American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last Wednesday and shamelessly tried to revise her history of being a staunch proponent of keeping public schools closed during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. While there, she also tried to justify the teachers’ union’s consultation with the Biden administration’s CDC on guidelines for reopening:
In response, Weingarten stood firm that she considered all factors when making her recommendations, with her ultimate goal being to safely open schools as soon as possible with the health of teachers and students in mind.”We knew that remote education was not a substitute for opening schools, but we also knew that people had to be safe,” she said.”It made sense to consult with the CDC. And it was not only appropriate for the CDC to confer with educators, it would be irresponsible not to,” she said.
She also played revisionism games on Twitter, but Community Notes fact checks kept being added to her tweets:
Others reminded people of some of the nasty teacher union tactics that were on full display during the reopen schools debate:
Twitter user PoliMath also composed a lengthy thread containing numerous tweets Weingarten had posted slamming Republican governors for in her view reopening schools too soon, while at the same time praising then-NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo for keeping things shut down. Here are a few of them:
To read the full thread, click here.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) went off on Weingarten’s “rehabilitation tour” as well:
Weingarten appeared on CNN Thursday to resume efforts to revise her history, but didn’t count on Kentucky Republican Scott Jennings confronting her over her falsehoods:
“We don’t know each other, but speaking on behalf of millions of American parents — I have four at home, 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 said during the segment, according to a recording from Mediaite.“I think you’ll find that most parents believe you were the tip of the spear of school closures,” Jennings continued.“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 kids. 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, ‘What? I wanted to open them the whole time,’” he added. “I am shocked, I am stunned. And there are millions of parents who feel the exact same way.”
Watch:
Something else to keep in mind when one listens to Weingarten and reads her tweets is that in her pointing to videos showing she advocated for schools to reopen, she doesn’t tell people that she routinely said one thing in public and did another when the cameras weren’t rolling:
Weingarten’s insistence that she supported school reopenings is like Leonardo DiCaprio insisting that he was actually on the Titanic: She was simply playing a role. She and her subordinates at the AFT correctly surmised that parents wanted their children back in schools and told the public what it wanted to hear — that the AFT was doing everything it could to get students back in class. Yet at the same time, the union worked at every level to keep schools closed and, even after they reopened, to give unelected bureaucrats the power to close them again.The AFT based its 2020 reopening plan on demands for $750 billion in additional funding, limits on student testing, and the suspension of teacher performance evaluations. Once President Joe Biden took office, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky broke her pledge not to allow “political meddling” in the development of school reopening guidance by sharing the draft guidance with Weingarten and her political cronies weeks before its release in February 2021. Walensky then edited the CDC’s guidance to include the AFT’s demand, nearly verbatim, that school reopenings be delayed or reversed if positive tests began to rise in a given area.The AFT’s local affiliates worked hard to make such delays a reality. In fact, research points to local teacher union strength as a prime indicator of whether schools were closed to students.
Randi Weingarten can try to run away from her record all she wants to. Unfortunately for her, though, the facts don’t care about her feelings.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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