despite knowing the above, and repeating it out loud to myself, their behavior hurt. Maybe that’s stupid, maybe I’m too soft, maybe that shows I was never good enough in the first place.

That night, as I laid on my right side ready to drift asleep, I cried. The first few tears fell and I could tell if I didn’t stop I would be sobbing myself to sleep. I got up, had water, and rummaged around in the cupboard next to the sink. I sat in the frigid darkness, watched the fireplace, and waited for the NyQuil to kick in.

But hey, that’s campaigning, baby!

Chris and I have talked about our “what if”s. What if we would’ve gone low, too?

What if we had pointed out most of the wins on their flyer was work we had done?
What if we told the truth about how our union president treated us?
What he said to us?
How he had treated our committee?
What he had said to me?

Because I wasn’t the only one, I learned this on the campaign trail. The behavior and treatment I was experiencing wasn’t necessarily unique to me, it had actually driven engaged members out of doing union work.

That kept me going.

But I didn’t know any of that on January 5th, and when my crashout video was the first thing they reached for on the Facebook Coalition page. I thought with a shrug, well, that’s who I am.

And when other people would say “But you’re so much more!” and I would say yes, yes, I am. But I am also her, and she is important.

I moved to Columbus from Denver in summer 2021. In Denver, I worked for billionaire Kimbal Musk (yes, brother of Elon) first at a restaurant called The Kitchen downtown on the corner of 16th and Wazee. It was here I met Z. Musk also has a nonprofit, Big Green (formerly The Kitchen Community, a national nonprofit but HQ’d in Denver) that builds, grows, and provides direct programming for edible school gardens. I bridged from the fine dining scene to the nonprofit, knowing it’d be my career pivot to classroom teaching.

While at Big Green, I started a virtual ‘coffee hour’ for employees across the nation that held my same position because, although we gardened in vastly different climates, we came across the same issues often, but didn’t really have an internal space to freely connect with each other.

So I made one, and people showed up. We talked about things we came up against in our work and how to handle them, from insects to handling 40 kindergarteners in a garden to how to deal with ultra-wealthy donors showing up to a Title I school to “watch” their pennies turn the world into a “better place” while their millions kept the working class suffering and ensuring the systems stay exactly how they are.

We tried to make our workplace better. We tried things regionally and would report back to each other how it went. We strategized and came up with ways to engage and use our voices in our nationwide calls. When that (inevitably) didn’t work, we disrupted. We stayed rooted in our principles and had solidarity with most of our managers.

I would come to learn, once I started teaching, this is a distinct and unique skill of mine. I am good at organizing ‘up’, I am good at organizing with my bosses. Unfortunately for my bosses, I am unmanageable. I’m great at my job because I love my job, and I’m more than competent on the distinctions between the rules, the norms, and the laws. I am also relentlessly true to what I believe in: our jobs need to be better, working people deserve more. These trenches are deep and they are wide, and if you are dying on the right hills, the people you need for the bigger fight will be with you.

The disruption led to severe retaliation. I quickly learned when you bark, they bite; so I bit back with the law. I filed three unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against my employer and, at the urge of and in agreement with my colleagues, contacted the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and said I needed help organizing a union.

CWA is where I learned what I had done at Big Green, and what I’ve actually done at every single workplace since I was 17, is a blueprint for labor organizing. CWA is where I learned the bullseye, where I learned power mapping, where I learned how to record and catalogue organizing information, and how to build and gauge escalating actions.

The Big Green union went public the same time I left to teach. Magically, the nonprofit restructured overnight and everyone was fired. Some signed NDAs and took a payout, some stuck it out for the long haul. The CWA took it to court, and it got rolled into the same case with my ULP charges. It took a year for us to take the stand but we won on everything: my 3 ULPs and an onslaught of charges from the union.

I moved to Columbus because of the contract my union has with the district. I knew if I was going to teach I needed a strong contract, and most teacher union contracts are public. I compared Madison, WI to Kalamazoo, MI to Columbus, OH and I became a buckeye.

So you can imagine that the first thing I did when I met staff at my new job was ask how to get involved with the union. It turned out our contract was expiring in just under a year and organizing to strike-readiness capacity was the goal. I volunteered for a highly visible organizing role that focused on the 18 high schools in our district.

Teaching is incredibly hard. The pedagogy and art of the practice is beautiful, and it’s what keeps people in it despite the conditions. But it not sustainable. It has a shelf life.

You are told you’re not doing enough while being tasked with the impossible: tackling poverty to appease a system that will keep sucking your soul, your blood, your tears, your money, energy, and joy. You will get much of that back from the job, because it is rewarding, it is incredibly special. But you’re running a deficit. It’s the ultimate bonk.

