[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                  THE CONSEQUENCES OF SCHOOL CLOSURES,
                        PART 2: THE PRESIDENT OF
                  THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS,
                          MS. RANDI WEINGARTEN

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

            SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

                                 OF THE

               COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 26, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-26

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability
  
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]  


                       Available on: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov
                             
                              __________

                                
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
52-121 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2023                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------     
                             
               COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                    JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman

Jim Jordan, Ohio                     Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking 
Mike Turner, Ohio                        Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona                  Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of 
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina            Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin            Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Gary Palmer, Alabama                 Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Clay Higgins, Louisiana              Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Pete Sessions, Texas                 Ro Khanna, California
Andy Biggs, Arizona                  Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Nancy Mace, South Carolina           Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Jake LaTurner, Kansas                Katie Porter, California
Pat Fallon, Texas                    Cori Bush, Missouri
Byron Donalds, Florida               Jimmy Gomez, California
Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota        Shontel Brown, Ohio
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania            Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
William Timmons, South Carolina      Robert Garcia, California
Tim Burchett, Tennessee              Maxwell Frost, Florida
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Lisa McClain, Michigan               Greg Casar, Texas
Lauren Boebert, Colorado             Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Russell Fry, South Carolina          Dan Goldman, New York
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida           Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Chuck Edwards, North Carolina        Vacancy
Nick Langworthy, New York
Eric Burlison, Missouri

                       Mark Marin, Staff Director
             Mitchell Benzine, Subcommittee Staff Director
                        Marie Policastro, Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5074

                Miles Lichtman, Minority Staff Director

            Select Subcommittee On The Coronavirus Pandemic

                     Brad Wenstrup, Ohio, Chairman
Nicole Malliotakis, New York         Raul Ruiz, California, Ranking 
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa           Minority Member
Debbie Lesko, Arizona                Debbie Dingell, Michigan
Michael Cloud, Texas                 Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
John Joyce, Pennsylvania             Deborah Ross, North Carolina
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Robert Garcia, California
Ronny Jackson, Texas                 Ami Bera, California
Rich Mccormick, Georgia              Jill Tokuda, Hawaii
                         
                         
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Hearing held on April 26, 2023...................................     1

                               Witnesses

                              ----------                              

Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers
Oral Statement...................................................     6

Written opening statements and the written statements of the 
  witnesses are available on the U.S. House of Representatives 
  Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.

                           Index of Documents

                              ----------                              

Documents entered into the record during this hearing are listed 
  below.

Letter, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; 
  submitted by Rep. Ross.

Question for the record to: Ms. Weingarten; submitted by Rep. 
  Cloud.

Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.

 
                  THE CONSEQUENCES OF SCHOOL CLOSURES,
                        PART 2: THE PRESIDENT OF
                  THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS,
                          MS. RANDI WEINGARTEN

