By Printus LeBlanc

Every day tens of millions of Americans send their children to school, entrusting the safety and education of their blood to the school system. It has become increasingly apparent education is not the top priority for the school systems, but indoctrination has. A slew of undercover videos recently released now make it seem like not only are the children being indoctrinated; they may be in danger from the very people charged to protect them. Are taxpayer-funded teachers’ unions covering up crimes being committed by its membership?

Despite what the leftist propaganda puts out there, teachers’ unions are not concerned with children. They do not care about the children, it is about the money, and former National Education Association (NEA) General Counsel Bob Chanin explained it best stating, “Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas; it is not because of the merit of our positions; it is not because we care about children; and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child.”

He continued, “The NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them; the union that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.” It is pretty obvious education isn’t the goal, but power is.

Now, thanks to real journalism conducted by Project Veritas, it appears teachers’ unions in New Jersey are covering up crimes. The second video shows the Union City Education Association President, Kathleen Valencia, admitting a teacher had sex with a student. Valencia stated, “This file right here is from a teacher who had sex with a student. This file is about whether or not the teacher gets to keep his pension. Is he going to jail? No. How come? Because the child’s not pressing charges. There’s no proof.” Doesn’t sound like the union has the best interests of the child in mind does it?

While admitting she is covering up sex between a teacher and student, Valencia goes on to instruct the undercover reporter on how to cover up the assault of a student at the hands of a teacher stating, “Did the kid’s parent come in? No? Nothing happened… There’s no video? Nothing happened… [The teacher] is fine.”

Valencia continued the cover-up stating, “I’m going to get your brother a lawyer. Your brother’s not going to admit anything happened. The only witness is the scumbag kid… he’s got a record.” Is this what education looks like?

One might ask, why do unions do this? The answer is simple, money. Lots and lots of money. Teachers unions are a multibillion-dollar business, with tens of millions in political donations going to the Democrat Party. According to Dropout Nation, the two largest unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the NEA, spend roughly $700 million per year on a broad spectrum of political activities. The Democrat Party does not want to lose that gravy train. This is why the left has been dead set against any reform of any kind. It is safe to say; the Democrat Party would find it extremely difficult to operate nationally without the taxpayer-funded unions giving them money.

The Department of Justice should immediately move to investigate. If the words of the union president are true, she could be guilty of several crimes, including conspiracy and obstruction of justice. If multiple people within the union and the school knew about the incident, they could also be charged with conspiracy. What about the rest of the students? If this is being covered up, is the teacher still allowed to be around students?

This video just exposes the latest failure of the U.S. education system. Perhaps the unions are the reason test scores have been stagnated for decades. Maybe if the unions spent more time educating children and less time covering up the crimes of its members they could improve on only 35 percent of 8th graders were proficient in Reading, and 33 percent were proficient in Math.

Printus LeBlanc is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.