A lovely story out of San Marcos, California, where high school teacher Alissa Piro was remotely teaching one of her classes via Zoom earlier this year. One of her students apparently made the mistake of bringing up a lawsuit that had recently been filed seeking earlier lifting of COVID restrictions and a return to in-person learning in the classroom. This clearly didn’t sit well with Piro, who went off on the students in a tirade about how “sick” she was parents trying to tell her how to do her job and so forth. I immediately found myself wondering if she was a union representative but that wasn’t specified in the report. She clearly has some anger management issues that she needs to work on, however. (Fox News)

In a video shared on Facebook, San Marcos High School teacher Alissa Piro can be heard raising her voice at several seniors during a virtual lesson over Zoom…

“If your parent wants to talk to me about their profession and their opinion on their profession, I would love to hear that…,” she says.

“However, if your parent wants to come talk to me about how I’m not doing a good enough job in distance learning based on what you need as an individual? Just dare them to come at me. Because I am so sick to my stomach of parents trying to tell educators how to do their job.”

The video isn’t of the best quality because it was filmed by a parent using their cell phone to record the student’s screen during the Zoom call. It’s available in this tweet from a group fighting to have the schools reopened. You’ll want the sound on, of course.

Newly released video of a @SanMarcosUSD HS teacher going off on students and their parents over distance learning and other issues. Originally posted to FB. Apparently this is a common occurrence. pic.twitter.com/pjEN80kLNh

— Reopen California Schools (@ReopenCASchools) April 12, 2021

To her credit, toward the very end of the clip, Piro does offer something approaching an apology for raising her voice, but it’s a little late by that point. Everyone is under a lot of stress these days, including the teachers, I’m sure. But so are the students. Perhaps this was her way of preparing the young man for the future when he would have to deal with short-tempered, hysterical adults?

Once word of this incident leaked out, another parent reportedly claimed that Piro had previously taught her daughter’s class in elementary school but had been fired. Assuming this is true, whatever prompted the dismissal clearly didn’t prevent her from landing a new job at San Marcos High School. Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that she was fired at all. It’s nearly impossible to fire a teacher for anything in this country.

It clearly was Piro’s union, however, that was involved in fighting back against the lawsuit seeking to reopen the schools. When the original move to reopen was announced, the union pushed back and insisted on a hybrid model where students would attend class two days per week and learn remotely for the other three days. That sort of program does little to no good for either parents or students. When the parents moved to take the matter to court, the union responded by saying that such a court order would represent “judicial overreach.”

Interestingly, the mother of another student in the same class claims to have brought the video to the attention of school principal Adam Dawson several weeks ago. Dawson allegedly described Piro’s behavior as “inexcusable” and promised to “address it.” But it appears that no action was taken. Color me shocked… shocked, I say.

We have the CDC and HHS saying that transmission rates of the virus in schools are quite low and can be managed. Teachers are being allowed to jump the line to be vaccinated all around the country. Too many parents are at the end of their ropes and too many students are falling behind at an alarming rate. Everyone is ready for this to be over. And the only thing standing in the way are the teacher’s unions.