This May Day, public education is anticipated to draw national attention — this time, in the streets instead of the classrooms. Labor union demonstrations are expected to halt educational instruction nationwide to celebrate International Worker’s Day, commemorating the 1886 campaign that established the eight-hour workday (a celebration that has long been tied to the Soviet-era).
The National Education Association published a May Day Solidarity Toolkit, encouraging its affiliates to organize and participate in strikes condemning the Trump administration and billionaires for their alleged defunding of schools. Yet, according to the U.S. Department of Education, public school revenues continue to reach all-time highs, with average pupil revenues nationwide increasing 1,000 percent over the past 80 years, adjusting for inflation.
Perhaps the most extreme case of May Day demonstration involving educators is anticipated in Chicago, the home of America’s third-largest public school district.
In April, the Chicago Teachers Union requested a non-instructional day to allow its members to partake in the city-wide protests. The new CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Macquiline King, was reluctant, but the union and the system ultimately reached an agreement, turning May 1 into a civics instruction day. Students are expected to receive civics lessons in the morning designed around the NEA’s political ideology. In the afternoon, school buses will transport both teachers and students to the Union Park rally. Both groups are being exempted from repercussions related to missing work or truancy laws. District parents who have grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of say in their children’s education have hired an attorney and threatened legal action.
The broader question: Why is public-sector advocacy displacing the core function of public education itself?
Illinois is one of the three states, alongside Hawaii and Pennsylvania, where public unions enjoy both a protected right to strike and compulsory collective bargaining with binding arbitration. Arbitration for public unions is generally seen as a trade-off for a ban on strikes because it guarantees a union contract. Yet, with the assurance of a union contract, a moral hazard emerges because members can engage in reckless demonstrations for unrelated causes — as seen in Chicago.
Suddenly, Clark County is not too different from Chicago. Although the Clark County Education Association officially disaffiliated from the Nevada State Education Association and the NEA in 2018, its priorities have not.
In the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 161. It grants teacher unions the protected right to “almost” strike. As adopted, the bill shifted away from traditional punishments for strikes — such as dismissal, contract cancellation or wage withholding — and instead introduced financial penalties against the union organization. The statute allows fines of up to $50,000 per day against an employee organization and up to $1,000 per day against responsible officers.
To illustrate how tiny these numbers are in the budgets of Nevada’s teacher unions, the association’s Strategic Horizons PAC donated $500,000 to state Sen. Rochelle Nguyen’s campaign in February. Not surprisingly, Nguyen was the legislator who sponsored SB161. Just in 2026, the secretary of state’s records reflect additional $450,000 donations to various PACs.
However, the concern is not the financial capacity of unions such as the CCEA, rather the structural imbalance. Teacher unions in Nevada were already guaranteed union contracts through arbitration. Who is to say that they would not abuse their new striking privileges on May 1 as well? The status quo will eventually turn strikes from a last resort into routine activism. Nevada may soon sense the urgency to redefine the power balance between school districts and teacher unions.
The challenge is simpler than it sounds: Public education was once about preparing students for success, and it can be again.
Anahit Baghshetsyan is a policy analyst at Nevada Policy, a free-market think tank. Geoffrey Lawrence is the organization’s director of research.
