Attack on teachers 'never been as bad as right now': Q&A with a teachers union leader

As another school year begins, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, is acutely aware of how difficult the past few years have been for parents, children and teachers.

An ongoing pandemic. School shootings. Culture wars.

"I know teachers are burnt out. I know parents are still overwhelmed. I know kids are anxious," said Weingarten, who has led the AFT, America's second-largest teachers union, representing 1.7 million members, since 2008.

"We know those problems exist. We know the politics have really hurt the teaching charge. We know people left the school year last year. But teachers want to teach, and kids need to learn. And so that's why we're kind of back to the basics, about reading, writing, math and science, and how we create joyful, welcoming, safe environments."

Weingarten recently met with USA TODAY's Editorial Board to discuss the AFT's "What Kids and Communities Need" campaign and take questions on a range of topics.

This conversation has been edited for length, style and clarity.

In the aftermath of the horrible Uvalde tragedy, we saw our first major legislation passed in this country for gun safety in some time. Did that legislation go far enough to promote security in our schools?

The most important part of that legislation was the fact that the federal government did something. But no, it didn't go far enough. We need to do much more. But it's really important to do something and to start somewhere to develop the muscle of democracy – that we the people, representative democracy, can actually really try and solve problems. And so I do think that that law will save lives. But we need to get AR-15s and AK-47s, and these weapons of war, off the streets. They're different than muskets. Good guys with a gun cannot stop a bad guy with a gun. We saw that in Uvalde and what happened to those kids and those teachers. We are opposed to arming teachers with guns. We think that's a really terrible idea, and I don't think you need to get to the first time that some horrible thing happens for people to understand what a terrible idea that is.

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How worried are you that AFT could get stuck in the mud of outrage politics in a way that undermines other priorities?

It doesn't matter what I say or what we say as the AFT. The extremists on the right wing hate unions, and they really hate teacher unions. They really hate the fact that we're trying to help kids figure out how to think, not what to think. They're going to attack us regardless. But we have to talk to people, we have to engage with people – even people who don't agree with us. The way they try to undermine me personally is to say, "What does she know about education? She doesn't have kids." They're going to do whatever they're going to do, and part of what our job is is to help create a welcoming and safe environment. That's part of the reason why we said to our members that we would have more of a legal defense fund, so that they knew we had their back, if they taught honest history and they tried to act in the best interest of children. Our job is about what kids need, what communities need. Because when you're doing that, you're also doing what your members need.

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Do you have any regrets for not advocating in a stronger fashion for a faster return to in-person learning?

What I regret is COVID. What I regret is the fear. What I regret is the misinformation. Would I have liked us to have a crystal ball, and know then what we know now, so we could have been more firm about saying, if you do X and Y and Z, we can reopen schools in person? Yeah. Because I think that being in person is most important.

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Do you expect to see a lot of strike activity as the pressures continue to percolate and salaries continue to stagnate?

Strikes are a last resort. You don't go on strike or threaten a strike unless you have exhausted all other possibilities. I think that we are seeing is a lot of teachers, like a lot of parents, want to get back to as normal as possible and have a stable, supportive environment and solve the problems and be problem solvers. There are exceptions to that rule, but that's what you're seeing a lot all over the place. Then you have a strike in Columbus, because there's been an expired contract, and the things that the teachers were trying to get, including lower class sizes and ventilation systems. The ventilation systems are going to be a bigger and bigger deal, particularly because of climate issues.

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Being a teacher used to be a profession that was respected and revered. All of a sudden, or maybe not all of a sudden, teachers are now public enemy No. 1. From your perspective, when did that shift begin and what prompted it?

I'm a public school baby. I was the daughter of a public school teacher. My grandfather escaped Russia while he was in college in Ukraine because of repression, and wanted his daughter to be a school teacher, and she did. I started representing teachers in New York City as a staffer in 1986. What you had for teachers for a long time was a Mother Teresa attitude that they were really wonderful people. Then they were wonderful women. And then, when they started actually wanting some power, it challenged authority in a lot of ways, since they were women. And when they started wanting to have economic power and a fair wage, it challenged a lot of things around the country. Still, it didn't get into the politics. The politics changed in the 1980s and the 1990s. You saw the politics of we versus them. But it's never been as bad as right now – where it's not just political, it's cultural. People had a different view of how to do education, but there was not this attack on people's basic humanity. This is really new.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: From COVID, gun safety to culture wars: Q&A with teachers union leader