Cartel Academies
Contemplate for a moment an inner-city Oakland middle school of ninth graders. Within the classroom, three to four substitute teachers attempt to lead a class of thirty-three students armed with cell phones, social media accounts, and gang memberships. Students in inner-city schools are frequently recruited into cartel gangs by the age of 10, and tragically, coined as “disposable assets.” The intoxicating combination of cell phones and gang memberships creates classroom turf wars, which rage on social media throughout the day. Students do not learn to read, write, or do math but instead finesse the art of virtual gang wars, which inevitably escalate and cascade into their neighborhoods after school.
Additionally, students actively use cell phones to answer classroom packet instructions, while photographing and filming each other and their instructors throughout the day. AI allows students to alter and manipulate these clips, which can land on social media accounts within seconds. As many as 130 student cell phone users may photograph and film a teacher in one working day. Instructors attempting to establish order and discipline in the classroom will encounter student (gang) derision, including open swearing and thrown objects. It raises the question, “What self-respecting person would choose teaching as a career and subject themselves to such conditions?”
California is suffering a teacher crisis and has a shortage of 100,000 educators. Despite attempts to simplify the credentialing process to address the situation, the CDE cannot attract enough qualified teachers and instead relies on legions of substitutes. Cartels exercise such tight control over students that school administrators often become powerless to help or even protect teachers, let alone substitutes hired through recruiting agencies, which require them to waive most protections and rights to recourse. A credentialed Oakland teacher stated, “They send substitutes into these war zones completely unprepared, like lambs to slaughter, and incidents occur because gangs have trained the students on how to play them. Our school has gone through hundreds of substitutes this year, hundreds.”
Randi Weingarten will tell you that the reason for the decline in teachers is low pay; perhaps there is a measure of truth in that statement. However, the union boss hasn’t grasped that public school teaching could lead to significant personal and professional liability, especially within inner-city schools. In this context, everyone loses except the recruiting agencies and cartels. What remains is a staggering waste of human potential.