I sometimes joke with parents that I spend so much time teaching kids tennis, especially during the summer, I forget how to talk to adults. But, please hear me out in this letter.

Incidentally, the Victoria tennis team has captured first place in over a half dozen tournaments this year. That includes first place in virtually everything during the Hays High invitational a few weeks back. A good case could be made this is the best VHS team in the past 10 years — a really good sports story that local media chooses to ignore.

I have a vested interest in kids as a parent, grandparent, great grandparent and educator at all levels of education before retirement. I retired from Mesa Community College in Arizona after 35 years as an administrator and counselor. I am also a volunteer tennis instructor, point being, I am still actively involved in the lives of young people.

I read recently where many teachers belonging to the National Education Association were upset that the NEA was backing Democrat Hillary Clinton for president. Come to find out many teachers want to back socialist and atheist Bernie Sanders instead. Are you kidding me! Socialist (even communist) organizations came out of the woodwork to support Obama’s two runs for president and will do the same with Sanders, or for that matter Hillary or even Biden.

To me, it is incomprehensible why so many teachers are liberal in their political beliefs. I don’t understand it and will explain.

For as long as I can remember, and once an NEA member myself, this huge union organization has contributed a fortune every year to the Democrat Party. The American Federation of Teachers is no different.

Let’s look at some facts as we contemplate this picture of far too many teachers supporting liberal causes and that’s not to say we don’t have teachers that are conservative as well, but it appears more lean left. At the college level, a conservative professor is an endangered species.

Not in your wildest dreams are the parents of school kids mostly liberal, especially if it is a household with a mother and father. More are conservative. Teachers with one ideology versus most parents of another belief strikes me as a huge dichotomy.

Do we really want our kids growing up where their lives have been mortgaged to the hilt by a liberal president who spends money like it is water? How are our kids going to pay down a national debt approaching $19 trillion?

Do we want our kids to grow up thinking it is OK to snuff out the lives of their poor defenseless unborn babies? Recently, 177 Democrats voted in Congress for infanticide, which our president also supports. God help us!

The Democrat Party took the word “God” out of its party platform, and its liberal secular agendas are an assault on this country’s Christian beliefs — and that’s a fact.

Add to all of that, we have historic records of people out of work, record numbers living in poverty, on food stamps, etc. I fear for all our children as Obama coddles a religion that says openly “death to America.” Nothing will change with a Clinton or Sanders or Biden as our next president.

Nationally, our public school system is in a shambles and teacher’s unions are at the forefront of the many problems. I suggest readers research the runaway liberalism taking place in some of our schools nationally. Our great local school systems are a whole different story! And, by the way, our U.S. Department of Education is also a liberal entity.

True that these unions have the backs of teachers and that’s the main reason so many pay dues. The problem is that the unions will sue school districts to retain a teacher even if incompetent. Good teachers don’t need the NEA or AFT protecting them. And, why should conservative teachers pay dues to an organization that supports one political party only?

I would like to see liberal teachers rethink their ideology, and I urge parents to be vigilant about what is being taught to their children. Kids getting caught up in all this runaway liberalism will destroy this country.

God bless our teachers, parents who believed in the sanctity of life, and most of all, God bless our nation’s young people.

Les Knoll lives in Victoria and Gilbert, Ariz.