Union Boss Randi Weingarten Blames Trump Administration for Keeping Schools Closed
Despite substantial evidence that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) wielded significant influence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) February 2021 guidelines that halted the reopening of U.S. government schools, the union’s president Randi Weingarten appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic this week and blamed the failure to reopen schools on the Trump administration.
“Right-wing press and Republicans in Congress want you to think that I tried to keep schools closed,” Weingarten tweeted following her testimony.
“Start in April 2020 I fought to reopen schools,” she claimed.
https://twitter.com/rweingarten/status/1651705705668198400
In July 2020, as The Guardian reported, Weingarten torched the Trump administration’s plan to reopen schools the following fall as “reckless,” “callous,” and “cruel.”
The COVID subcommittee ripped Weingarten’s claim that her union “fought to reopen schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“It’s hard to run from the truth,” the subcommittee tweeted, observing it “has the receipts.”
https://twitter.com/COVIDSelect/status/1651665507903217664
The hearing identified the major findings regarding Weingarten’s and the teachers’ union’s influence over CDC’s decision not to fully reopen public schools for in-person learning, even as private and religious schools in the United States had already fully reopened, as had many public schools in Europe:
CDC gave AFT uncommon influence over its school reopening guidance
AFT fought for an automatic “trigger” to close schools
She [Weingarten] has CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky’s direct line
https://twitter.com/COVIDSelect/status/1651332314243252232?s=20
https://twitter.com/COVIDSelect/status/1651650273620664326
Weingarten stated in her prepared testimony:
We did town halls with President Trump’s Surgeon General Jerome Adams as well as Dr. Anthony Fauci. We did town halls with the National PTA and other parents’ groups, and with mental health experts such as Dr. Pamela Cantor. Our town halls drew tens of thousands of participants. We met via Zoom with parent groups that often disagreed with us on COVID-19 safety measures and school closures.
…
We did all this work… yet Chairman Wenstrup, you and this Subcommittee are focusing on a few sentences in the CDC’s 38-page Operational Strategy. Not the relentless efforts and numerous steps the AFT took to reopen schools safely. Or our members’ work to help young people recover from trauma, depression, fear, isolation and other effects of the pandemic, including learning loss.
“We did this work as President Trump failed to produce a coherent school reopening plan,” Weingarten claimed.
CNN’s Scott Jennings blasted Weingarten following her testimony when both appeared on a panel on CNN Tonight.
“[S]peaking on behalf of millions of American parents, I have four at home,” Jennings said. “I had to teach them at home; my wife had to teach them at home. I am stunned at what you have said this week, about your claiming to have wanted to reopen schools.”
Jennings continued:
I think most you'll find that most parents believe you were the tip of the spear of school closures. There are numerous statements you made over the summer of ‘20, scaring people to death about the possibility of opening schools. And I hear no remorse whatsoever about the generational damage that's been done to these … I have two kids with learning differences. Do you know how hard it is for them to learn at home and not in a classroom that was designed for them? And for you to sit in front of Congress and the American people and say, “Oh, I wanted to open up the whole time.” I am shocked. I'm stunned. I'm stunned, and there are millions of parents who feel the exact same way.
Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) responded to Jennings’ confrontation.
“This hits close to home. My wife is a public school teacher and we have three daughters in grades 3-8,” LaLota said. “Remote learning and school closures had a detrimental impact, Randi Weingarten and the AFT ignored the science to keep schools closed. Our children deserved better.”
https://twitter.com/RepLaLota/status/1651934007448293377
Education economist Harry Patrinos noted that “school test results are still lagging behind pre-#Covid levels – only 20% of the decline in pass rates have been recovered.”
https://twitter.com/hpatrinos/status/1649402857366454272
In her prepared testimony, Weingarten also mentioned physician and epidemiologist Dr. Tracy Høeg, who had been a participant in an AFT panel on COVID safety in schools.
Weingarten stated:
One of those Zooms included Dr. Tracy Hoeg, one of the witnesses at your hearing last month, who was quite complimentary at the time about the work we were doing. We heard each other out and talked things through. We need more of that in America.
Høeg, however, tweeted a thread in which she explained Weingarten misrepresented results of her study, published in January 2021, at CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
“Today in her congressional testimony [Weingarten] mentioned our Wisconsin study in [CDCMMWR] multiple times as evidence schools needed ‘layered mitigation’ to reopen,” Høeg said. “She also mentioned me in her written testimony. This statement & her interpretation of our study are incorrect.”
The study found low levels of COVID transmission in schools and no known transmission to teachers, and Høeg noted in her thread, “I don't agree w/how our study & I am being used to make it seem we needed more mitigation before full reopening; no-in fact the *delay* that was perilous.”
“The fact the [CDC] was taking the advice of the [AFT] & not the scientists publishing on this topic in their own journal and without considering the data from Europe seems to have played a role in the massive error that left millions [of] US kids out of school unnecessarily,” Høeg added in her thread.
https://twitter.com/TracyBethHoeg/status/1651410633160814592
https://twitter.com/TracyBethHoeg/status/1651410624323387392
Evidence showing the teachers’ unions’ significant influence over the Biden CDC’s guidance on school reopenings has been mounting.
Americans for Public Trust (APT) shared documents this week with the New York Post that highlighted Weingarten’s major input into the CDC’s final guidance.
APT tweeted Thursday Weingarten claimed the Biden transition team “solicited school reopening advice directly from the union.”
https://twitter.com/apublictrust/status/1651710814943068160
The Post noted the documents showed Weingarten “spoke twice by phone with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in the week leading up to the Feb. 12, 2021, announcement that halted full re-opening of in-person classes — including the day before the guidance was released.”
House Republican leaders previously discovered in March 2022 that the CDC “coordinated with unions at unprecedented levels to keep kids out of school.”
“We now know Biden's political leadership at CDC let unions impose line-by-line edits,” tweeted then-House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) regarding a GOP report that revealed a CDC official had confirmed his agency coordinated with teachers’ unions at an “unprecedented” level to create the CDC’s school reopening guidance.
https://twitter.com/SteveScalise/status/1509162639192174598
“Randi Weingarten colluded with the Biden administration to put politics over science, threatening the wellbeing of children,” APT Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland told The Post. “Her multiple calls, emails, and non-scientific recommendations to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and her team illustrate the level of dark money influence that was allowed to shape school reopening policies.”
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