NYT
May 13, 2021 8:25 AM ET
Randi Weingarten, president of the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union, plans to call on Thursday for a full reopening of the nation’s schools for the next academic year, saying: “There is no doubt: Schools must be open. In person. Five days a week.”.
Teachers’ unions have been one key barrier to a broader opening this school year, accused of slowing reopening timelines as they sought strict virus mitigation measures, even after teachers began to be vaccinated in large numbers.
“It’s not risk-free,” Ms. Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has 1.7 million members, plans to say, according to the remarks. She is expected to argue that the health risks can be managed through a range of practices some of them relatively simple, such as masking and handwashing, and some of them more difficult to achieve at scale, such as decreasing class sizes to maintain distance and procuring additional spaces to meet
America Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten joins The Story to discuss the return to in-person school
EXCLUSIVE: Top Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees on Wednesday called for an investigation into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after emails showed the nation s second-largest teachers union lobbied the agency on school reopening policies.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, House Oversight Committee Ranking Member James Comer, R-Ky., and House Education and Labor Committee ranking member Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. penned a letter to the CDC accusing them of putting political obedience to Democrat-aligned special interest groups ahead of our nation s youth.
Five Things To Watch For In The First Official Mayoral Debate
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Eight of the leading Democratic candidates running to become New York City mayor are scheduled to take part in the first televised debate of the campaign season on Thursday, May 13th. Broadcast on NY1 and WNYC from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., the debate is the first of three that have been planned by the Campaign Finance Board.
Eric Adams, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Ray McGuire, Dianne Morales, Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley, and Andrew Yang will be participating. NY1’s Errol Louis will serve as a moderator, while WNYC s Brian Lehrer and The CITY’s Josefa Velasquez will join Louis as panelists.
Turning to Weingarten, MacCallum pressed:
“You can see why that would lead people to think that you all have a lot of muscle over at the White House when it comes to reopening our schools.” The hackish union chief desperately tried to deflect blame by attacking Donald Trump: “I begged the Trump administration to do exactly what the Biden administration did, which is real safety guidance, that Trump – that the former president didn’t mock every other day.”
MacCallum wasn’t buying it:
So you’re saying, yes, the Trump administration was very aggressive. They wanted to get kids back in the classroom. And one of the reasons they wanted that was because