So when my union was hellbent on going on strike, I thought “Thank God!” And when I held that paper packet in my hands on a blistering Sunday in Huntington Park at the end of the a three day strike, my jaw dropped as I took in the ‘wins’, and I thought “Oh no.”

While I was campaigning for president throughout the buildings in my district, one of the most frequent questions I got was “What do you think of the strike?”. I have two answers to that, but my first and most important, is I would have made goddamn sure members had a chance to vote on the contract before being ordered back to work.

Our strike was three days long: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. When a conceptual agreement was reached in the early hours of Thursday by the bargaining team, members were told Thursday was a “remote work day” and to report to our worksites on Friday for a contractual workday; members did not gather to debate and cast a vote until Sunday. This makes the vote effectively performative.

Workers are not going to return to the picket line after returning to work for many reasons, the most glaring being optics to the public (students were told they’d be coming back to school, families now had the restoration of the reliable childcare), recommitting to withholding labor after setting up a classroom is emotionally impractical, at best, and we had already worked.

The workers who withheld their labor, who stood ignited with the power of solidarity despite being scared, did not get a say in whether the contract was worthy of coming off the picket line. To me, that is unforgivable.

And it doesn’t mean the bargaining team did a bad job.

It doesn’t mean I necessarily disagreed with the conceptual agreement.

It means it was undemocratic. The decision to return to work for 4,000 people was made by a group of 9.

To me, that, on principle, is wrong. And I’ve heard the reasons, oh good God I have heard the reasons for years, but it does not change that it was undemocratic. Workers had no choice, and that was communicated to us. The question “What if we vote no?” was not even properly answered at the ratification meeting.

I do not believe in taking votes or voices from members.

Workers are fit to run their own affairs1. It is that simple, and it is that deep.

When debate closed I was in line to speak at a mic, with a rally cry from the bottom of my heart, ready to go.

“Many of us unhappy with how this strike has ended, but we must keep going! We must continue to talk to each other, to build bonds, to keep pushing and making our schools better! We will be sad, for a bit, but we can do this! I know this because I believe in us! I still believe! Believe with me!”

But, of course, a mic strategy was being implemented and discussion closed. Despite our feelings, the school year was starting.

Our union president had made the decision to have an ad-hoc committee to “build an organizing culture in our union”. I threw my name in the ring for the Chair position and got it.

There was sizable division in our union in the aftermath of the strike, but I knew that if I could teach people how to organize, members could start to solve real problems, their worksites would get better, and we’d have a stronger union before we got to the next contract negotiation cycle.

The first year of chairing the committee I struggled to find anyone that wanted to be involved. Most people were burned out from the strike and barely survived the whiplash of returning to the classroom, many were done with showing up for the union; educators are also just very tired and very busy people.

The public sees us as enjoying summer break, unplugging for the holidays, and jet-setting to beaches the first week of April. There was a time when the breaks were enjoyable, holidays weren’t spent on the couch, and we could afford vacations. I’m deeply curious on when the shift happened, because that is no longer the sentiment at large.

Most breaks from school are spent trying to simply recover, often unsuccessful due to the looming anxiety of simply going back. The breaks aren’t long enough to recover, they’re not long enough to heal.

I have been chastised for saying such a thing from veteran educators. Why am I still doing the job if I feel that way? I should find another career if I’m “so unhappy”.

But I’m commenting largely on what I see around me, which includes older educators. During the campaign I was called “ageist”, that I didn’t respect older educators. But veteran educators are some of my favorite people to speak with, they always have been, I am a sponge to their experience.

I ask them to tell me about what teaching used to be, the sense of community that used to be alive in schools, the freedom to foster and chase curiosity in the classroom without the fear of walk-throughs, administrators, or violence. I ask them to share with me how they get through the years, what matters most to them when they think back on their years of teaching.

Seeing the profession free-fall into what it is now, over the course of a career, must be devastating. It would break my heart. They’ll often make jokes about it, and when they’re funny, I laugh. When they’re not funny, I give the laugh that acknowledges the pain behind the joke. I give the laugh that lets them know I see them.

And I thank them.

And later, when I write about what I learned from them, what questions have come up since, and ways we might be able to make education wonderful again, I cry.

I cry for them. I cry for me. I cry for educators between us. Keeping company with the tears is a flood of hope, of love, of gratitude, and anger. And fury.

The people that suggest I leave teaching are very few, but they share simple commonalities: people who have less than 10 years of teaching to go and are no longer in a student-facing educator position.

