Teachers union leader calls for ‘fully reopening’ schools this fall

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American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called for schools to reopen full time and in person this fall and set out a multimillion-dollar outreach campaign to coax families back to campuses, as President Joe Biden’s administration presses for a quick resumption of regular classes.

The chief of the 1.7 million member labor group said political pressure from Republican lawmakers didn’t factor into her school reopening call to the AFT on Thursday. Nor, she said, did any new conversations with Biden’s administration about school reopening during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She instead cited expanded eligibility for coronavirus vaccines, her own visits to schools carrying out federal safety guidance for reopening, plus hundreds of billions of dollars in federal aid now being delivered to K-12 schools.

“Between the vaccines, the mitigation, the collaboration, and just being in school — you saw a formula for how to create the trust and transparency that was necessary to get everyone back,” Weingarten told POLITICO.

“It wasn't any new conversation with the administration that led to this speech. They did what we asked them to do, which we thought would actually be key to reopening,” she said of Biden and the White House. “I watched those things in action, and that created trust.”

Those circumstances mean “nothing should stand in the way” of fully reopening public schools this fall, Weingarten told her members.

Labor groups and governments still face a stiff challenge: federal data show public schools have largely reopened for some form of in-person learning, but often not on a full-time basis and with few students of color in classrooms.

Weingarten’s announcement followed what she described as separate briefings about her planned remarks with First Lady Jill Biden, herself an educator, and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

The AFT’s larger counterpart, the National Education Association, of which Jill Biden is a member, also suggested it supported Weingarten’s message.

“NEA supports school buildings being open to students for in-person instruction in the fall,” union President Becky Pringle said in a statement following Weingarten’s remarks.

“Educators will continue to lead in making sure each school has what it needs to fully re-open in a safe and just way and to ensure the resources exist to meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of all students,” Pringle said.

But Weingarten’s reopening call went beyond restarting in-person classes. She endorsed new efforts to help students recover from missed classroom time, including robust summer learning initiatives and high-quality tutoring programs, and she called to reshape public education in line with longstanding union policy demands — such as smaller class sizes, expanded curriculum, bolstered school staffing and overhauled approaches to standardized testing.

Weingarten is also promising to roll out a $5 million union effort that resembles a "get out the vote" effort, but for school reopening.

The union released new polling results Wednesday that concluded 73 percent of parents — but only 59 percent of Black parents — said they are comfortable with in-person learning for their child this fall. By contrast, 94 percent of parents (and 87 percent of Black parents) said they’d be comfortable with in-person learning this fall if schools adopt safety measures such as mask-wearing and physical distancing requirements and make Covid-19 vaccines available at school buildings.

“We know how to engage members, we know how to gauge communities,” Weingarten said. “But we want to make sure the locals have the funds to do that.”