House Republicans venting their anger
to the leader of the second largest
teacher's union in the country.
On Capitol Hill
this week, Republicans
allege that
the union and others
worked
with the CDC
to keep schools
closed longer
than necessary amid the COVID pandemic.
But did HFT ever provide
suggested revisions to the CDC's
operational strategy regarding school
closures or reopenings?
Did you
suggest revisions
to their operational strategy?
What we suggested, sir, was ideas.
I'm a member of Congress
that sits on two committees
that deal with this, the CDC.
I don't have a direct number
to Director Walensky.
Do you
I do not talk to represent.
You have the gov
you have a direct number to to.
Director Walensky,
do I have Director William Ski's direct?
No. Yes. Yes.
I have director of Wetlands,
his direct number.
Well, hopefully
she'll give it to me, too.
So I've been to some weird hearings
in this Congress, Mr.
Chairman,
but this one might be the weirdest
because it's
convened in order
to accuse a federal agency
of the crime of consulting
with American citizens.
Randi
Weingarten is the president
of the American Federation of Teachers,
and she joins me now.
Randi, great to have you here.
Basically,
it sounds like what they were saying
was that you had undue
influence on the CDC
to make policy,
I guess, about when schools would reopen.
What's your response to that?
So, you know, we represent teachers
and nurses.
We're actually the fastest
growing nurse union these days.
And with the Biden administration
coming in,
they wanted to reopen schools
more fulsomely.
We wanted to reopen schools
more fulsomely.
And we said during the transition,
you need to have clear
scientific based guidance
that people can understand.
I mean, most of us are not scientists.
So And and what we were getting for
the months
beforehand was unclear and unhelpful.
So you needed the resources
for things
like ventilation
masks, the things that you know,
and in a respiratory disease
that's not seen, you could have
that would help people testing.
And you needed clear guidance, Scott?
Yeah.
We don't know each other,
but speaking on behalf of millions
of American parents, I have four at home.
I had to teach him 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.
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 them the whole time.
I am shocked.
I'm stunned.
And there are millions of parents
who feel the exact same way.
Okay. Go ahead. Right. So
I don't
know you, sir, and you don't know me,
but I have worked for the last
20 or 30 years
helping kids every single day.
I've been a school teacher.
I've been a union leader.
I knew
and understood the importance
of reopening schools
and the importance of making sure
that people were safe.
And poll after poll
that we did have parents
and I spent a lot of time with parents,
said that they basically understood
and supported that we needed to do both
I'm really sorry.
You think parents
wanted to keep the kids?
Nobody wanted to parents.
Nobody wanted to keep you in keeping in.
Why did we fail?
How did Europe
and the rest of the civilized world
get this right? And we failed.
They had the
how did they
how does that help the schools in Europe?
That opened sooner than we did
and most of them did.
Had the mitigating circumstances,
had the mitigating strategies
that we were just talking about.
And it wasn't negotiable.
It wasn't.
Oh, well,
it's inconvenient to have six feet
or it's inconvenient to have mass.
They had these things.
And the other thing they did,
and I don't know if was right or wrong,
the other thing they did
is they prioritized schools
over commerce.
They prioritized schools
over bars and restaurants
and things like that.
They did
Let me let me jump in
because I respect with Scott
saying obvious.
I come at it
from a slightly different perspective,
having three children
also in public school in New York,
just outside of New York City.
And we
we sort of dealt
with the cards that we were
we were handed.
What I want to ask
you, Randi, is when you look back
and obviously we all know about hindsight
as a parent
on the
outside looking in
my sense of the situation was always
this is because the teachers
and the adults
around are
are more
afraid of this virus than the kids.
Because as we found out fairly quickly,
we knew that children weren't going to be
that affected by this particular disease.
And so from
from my perspective,
it seemed like
this was coming from the teachers
and the leadership on their side saying,
hey, this isn't safe for us.
It's not safe
for our family members,
for the community.
Is that what drove
you think, the decision to play it
extra safe
when it came to allowing the kids
to go back in the classroom?
Well,
I think the problem is
that teachers actually teach kids.
So if it wasn't if if I mean, look,
at what happened in Omaha from
when we were able because of testing,
we're able to actually keep schools open
some schools shut
when there were too many teachers absent.
But we were able to keep schools open
because we understood and use testing
as a way to do that.
So I think what happened was that
people were fearful.
You're absolutely right. But
even though thank God
kids didn't get as sick as adults,
adults were getting sick
and adults were dying.
And so we were trying to figure out
and I'm not saying that.
Look, there were people
all across
America who were taking different
positions and,
you know, I was at the left,
including some of my members,
and you saw some of those things.
But we were trying to figure out
what were the mitigating strategies
that were needed to keep schools open.
And that's
what you know,
and and that's what we tried to do.
From April 2020.
And what I produced,
I went
and I testified in Congress
yesterday voluntarily, and I produced
much documentation
proving
all the things that we tried to say no.
That's why
I keep on using
the form of administration
because frankly,
Governor Hogan, Governor Cuomo,
Rockefeller Foundation,
lots of governors,
they were working
in a really different way.
Than the Trump administration was.
And the Trump
administration did a great job
in terms of vaccines,
but in terms of giving people
the kind of guidance to say
to do what Europe did, we didn't get it.
And that's why in this
the investigative book
that just came out yesterday,
what they said was if we had gotten
that guidance,
that stockpile of guidance,
we would have been able
to open up earlier
and we just didn't get it, Randi.
Thank you very much.
I'm thank you for answering
all of our questions.
We really appreciate you being here.
You know,
the subject is not easy for a lot of
for everyone.
But the bottom line is now
why are we not
doing everything we need to do now?
Yes, that has
and that is
and that's what,
you know, I'd like to have seen
one question from the
Republicans that questioned me yesterday
for 3 hours about what we need to do.
Now, that's a great point.
And yes,
we do need to get ahead of this next one
and not just be reactive.
Thank you very much, guys.