                              ----------                              


                       Wednesday, April 26, 2023

                       4House of Representatives

               Committee on Oversight and Accountability

            Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic

                                           Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:26 p.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad R. 
Wenstrup, (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
    Present: Representatives Wenstrup, Comer, Malliotakis, 
Miller-Meeks, Lesko, Cloud, Joyce, Greene, Jackson, McCormick, 
Ruiz, Raskin, Dingell, Mfume, Ross, Garcia, and Tokuda.
    Also present: Representatives Jordan, Gomez, and Frost.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Good afternoon. The Select Subcommittee on 
the Coronavirus Pandemic will come to order, and I want to 
welcome everyone.
    Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at any 
time.
    The Committee welcomes the public to this important 
meeting. While you are here, I want to point out to the members 
in the audience today that House Rule XI provides the Chairman 
of the Committee may punish breaches of order and decorum, 
including exclusion from the hearing. All participants will be 
required to avoid unruly behavior and inappropriate language. 
Expressions of support or opposition are not in order. I expect 
all parties to these proceedings to conduct themselves in a 
manner that reflects properly on the House of Representatives, 
as has every one of the hearings that we have had thus far on 
the pandemic.
    Pursuant to Rule 7(d) of the Committee on Oversight and 
Accountability and at the discretion of Chairman Comer, Mr. 
Jordan, a Member of the full Committee, may participate in 
today's hearing for the purposes of questions. Further, without 
objection, I ask for unanimous consent for Mr. Frost of Florida 
and Mr. Gomez of California, both Members of the full 
Committee, to participate in this hearing for the purposes of 
questions.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening 
statement.
    This is our second hearing regarding pandemic-era school 
closures. We are investigating the decision-making process 
behind school closures and the effects it had so that we can do 
better in the future. Inherently, part of that investigation is 
evaluating if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
followed science as they knew it or learned it or merely 
accepted outside guidance regardless of available data during 
its guidance, drafting, and publication process.
    This is part of the reason that we are here today. To 
determine to what extent the opinions and suggested guidelines 
offered by, in this case, the American Federation of Teachers 
during the CDC guidance process were accepted and why they were 
accepted. Americans are curious to know if the AFT access was 
in line with CDC past practice and if their influence had a 
positive or detrimental impact on America's children. While it 
is reasonable for the CDC to seek outside opinions, were some 
opinions accepted and others not considered, and why or why 
not? These are questions that we need to ask.
    To be clear, we are not here to attack teachers, the 
teaching profession, or suggest pandemic-era teaching was easy, 
because it was not, and we all know that. We are here to 
conduct an after-action report, establish lessons learned so 
that we can better protect our children in the future and 
protect our children's futures. During this process, honesty is 
non-negotiable, and the facts should be facts, not political 
statements.
    Beginning in March 2020, in response to COVID-19, schools 
around the world began to close. Doctors and scientists didn't 
know a lot about the novel virus, and decisions were made based 
on whatever facts were known and at the time what was known to 
try and best save lives. However, it became clear, in fact, 
essential, long before the beginning of the fall of 2020 
semester that schools needed to be and safely could be opened 
for in-person instruction. It was happening. My children have 
benefited greatly in every way academically, physically, and 
mentally from their schools being open since the fall of 2020. 
And when the facts become clear, our decisions must change with 
them. It is important for students, important for parents, and 
important for teachers.
    Further, the facts and science supported the ability to 
safely reopen. While children could get and transmit COVID-19, 
it was rare. While children could die from COVID-19, that risk 
has been estimated as 1 in a million. Some estimates stated 
that children actually became 10 times as likely to die by 
suicide, a crisis exacerbated by school closures. And with a 
wide range of mitigation strategies, COVID-19 transmission in 
the school setting was low. Schools could have and should have 
reopened, and, again, many did. The baseline question should 
have been schools need to be open; are we doing everything we 
can to make that happen?
    Unfortunately, many schools chose not to reopen, despite 
the science supporting safe in-person school practices. This 
all came to a head in February 2021 when the Biden 
Administration and the CDC issued its first school reopening 
guidance, entitled the ``Operational Strategy for K through 12 
Schools through Phased Prevention.'' According to reports, when 
