Just when you thought teachers unions couldn’t make themselves look any worse in response to the coronavirus, they go and one-up themselves.

Previously, I reported on a stunt perpetrated by the Washington D.C. union, which used body bags to act as if teachers would drop dead if they dared to return to work. Of course, as I’ve also reported on, these teachers unions want to get paid their full salaries and benefits while not doing their jobs.

But now, they are taking it up a notch. They don’t even want full-time distance learning.

“Many teachers’ unions, while concerned about the safety of classrooms, are also fighting to limit the amount of time that teachers are required to be on video over the course of a day.” https://t.co/u6y1CfyMNf

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) July 30, 2020

Teachers in many districts are fighting for longer school closures, stronger safety requirements and limits on what they are required to do in virtual classrooms, while flooding social media and state capitols with their concerns and threatening to walk off their jobs if key demands are not met.

On Tuesday, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union raised the stakes dramatically by authorizing its local and state chapters to strike if their districts do not take sufficient precautions — such as requiring masks and updating ventilation systems — before reopening classrooms. Already, teachers’ unions have sued Florida’s governor over that state’s efforts to require schools to offer in-person instruction.

So let me get this straight. They want full pay, full benefits, don’t want schools to open, and don’t want to even have to work full-time to facilitate distance learning? It’s almost like these “essential workers” aren’t essential at all, even in their own minds. At this point, why not just fire them all and move on?

The fact that we’ve set up a system where teachers can hold children hostage until their “key demands” are met is absolutely ludicrous. Public sector unions are a plague and that becomes more and more obvious every single day. It’s really hard not to takeaway from all this that teachers simply don’t want to work. If they are going to protest having to do a full day of distance learning in districts that don’t require them to return to school, they are asking to get paid full time for a job they aren’t willing to even do. What other profession would allow a person doing that to remain employed and on the payroll?

Meanwhile, there are threats of strikes if they don’t get their way, which will only further escalate the situation and (hopefully) turn the public against them. If there was ever an example of overplaying one’s hand, this is it. Parents are reaching the end of their rope. We’ve been told for generations that public education is a necessity that must not only be maintained, but that it should dominate the education sector. The ending of charter schools and private schools has become dogma on the left, for example.

But now that people have made public schooling so integral to their lives, they are having it used against them when they have no other options. A parent who works 9-5 can’t continue to not have a school to send their children to, nor can they properly supplement their eduction because some teachers don’t want to teach.

It’s a bad situation and one the country never should have let themselves fall into. Empowering these unions was a mistake and one that should be rectified in whatever ways possible. If governors or local officials have the power, they should fire striking teachers. Enough is enough.