05.07.2025

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Stop the grandstanding: Frustrated Bay State teachers want to stop union’s leadership from bloviating on hot-button international and political issues

State teachers’ union bosses have earned a well-deserved rep for radical political showboating.

Now, dissident members of the Massachusetts Teachers Association want to put the kibosh on it.

Jewish and non-Jewish teachers from schools across the state put forth a series of proposals at the MTA’s annual meeting last weekend that would rein in the propensity of the union’s leadership to sound off on hot-button international issues.

Over the last 18 months, leaders of the Massachusetts Teachers Association have come under fire for anti-Israel statements and the promotion of classroom materials on the Gaza War that were extremely biased against Israel, and, in some cases pretty clearly openly antisemitic.

Protestors outside last year’s MTA annual meeting

A pair of teachers, one from Malden and the other from Billerica, called for a “neutrality policy” that would prohibit union leaders and reps from the MTA from taking “official positions on matters related to geopolitics, foreign policy, or global conflicts.”

The MTA’s leadership sparked a furor in December 2023 with a resolution, two months after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, that called for “an end to our government’s complicity with Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza.”

The neutrality policy was debated but ultimately voted down.

A similar item called upon the MTA to “reaffirm its primary mission” while refraining from endorsing or promoting political positions that fall outside of education and labor issues.

“Local teachers are really getting sick of the MTA’s grandstanding,” one union member told Contrarian Boston.

Teachers from Newton and Watertown called for the removal all curriculum materials posted online by the MTA on the Gaza war and the conflict in the Middle East.

Last spring, the MTA came under renewed criticism for hosting a professional development workshop on Gaza that not only was heavily biased against Israel, but also included classroom resources that included some arguably antisemitic materials.

After coming under fire from a state legislative commission on antisemitism, the MTA has pledged to pull some of the materials, including a “replica of the Star of David made out of folded dollar bills” and “a poster featuring a hand grabbing the tongue of a snake that read “Unity in Confronting Zionism.’”

One of the offensive images that the MTA included in its listing of resources for teachers looking to learn more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Meanwhile, the proposal to remove the controversial curriculum materials, as well as a couple of similar items, were not voted on at the annual meeting but are expected to be debated by the MTA’s board next month.

“The curriculum resources have divided our union, marginalized our Jewish members, and painted a very poor picture of the MTA within the Commonwealth and in the media,” the proposal states.