this guidance was issued, its recommendations would keep 90 
percent of schools, including almost all of the 50 largest 
counties in the country, from fully reopening. Why? Primarily 
because of three recommendations: the use of community spread 
rates to determine reopening, a requirement for routine 
screening/testing, and six feet of distancing instead of three 
feet, none of these based in sound science at the time yet all 
directly supported by the AFT.
    Community spread does not reflect school spread. Data 
showed that it appeared safer to be in school than in the 
community in many, many cases. So, if the goal was to get kids 
in school, and it is essential for America as we determine 
things to be essential or not, then why was the recommendation 
to follow the community spread data and not the in-school 
spread data, which is actually the environment in question? The 
AFT is of course, allowed to have an opinion. I respect that, 
but opinion should fully explain how the opinion was reached. 
This is how science works and how science is debated. Teachers 
teach science.
    In an email on February 11, 2020 to Director Walensky from 
AFT staff, AFT takes issue with the current CDC language that 
stated, ``At any level of community transmission, all schools 
can provide in-person instruction.'' Seemingly to weaken that 
statement, AFT proposed adding, ``In the event high community 
transmission results from a new variant of COVID-19, a new 
update of these guidelines may be necessary.'' The CDC obliged 
and added that edit to the final guidance. Why not, in the 
event of a high in-person school transmission rather than 
community transmission. They are two different.
    In an email to the president of the AFT, the AFT staff 
prepared a document for the president for a February 1, 2020, 
phone call with CDC. AFT staff wrote that the CDC should 
support the adoption of screening testing. In notes provided to 
President Weingarten before the same February 1, 2020 call with 
the CDC, AFT staff wrote, ``Emphasize six feet of distancing. 
The guidance is fairly good on six feet or more of distance. It 
could be made stronger by rebutting directly school systems 
that are using lower standards to keep students in school.'' 
Let me say that again. Basically, AFT objected to schools using 
less than six feet of social distancing so the kids could 
return to school. AFT's support for these unscientific 
mitigation policies calls into question why was offering 
scientific advice to the CDC in the first place. The scientific 
expertise of the AFT is called into question, and also called 
into question is the high level of access and influence the AFT 
was provided by the CDC.
    In the AFT letter to this Subcommittee on April 19, lawyers 
wrote, ``Releasing guidance on how to safely reopen schools 
without attempting to address the concerns of these educators 
would not only be irresponsible, but also futile''. Lawyers 
continue, ``In short, the failure to consult would have been 
foolish and self-defeating.'' To me, these statements sound 
like a form of intimidation. Is this more political than 
scientific? Of course, in the letter and prepared statement 
that President Weingarten submitted today, she mentioned former 
President Trump 12 times. As best that I can tell, President 
Trump had nothing to do with the crafting of AFT guideline 
recommendations. That is the topic today.
    The purpose of this Committee is to examine the procedures 
followed to decisions made and why, what motivated decision, 
and what worked and didn't work, and ultimately, I would hope 
that we can produce a product, bipartisan, that will guide 
future generations so that we may have the ability to predict 
the next pandemic, prepare for it, protect us from it, and 
maybe even prevent it, and, in this case, maybe even be able to 
successfully maximize our children's education, especially in-
person education, not just for some of our children but rather 
all of our children across this country. I pray that today's 
hearing will produce some of the necessary facts and evidence 
that this Subcommittee may utilize going forward in order to 
achieve our altruistic goals.
    I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Ruiz for the 
purpose of making an opening statement.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The COVID-19 pandemic 
has taken a heavy toll on our Nation's students both inside and 
outside the classroom. Nearly 230,000 children nationwide lost 
a parent or primary caregiver to the pandemic. Adding to this 
loss, job loss, economic hardship, and food insecurity weighed 
heavily on families across the country. These stressors, in 
combination with the prolonged suspension of in-person 
learning, have had a profound impact on our Nation's youth, 
their mental health, and their academic performance.
    According to a 2021 CDC study, nearly 45 percent of high 
school students suffered so severely from feelings of sadness 
and hopelessness that they were unable to engage in regular 
activities. Nearly 1 in 5 students seriously considered 
suicide, and 9 percent of surveyed teenagers actually tried to 
take their lives during the previous 12 months. These are 
alarming statistics, and as a physician, an emergency 
physician, and a father, I am deeply concerned about this 
growing mental health crisis among our youth. It is crucial 
that we address this as well as the startling declines in 
