What Do Abortion and Felon Voting Have to Do with Teaching Kids?
VEA’s post-election statement shows where the teachers’ union’s priorities lie—DEI issues that “advance collective bargaining.”
I spent years on a Virginia school board, and I’ve experienced firsthand the teachers’ union’s far-left ideology. This week, the group declared its beliefs out loud.
The Virginia Education Association (VEA) issued a press release on November 4, 2026, celebrating voters’ “approval of constitutional amendments protecting reproductive freedom, securing marriage equality, and automatically restoring voting rights” to felons. It even admitted to supporting the legislation that put the amendments on the ballot.
What do those Democrat-led amendments have to do with public education? The VEA’s answer is that these issues “matter to our members and school communities.”
Amendment 1 permits unrestricted abortions until birth. Amendments 2 and 3 enshrine gay marriage and gender ideology into the Virginia Constitution and restore felon voting rights.
The VEA said in its press release that 21 candidates supported by it or its affiliates won—not one Republican is included in the announcement. It also bragged, “These victories create an important opportunity to advance collective bargaining.”
As a former elected school board member in Virginia, I know firsthand that the VEA’s agenda is social justice activism, not improved academic achievement.
The VEA Platform
In my experience, teachers’ unions remain focused on leftist indoctrination and serve as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. The union’s goal is to control the minds of America’s children, so it can control the future of our nation.
The VEA supports letting boys compete in girls’ sports and use girls’ locker rooms. It also supports providing sexually explicit books to minors.
Restoration News previously exposed the radicalism on display at the VEA’s 2025 conference. A keynote speaker was a “non-binary” author whose X-rated books are found in schools across the nation. Topics covered at the event included political advocacy and activism for educators, fostering an environment where “diverse families” are valued and understood, and “supporting transgender humans in school settings.”
Union members and supporters regularly attended my school board meetings, demonizing conservative board members for opposing racist diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agendas that separated children by the color of their skin.
Parents Beware
During the COVID-19 nightmare of forced online schooling, parents got a glimpse of what children were taught in classrooms across the nation. It was shocking. Government schools taught students a demeaning narrative of “white privilege” and that America is a systemically racist country. Leadership told teachers to admit their racial biases and that classroom instruction must include “culturally responsive practices”—a phrase aligned with cultural Marxism.
After the COVID shutdowns, parents fought back against these harmful agendas, and I watched my school board flip from far-left control to a conservative majority. Yet, in the most recent election, voters seemed to forget the damage caused by Democrat-led school boards across the nation.
With more far-left, union-backed candidates winning school board races, I fear these dangerous cult-like ideals will return. Forced teacher unionization, also known as collective bargaining, will place more burdensome costs on America’s taxpayers. Diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives will reappear to sow division rather than unity.
The VEA’s press release makes its priorities clear: it is centered on abortion, gender ideology, and forced unionization, rather than on classroom results. Parents and taxpayers who care about academic achievement should pay attention to who runs their local school board and which organizations back them. Show up to board meetings, and demand to know what is being taught in the classroom and whether outside unions have access to your schools.
School board elections are often overlooked. When voters stay home, organized self-interest groups, like the VEA, fill the vacuum. Restoration News is exposing radical school board members and employees across the nation through its newest project, District Watch. Check it out. Our children’s education and the nation’s future are too important to ignore.
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