American Federation of Teachers union president Randi Weingarten testified before the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic this week. But if you think this means she’s finally taking any responsibility for keeping children out of school, you’re wrong. Instead, Weingarten frequently filibustered her answers with teacher union propaganda. She actually said, “We need to put JOY back in school” while her own union teachers are just trying to survive the fallout of closing schools.

For example, Baltimore has 23 schools with 0% proficiency in math. How does any teacher overcome that—they’re not magic. Infinite ESSER funds cannot make children proficient overnight after historic learning regressions. 

And even worse, using ESSER funds for CRT, anti-bias training, and DEI does not help kids—it hurts them by detracting them from recovering reading and math proficiency from closed schools. They should spend every dime on high-dosage tutoring, extended school days, and expanded summer school programs.

In particular, woke restorative justice practices only exacerbate the out-of-control discipline issues, threats, and physical violence against teachers after kids were isolated through school closures which have now led to half of teachers reporting a desire to quit. 

The goal of the hearing was to create a protocol that protects children in another pandemic. How about prohibiting private special interest groups with ethical conflicts from consulting with government agencies if they stand to benefit from policies that harm the American People? I don’t see the Environmental Protection Agency consulting Exxon Mobil in their policies. Likewise, the CDC shouldn’t consult with the teachers union which employs no doctors, epidemiologists, or immunologists. 

Ironically, some teachers union members got school choice during the school closures. My school district stayed open during covid. To accommodate teachers who lived in other school districts with closed schools, my school allowed their teachers to transfer their own kids from closed schools to the open school where they taught. 

This sounds very reasonable and necessary to keep a school open—you need teachers coming to work and not staying home with their kids to keep the school open. 

But teachers union members—at least some of them in Rhode Island—got special teacher union deals to escape their own closed school and come to an open school for free while the rest of us peasants watched our kids sit on computers becoming depressed, fat, and suicidal. 

Watch me explain in a Fox Business interview with Kennedy:


So you have one teachers’ union working with the CDC to close schools and another teachers union making backdoor deals to immunize their own union teachers from the consequences of the closed schools the teachers unions’ supported. 

Teachers unions get to both influence policies that harm kids and also make backdoor deals that immunize teachers union members from the consequences of those harmful policies. 

It makes one wonder how many other school districts in the country allowed union teachers to escape closed schools. I encourage parents to submit public records requests for all Memorandum of Agreements (MOAs) with teachers unions since 2020 and find out the truth in their school districts.