learning caused by the prolonged suspension of in-person 
learning and the psychiatric psychological trauma of the 
pandemic and losing a parent.
    According to a January 2023 McKinsey Report, we have been 
set back 2 decades of progress and learning because of this 
pandemic, and it may take until 2050, for some students to 
recover. So, now is the time to give students the resources 
they need to live and learn healthily and safely, so that they 
can succeed now and into the future. The mental health crisis 
our students face and the acute learning loss they suffered 
demand a response that is driven by data informed solutions 
that put people above politics, not extreme budget cuts that 
threaten our children's health, safety, and well-being. You 
see, when we invest in education and prioritize our children's 
health, we see the results.
    Under the American Rescue Plan and the Biden 
Administration's leadership, we have doubled the number of 
schools open for full-time in-person learning thanks to bold 
investments in education and school infrastructure. In fact, 
just 1 day after he was sworn in to office, President Biden 
issued a sweeping executive order directing a whole-of-
government approach to get schools safely and responsibly open. 
This leadership, the American Rescue Plan's bold investments 
and strong guidance created with input from more than 50 
organizations, including parents, teachers, nurses, and 
superintendents, helped get students back in the classroom 
sooner and protected our communities from a deadly novel virus.
    It is because of these investments and this leadership that 
we were able to overcome the previous administration's COVID-19 
response failures and inaction that left our Nation and our 
classrooms unprepared to combat a global public health threat, 
failures such as downplaying the pandemic, calling it a hoax, a 
political ploy by Democrats, not urgently acting to reduce 
transmission, not honestly communicating with the American 
public, and not effectively equipping our schools with the 
necessary resources to stay open.
    These actions put high-risk communities in harm's way, led 
to an estimated 130,000 preventable American debts, and 
resulted in the prolonged suspension of in-person learning. 
These failures should have taught us all a lesson about what 
happens when we leave our schools and our communities under-
resourced, under-equipped, and vulnerable. And yet here we are 
holding this hearing today along the backdrop of the Republican 
extreme budget plan that makes reckless 22-percent cuts on 
critical education and healthcare programs that serve 
Americans, children's, and families.
    The extreme Republican budget would have disastrous 
consequences for communities, such as removing 60,000 teachers 
from schools serving low-income students, eliminating more than 
101,000 childcare slots, excluding nearly 1.2 million children 
and mothers from essential nutrition programs, and decimating 
lifesaving mental health programs. This doesn't help our 
students suffering from mental health or struggling with their 
grades. It makes it worse for them and their parents.
    Right now, America's children need our support. They need 
resources to make up for lost classroom time, overcome 
struggles with mental health, and live, learn, and grow in a 
healthy, safe environment. Ripping away critical funding and 
focusing on and prioritizing partisan allegations that seek to 
vilify our Nation's dedicated teachers will get us nowhere in 
addressing the challenges our Nation's children's face. 
Instead, let us cut the partisan allegations. Let's get down to 
business, and let's prioritize our children's health and well-
being both inside and outside the classroom. And let's prepare 
our schools for the next deadly airborne pandemic to save 
lives, reduce transmissions, and keep schools safely and 
responsibly open. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I thank the Ranking Member. We will be able 
to have these conversations again when that is the topic. That 
is why I appreciate you setting the stage now.
    Our witness today is Ms. Randi Weingarten. Ms. Weingarten 
has served as the president of the American Federation of 
Teachers since 2008. In this role, she oversees a union that 
represents more than 1.7 million members, including teachers 
and other school-related personnel.
    Pursuant to the Committee on Oversight and Accountability 
Rule 9(g), the witness will please stand and raise her right 
hand.
    Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you 
are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, so help you God?
    Ms. Weingarten. I do.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Let the record show that the 
witness answered in the affirmative.
    The Select Subcommittee certainly appreciates you being 
here today, and we look forward to your testimony. Let me 
remind the witness that we have read your written statements, 
and they will appear in full in the hearing record, so please 
limit your oral statement to 5 minutes. As a reminder, please 
press the button on the microphone in front of you so that is 
on, and the Members can hear you. When you begin to speak, the 
light in front of you will turn green. After 4 minutes, the 
light will turn yellow. When the red light comes on, your 5 
minutes has expired, and we would ask that you please wrap up.
    I now recognize Ms. Weingarten to give an opening 
statement.

