In front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Wednesday, Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teacher’s union in the country, gave a masterclass in revisionist history, a special presentation in Gaslighting 101. Weingaraten repeatedly told members that despite the fact that most schools in America remained closed for two full years, she fought to reopen them.
Weingarten’s brazen lies and refusal to acknowledge the incredible physical, emotional, and academic devastation children endured due to her directive to keep schools closed demonstrates the importance of keeping our nation’s leaders honest and accountable.
Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer explained the reason for the hearing meeting plainly: “Our kids are behind,” he said. “We're trying to find answers. We want to prevent this problem in the future.” Comer and other Republicans seemed to be the only ones trying to get to the bottom of the issue, an unfortunate feature of post-pandemic accountability.
“We spent every day from February on trying to get schools open. We knew that remote education was not a substitute for opening schools,” Weingarten said.
This statement contradicts Weingarten’s own actions and positions.
In 2020, she called attempts to reopen schools in the fall, “reckless, callous, cruel.” Her union pushed aggressively at the local level to keep schools closed, and in fact, in many large cities including Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., labor groups refused to reopen deeming it unsafe for teachers.
In California, teachers refused to reopen, holding school buildings as hostages, until local officials met their demands. Schools in areas with high union influence remained closed longer than other schools did and have even continued into 2022, long after the entire world has reopened and moved forward.
At one point during questioning, Weingarten admitted that the pandemic had created “terror” in New York which seemed to direct her own policy decisions. While much of the world felt fear in those first few months, data soon came pouring in that should have mitigated some of this.
At least when it came to schools, children were hardly contracting COVID, much less dying from it. The numbers were minute: 0.01 percent. The risk assessment was incredibly low but adults in powerful leadership and administrative positions still acted like this was not the case.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) asked if Weingarten was familiar with the early data showing such little transmission of COVID in kids. “Sitting here today, I don't know how many [kids died] in that age group.”
Miller-Meeks knows and so does the Center for Disease Control, as well as many other people who can read the myriad of data available to them.
“The answer is zero,” Miller-Meeks says.
Despite schools being closed, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) reminded Weingarten that the American Federation of Teachers received nearly $200 billion from CARES and yet little was spent on reopening despite the fact that private schools began to reopen. Another travesty of government-sponsored socialism gone awry ‒ and during a pandemic at that. Who would have guessed?
In 2020, at the directive of Dr. Anthony Fauci, which trickled down to Randi Weingarten, state governors, and other powerful administrators, schools were closed and masks were mandated. In many states, schools remained closed for two years. In some fortunate Republican-led states such as Texas and Florida, schools reopened after a couple months.
The results of school closures were disastrous, even with attempts to facilitate virtual learning. The Washington Post reported many of our nation’s students were falling behind academically–especially poor kids. NPR reported that 4 of 10 teenagers didn’t even engage in virtual school.
The Centers for Disease Control found that suicide and depression rates among kids had sky-rocketed, and kids already at risk for abuse and neglect were now even more so, with no option to attend school. In Las Vegas in 2021, there were so many teen suicides as a result of schools being closed and kids being shut off from the world that the districts reopened just to mitigate them, science be damned.
There’s a disturbing pattern among leaders such as Fauci, Weingarten, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and more to ignore what happened during the pandemic, even though they must surely know their decisions were reflexive, crowd-sourced, and harmful. Rather than rely on data, they gave in to fear; rather than examine risk, they yielded to union pressure; rather than allow people to make choices, they succumbed to authoritarian measures.
We now know, and we even knew this as early as summer 2020, that one of the worst things we could have done to our children was pour sand in their skateboard parks, shutter schools, close playgrounds, and cut them off from sunshine and fresh air, friends, teachers, and their school routine.
Republicans keep harping on Weingarten because it’s vital she take responsibility, submit to accountability, and admit she was wrong. If she doesn’t, how will she keep from repeating the same mistakes? How will the rest of our leaders?
