AFT Prez Weingarten Outlines Legal & Strike Strategy to Resist Unsafe School Re-Openings – Payday Report
AFT Prez Weingarten Outlines Legal & Strike Strategy to Resist Unsafe School Re-Openings
As the recession delivers severe budget cuts to education, many teachers are worried they won’t be able to re-open schools safely, which has left some considering the possibility of a strike.
Given the physical distance needed, teachers are considering the “hybrid basis,” of teaching as the best model for re-opening, says American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten about teaching in a combination of online and in-person instruction.
“Our members understand that in-school teaching is really important and with the safeguards we have been pushing since April, 76% of them were comfortable with re-opening,” says Weingarten, referring to one survey released earlier this month the AFT where 76% of teachers supported some form of school re-opening if it could be done in a safe and effective way. Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, however, dropped a bomb on teachers last week while teachers were hoping to negotiate a contract over re-opening safely.
They threatened that if schools didn’t re-open this fall that they would lose their federal funding.
Trump and DeVos’ threats came on the heels of many teachers fearing that they don’t have enough resources to open schools.
“We are seeing states project 20% budget cuts on schools when we know that to re-open safely, we need 20% more,” DeVos said, explaining that no new state aid would be needed to bolster the revenue loss.
“What Trump and Devos did was open the floodgates, which where our members before were very focused on having safe conditions because people want to start school because they want to be back to school with our kids,” says Weingarten. “But Trump and DeVos basically eviscerated any trust that anybody has in the federal government.”
Weingarten says that neither Trump nor DeVos has a re-opening plan for schools.