                     STATEMENT OF RANDI WEINGARTEN

                               PRESIDENT

                  THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS

    Ms. Weingarten. Thank you, Chair Wenstrup, Ranking Member 
Ruiz, and Members of the Subcommittee. I thank you for the 
opportunity to discuss my Members' work during the COVID 
pandemic.
    Teachers work creatively, often past the point of 
exhaustion to teach and reach their students, like Kara 
McCormick-Lyons from White Plains, who is here with us today. I 
am going to ask the three of them to stand in minute. School 
bus drivers drove their routes to drop off meals and learning 
materials, like Lisa Rogers from Albuquerque, and school 
nurses, like Beverly Scott from Cleveland, navigated the 
challenges and the uncertainty of the global pandemic. Would 
the three of you just stand to be recognized, and I appreciate 
what the Chair said about teachers and what they have done 
during this period of time.
    [Applause.]
    Ms. Weingarten. Now, if you have, and I know it took some 
minutes, but if you have educators in your lives, you know that 
their priority is their students, to create a safe environment 
for all children and to prepare them for life, career, college, 
and citizenship. We know that kids learn best in-person, so 
opening schools safely, even as the pandemic surged, guided the 
AFT's every action, and I am grateful to set the record 
straight.
    From the earliest days of COVID, the AFT knew that safety 
was a pathway to opening schools and keeping them open. We, 
along with parents, and administrators, and health officials, 
we needed clear science-based guidance to keep students and 
staff safe in school, and, yes, it made sense to consult with 
the CDC. And it was not only appropriate for the CDC to confer 
with educators, it would have been irresponsible for them not 
to, and the CDC conferred with more than 50 organizations about 
the guidance. But before the CDC and, frankly, neither the 
President at that time nor Betsy DeVos would confer with us, 
but we tried to do whatever we could. We released this report 
in April 2020, a commonsense science-backed plan to open school 
safely. That same month we worked with John King, the former 
Education Secretary, to focus and combat learning loss.
    2020 was chaotic and terrifying. The previous 
administration downplayed the pandemic. Failure to protect 
Americans had unbearable costs. It is not just the 1.1 million 
Americans that died of COVID. Black children died at almost 
three times the rate of White children. Two hundred forty-five 
thousand children were orphaned in America, and members of my 
union died as well. Gabrielle Gayle was a fourth grade teacher 
who was pregnant with her second child when she died. We lost 
Holly Ann Hoover, a nurse, Anthony Harrell, a school custodian, 
and so many more.
    And this is what the AFT did. When the Strategic National 
Stockpile unstocked, we bought $3 million of PPP for our nurses 
and for our teachers in schools. We ran vaccination clinics. We 
convened virtual town halls that brought parents and educators 
and mental health experts together. We spent $5 million on a 
back-to-school campaign to get people back to school, 
everything from developing reopening plans, back-to-school 
fairs, door-to-door visits with parents, billboards, radio ads, 
et cetera. Our priorities were to open schools safely, to keep 
students and staff and family safe, to focus on students' 
social, emotional, and academic well-being, and to get the 
resources for this. We were fighting for better ventilation, 
yes, for COVID testing, and for the tools that we needed.
    And the same was true with parents. When President Trump 
left office, 46 percent of schools were open for in-person 
instruction. Between the American Rescue Plan and the work done 
by the CDC and other agencies, and by Governors and education 
officials, parents and educators, including our union, we went 
from 46 percent of schools open for in-person instruction in 
January 2021 to close to 97 percent open in May 2021.
    Now, teachers want what students need. Let's work together 
now to help kids recover and leap academically. Let's expand 
community schools. Let's increase experiential learning and 
career--connected learning. Let's address educator burnout. 
Together, we can overcome the effects of this unprecedented 
pandemic, and I welcome your questions. And my apologies for 
being 9 seconds over.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Quite all right. Ms. Weingarten, I want to 
thank you for being here today and providing your testimony. I 
now recognize myself for questions. And I sort of apologize in 
advance because for the sake of time, I am going to have some 
questions where I really just want a ``yes'' or ``no'' answer, 
and I would appreciate it because we are really interested in 
process here. So ``yes'' or ``no,'' did the AFT consult with 
the CDC on its February 2021, operational strategy for school 
reopening?
    Ms. Weingarten. We consulted with the CDC----
    Dr. Wenstrup. It is ``yes'' or ``no,'' please.
    Ms. Weingarten. Mr. Chair?
    Dr. Wenstrup. Let me ask the questions, please.
    Ms. Weingarten. Sure.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I am respectfully asking you just answer the 
answer ``yes'' or ``no'' as I am going through the process. My 
next question is since you did consult with them, what did that 
consultation look like?
    Ms. Weingarten. Oh, I see what you are saying. I am sorry, 
sir.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Yes. What did the consultation look like? Did 
the AFT first engage the CDC or did the CDC reach out to you?
    Ms. Weingarten. So, what essentially happened, sir, was 
that we were talking to the Biden transition team before he was 
sworn into office.
    Dr. Wenstrup. OK.
    Ms. Weingarten. And we----
    Dr. Wenstrup. Did they reach out to you or----
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, they reached out. No, the Biden 
transition team reached out to us, and----
    Dr. Wenstrup. OK. Did that include the next CDC director--
--
    Ms. Weingarten. Not----
    Dr. Wenstrup [continuing]. Or anybody who went to work for 
CDC?
    Ms. Weingarten. You know something? I don't want to 
