(Madison Hirneisen, The Center Square) – Reports that a Calif. school teacher who was aligned with Antifa was paid $190,000 to resign this year are sparking outrage, leading critics to say it reveals the strength of California’s teacher unions on public education in the state.
Information obtained by the Sacramento Bee revealed that former Inderkum High School teacher Gabriel Gipe was paid $190,000 to resign from his post. According to the Bee, the payout was taxed, and the final check totaled $100,000.
Gipe, an AP Government teacher, was secretly recorded saying he had 180 days to turn his students into “revolutionaries,” as revealed in a Project Veritas video released in Sept. 2021.
The conservative organization’s video release sparked intense backlash, and the district announced that it planned to fire Gipe within a few days of the video’s release and started compiling a dossier outlining the evidence against him, according to multiple news reports at that time.
The school’s investigation revealed that Gipe rejected the regular AP Government curriculum and “instead led freewheeling lectures about communism,” the Bee reported.
School district Superintendent Chris Evans told the Bee that the decision to pay Gipe came down to “basic math.”
“[Calif.] is not an easy place to fire a teacher,” Evans told the Bee. “I think everyone knows that.”
The school district’s costly payout for Gipe to resign sparked backlash as reports began circulating. Critics say that the situation highlights how difficult it can be to fire teachers in Calif. due to the power of teacher unions.
“For years teacher union bosses have manipulated their government-granted monopoly control over schools to shield bad teachers from any sort of accountability to parents or taxpayers,” National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix said in a statement to The Center Square.
“In such an environment, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when school districts have to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to oust teachers who are flagrantly abusing their power to harm students.”
Mix claimed that the case is an example of “why it is time to eliminate the monopoly bargaining power enjoyed by teacher union officials.”
The Right to Work Foundation was one of two legal nonprofits to usher through the lawsuit that eventually became the landmark U.S. Supreme Court opinion Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.
The opinion found that forced public union dues, and fair share fees, were a violation of a worker’s 1st Amendment right of association.
The Calif. Teachers Association and Natomas Unified School District did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Center Square.