This is the biggest division of workers the boss has done to us: made up positions that are not full-time teaching or student-facing positions. Despite it being the biggest boss fuckery happening right in front of our faces, no one admits it, let alone challenges it. Making so many union members Teachers On Special Assignment (TOSAs) was the smartest way the boss pitted us against each other.

For non-educator readers, TOSAs have jobs that are (not always2, but often) a direct result of the privatization of public schools.

Curriculum companies (companies that create the standardized tests and sell school districts millions of dollars of test prep materials) along with the government have made testing so important that school districts have made up positions for educators to “support” various endeavors, whether it’s matriculation, Positive Behavior Incentives and Supports (PBIS: referenced as a “framework” but actually just a couple companies making billions of dollars off of student unhappiness because public schools operate as effective jails), or a ‘coaching’ position which is supposed to “support teachers”.

The problem with these positions is they take orders from the boss and then repeat those orders to educators, and in ‘trying to support’ educators to reach the boss’s goal, educators are told they’re not doing enough and receive directives from a colleague. These positions are essentially middle management, they create a hostile work environment and a natural division in the union.

Members have a very hard time splitting the position from the person, rightfully so, and even the TOSAs with the best intentions often fall privy to boss-like tactics. Some educators enjoy the break from the classroom and return when they’re ready; most stay in the position until retirement, and the rest become administrators.

That is hard for many to see. The knee-jerk reaction from educators is “Not all of us!” “I know one and they are great!” “You don’t understand my job!”. Those reactions, instead of pausing to assess the system at play and our roles in it, are a symptom of the system itself.

We are so exploited, so exhausted, so tired of trying our best and being told it’s not nearly good enough, that we punch back to survive, and instead of punching up for power, we punch across, at each other. It’s a coping mechanism, and it works.

We are all part of this system, and the more comfortable we get at talking about it, the better chance we have at overcoming it. But so few will talk about it, and people in power are not fixing it.

When I tried to bring it up, I was told I was dividing members. “I am not the one dividing the members, the boss has already divided them, we need to find a way to bring people back together!” was written off as naivety. The fear of losing dues dollars matters more than overcoming division.

During the campaign we had in-person events for members to get to know us, ask us questions, to share their work experience. At the first event, a veteran educator asked me flat-out “Why do you want to leave the classroom already?”.

It felt like the scene from Mean Girls, where Regina George says “So you agree, you think you’re really pretty.”

The fact that people thought I was running for president to escape the classroom is, oddly, the reason at the heart of why we ran: the classroom is unsustainable, and everyone knows. It is only a matter of time before you will want out.

I spent so much time, especially when I was put on leave, wondering if I was “ready” to leave the classroom. I’ve come to know that being “ready” isn’t a feeling, it’s simply a decision.

I had decided I was going to show our union members they had a choice in leadership. I had decided it would be time well spent to make our union more democratic, more transparent, to organize, to fight for special education and to fight for elementary educators.

The fact that Chris (for vice president, my running mate) and I were telling members we want to return to the classroom — we see term limits as imperative for leadership success, including and especially our own — was perhaps the biggest testament to who we are, why we ran, and what we are demanding from our union. It must always be working to improve the daily jobs of members. If elected and termed out, one should have a sigh of relief and think “I’m so glad this is better than when I left it”, not “Please God don’t make me go back there”.

We were comfortable saying “Hey, our jobs are getting harder every year, public schools are getting worse, there’s a different way to do this.”

And people absolutely hated us for it.

No, I will not stop rolling my eyes.

Yes, I have always been like this.

With any luck, I will always be like this.

I ran for president of my local union because I don’t believe the union is functioning as it should. If we have to fucking work, if we must spend five out of seven days of our weeks and all of the weeks of our months and all of the months of however many years we live on this planet we are readily and properly destroying, we might as well be able to fight for work to not fucking suck.

And work for public school educators sucks.

There’s a groupchat that will call me anti-union for having the audacity to type such a sentence for the internet to read; it’s the same groupchat that said I was “too pro-union to be union president”. For the collective better and for the idiosyncratic worse, I am nothing if not audacious1.

I ran at the head of a reform slate in the 2026 elections for my local union. On the day voting opened, February 23, 2026, I was pulled from the classroom and put on administrative leave. My employee misconduct form was swiftly leaked to the local press. My district investigation was scheduled for Friday, March 13th, the day immediately following the finalization of the election results.

My investigation interview was one of the first places I drove my new old car. Because like appliances that my mom says break in threes my reliances, in winter ‘26, broke in thirty-threes. My lawyer called on the way with a reminder: the investigator is there for the district and a piece of advice: answer clearly, and only with certainty, and did I understand what that meant?

