Weingarten is no different than any other teachers’ union head. That is to say, she is interested only in her members.
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten insisted that “we have to get this done.”
“Take me at my word,” she implored.
I hope you didn’t.
In a glowing New York Times profile published on Monday, Weingarten was in damage-control mode. The pandemic has made plain what has always been true: Teachers’ unions are a destructive force in our politics, and worse, our children’s lives. The piece, given the embarrassing headline “The Union Leader Who Says She Can Get Teachers Back in Schools,” includes a smorgasbord of weasel words meant to provide Weingarten and her organization political cover. A few selected examples:
“Schools will reopen. Maybe within 100 days. Certainly, it is imperative things be ‘as normal as possible’ by the fall, Ms. Weingarten said.”
“She reiterates that schools do need to open back up, in person, as soon as possible. She just hopes the country can give her, and Mr. Biden, a few weeks — or maybe months — to make it happen.”
“What she needs, she said, is just a bit more time to bring her rank and file along with her. ‘I’m confident that we will overcome the fear,’ she said. ‘But it’s not going to happen in two-and-a-half nanoseconds.’”
Nothing Weingarten has done is admirable or impressive, so the name of the game is nebulousness. “Schools will reopen,” but the timeframe is unclear. Sometimes it’s within 100 days (does she mean schools will be open as traditionally understood, or once a week as President Biden has suggested?) Sometimes it’s in a “few months.” So, May? A few weeks before her union members return to their regularly scheduled three-month vacation? Sometimes we can only hope to be approaching normality, like an asymptote, come September. What’s important to remember is that it cannot be done in “two-and-a-half nanoseconds.” Come now, be reasonable.
Weingarten is no different from any other teachers’ union head. That is to say, she is interested only in her members. Children are not a secondary concern to her, they are an obstacle to her objectives. This fact should help to explain why on Tuesday, only one day after the Times published its puff piece, she demanded that Washington, D.C. close down entire schools for cleaning if even one of its attendees tested positive for coronavirus. That is to say that schools should, for all intents and purposes, be permanently remote.
We have become so accustomed to the craven greed of people like Randi Weingarten that all it takes for her to receive fawning press coverage is a vague commitment, contradicted by her own actions 24 hours later, to returning to schools at some unspecified point in the future. Weingarten is not only willing to pass on the entirety of the costs of the pandemic — mental, emotional, and even physical — from her members to America’s children, she’s eager to do so. Shame on Randi Weingarten, and her enablers.