I thought about the first candidate debate.
Their Facebook posts.
The second candidate debate.
My videos.
The years of struggle that led to this bigger struggle.
How the bottom row of eyelashes are tiny spears when they’re sopped.

Yes, I told her, yes I understand what that means.

The room was tiny, so sterile a jar of cotton balls and tongue depressors surely belonged at the edge of the sink, the walls themselves seeped with scandal from ECOT, painted and rebranded to now deal with me.

The table is far too large for the space, yet just 4 chairs, meant for the 4 people, and did I need coffee? It’s not good, she says, but it’s something. No, thank you, but my lawyer did, she had a long drive. Did my union rep need a cup? She asks with a chuckle because no, he didn’t, but he knew where the pot was because he’s here often, and the prolonging pleasantries are funny. Oh, and did I need water? No, I didn’t, thank you, and if I changed my mind it was just down the hall. Was I ready? Was everyone ready? Okay, everyone’s ready, we’ll go ahead, we’ll get started.

She knows it’s in my statement but she wants to know, she wants to hear it from me, did I help students protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

And now we’ll watch the video. And actually we’ll watch it twice, and then a third time we will rewind it to just a certain part, and watch that again.

“Do I need to point out that [the bulk of this] employee misconduct form is a lie?”

“I know. Why would [someone] write this? Why would [they] set you up?”

My union rep wants to know, is the investigator kidding? Is she aware of the grievances I’ve filed and won over the past four years? Is she aware of the cease and desist letter that was sent [when the regional superintendent interrogated me when I organized members]? Is she aware of the Unfair Labor Practice [filed and won against when School Board Member Michael Cole came into my building and screamed at me during the workday]? Is she aware [of the conditions I’ve endured to win protections for members]?

And does she know that I was running for union president, does the know about the timeline, and does she know about the local news? Those words stay on the back of my tongue because my union rep has shown me they don’t belong in the room. My lawyer has shown me they don’t belong in the room.

My lawyer that I had to advocate to get. My lawyer that my union office said I wouldn’t need. My lawyer that E had to remind me I needed.

“Kelsey! Snap out of it! You need a lawyer! You need to fight! Kelsey, you are under attack! Wake up! Is this how you beat Kimbal Musk? Kelsey!”

My blue eyes searched E’s and no, no, this was not how I beat Kimbal Musk. No! This is not how I beat Kimbal Musk!

I was home by 11:00 in the morning after my district investigation interview. The investigator had told us the allegation was wholly unfounded and she would be putting that in writing before leaving her desk that day. It was a priority for her to do so, she had said, as she was leaving for spring break with her kids, who are in a different district, and we all wanted me to return to work as soon as possible.

At home I sat on my couch, still donning my coat and snow boots, focused on the ticks or tocks from the clock hanging above the door. How long was I going to sit there? How long could I sit there? How long was I capable of just sitting, and could I count up to one thousand ticks or tocks, should I put on a record to fill the room?

But I couldn’t move, not to untie my boots, not to put on a record. The laundry list of grievances, organizing campaigns, marches on the boss, of speaking truth to power held new meaning. No longer victorious in nature, now axes with blades of submission.

Because if my employer was willing to do this to me, someone who they knew would speak out, who would organize, and would win, what in the proper hell were they doing to other employees?

But they struck at a time when my union office was against me, and not afraid to show it. It was not lost on me that all people in positions of power: my building administration, my district administration, my union administration leadership, had a tangible and direct gain from me being assigned to home.

I would go on to refresh my work email several times that day, after I found the energy to untie my boots and hang my coat, waiting for the directive to return to room 113 at 7:15am Monday morning, but it would never arrive. Despite the charges unfounded, the district would keep me from my classroom for an additional four weeks.

But I didn’t know that yet, so I sat there, bones far too heavy to do anything but sit on my couch and stare at the roaring gas fireplace, and as the flames reflected in the depths of my pupils I would wonder if this was my Icarus moment.

Most people who reference Icarus aren’t actually familiar with the story, and instead rely only on the moral, that his arrogance flew him too close to the sun and his wax wings melted. But if I was going to be Icarus, who was Daedalus, who had made my wings? Who was King Minos, who locked me away, and what is the Labyrinth, which I know the secret to, and are the billionaires the Minotaur or is it capitalism itself? Is the Labyrinth the structure of paid-dues organized labor, or is there a version where it is collective class consciousness?

One thing often properly ignored when referencing Icarus is this: he flew.

***

This is the first piece in a series of six. They detail my experience being a rank and file union member, a high school English teacher, a labor organizer, a reformer, a failure, a friend, a dropout, and a believer.

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