speculate. There were lots of meetings with lots of people on 
Zoom.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Fair enough. Fair enough.
    Ms. Weingarten. So, I don't know. I just don't know.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I get that. I understand that.
    Ms. Weingarten. But what----
    Dr. Wenstrup. When was the first time you engaged with CDC 
in any way, shape, or form directly?
    Ms. Weingarten. The first time----
    Dr. Wenstrup. Yes.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Was when they asked us to do 
the Zoom. I think the first time. Look, I am 65 years old. I 
don't remember everything anymore.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Me, too.
    Ms. Weingarten. I am sorry. I think the first time was, 
remember the President was----
    Dr. Wenstrup. I guess really the only question is----
    Ms. Weingarten. I think it was about----
    Dr. Wenstrup [continuing]. Did they reach out to you, or 
did you reach out to them because I know they asked for 
guidance from many organizations.
    Ms. Weingarten. Right, they reached out. They reached out. 
My recollection is that they set up this January 29----
    Dr. Wenstrup. OK.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Half an hour conference call.
    Dr. Wenstrup. OK.
    Ms. Weingarten. That is my recollection.
    Dr. Wenstrup. And again, ``yes'' or ``no,'' did that 
include any direct interaction with CDC Director Walensky?
    Ms. Weingarten. Meaning, did I talk to her directly?
    Dr. Wenstrup. You or your staff?
    Ms. Weingarten. That day, we talked to her directly.
    Dr. Wenstrup. OK. And so that was via Zoom at that time?
    Ms. Weingarten. Right.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Later on, were there emails, phone calls?
    Ms. Weingarten. I think there were a couple of phone calls, 
but what there also were, and I wanted to just correct the 
record on this, sir. What you may not have asked us for is on 
March 23, 2021, we actually had several public letters with the 
CDC, including March 23, 2021, where we actually talked about 
how we understood their change in terms of social distancing to 
three feet. So, we had several public letters to the CDC 
because we wanted to be transparent of everything that was 
going on.
    Dr. Wenstrup. So again, ``yes'' or ``no,'' but did AFT ever 
provide suggested revisions to the CDC's operational strategy 
regarding school closures or re-openings? Did you suggest 
revisions to their operational strategy?
    Ms. Weingarten. What we suggested, sir, was ideas.
    Dr. Wenstrup. OK. Your letter to the----
    Ms. Weingarten. They asked us for ideas.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Your letter to the Subcommittee said that the 
AFT proposed a handful of edits to the operational strategy. Is 
that right?
    Ms. Weingarten. What happened was there was one particular 
edit that they accepted. There were several different ideas 
that we proposed. The edit that they accepted was in the, if I 
may explain or no?
    Dr. Wenstrup. Yes. Go ahead.
    Ms. Weingarten. They asked us in the January 29th meeting 
and, from your document request, as you know, we provided 
documents, including all the emails back and forth between and 
amongst staff, our staff. They asked us for----
    Dr. Wenstrup. Well, excuse me. I want to get to the point, 
I guess. We know, two of the proposed changes.
    Ms. Weingarten. Right.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Work from home options for teachers with 
high-risk conditions, and that if a new variant arose, that the 
guidance may need to be changed.
    Ms. Weingarten. Well----
    Dr. Wenstrup. So, with that, and again, ``yes'' or ``no,'' 
were these proposals accepted by the CDC?
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, the one proposal that was accepted, 
if I may explain, during the meeting on the 29th, we raised 
several different issues. We had seen all the former----
    Dr. Wenstrup. Were they accepted or not?
    Ms. Weingarten. What was----
    Dr. Wenstrup. It is a simple question.
    Ms. Weingarten. Right.
    Dr. Wenstrup. When you made these proposals, the two I 
suggested, were they accepted by the CDC?
    Ms. Weingarten. First off, the second proposal was not made 
on January 29th.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I didn't say that.
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry. The first proposal about at-risk 
immunocompromised workers, and not that simply that they would 
work at home but there would be accommodations for people who 
are at risk. That proposal was accepted.
    Dr. Wenstrup. OK. Now, you have answered my question. Thank 
you.
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Yes.
    Ms. Weingarten. I am just slow.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Well, and then the other, if a new variant 
arose that the guidance may need to be changed, and then really 
like, what else did AFT propose? I mean, I mentioned those two 
that I know. Were there other proposals that weren't accepted?
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, several.
    Dr. Wenstrup. And the proposal about a new variant arising 
that the guidance may need to be changed, was that accepted?
    Ms. Weingarten. So, what we asked for was because there 
were new variants that were starting to happen.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Right. I understand. We all know there were 
new variants. I am asking----
    Ms. Weingarten. So, we said----
    Dr. Wenstrup [continuing]. Was the proposal accepted?
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. So, before the operational 
strategy was finished, AFT advocated for a school closure 
trigger. That is the word in your documents. On January 29, 
2021, in notes prepared for you before a call with the CDC, 
your staff recommended pushing the CDC for a trigger, stating, 
``We need an objective metric for closure,'' dot, dot, dot, 
``triggers.'' Then on February 11, 2021, following the need to 
push on a closure trigger, a member of the AFT staff emails 
Director Walensky directly and says, ``We must, however, urge 
inclusion of clear closure triggers in the imminent guidance.'' 
Again, on February 11, 2021, in an email from your staff they 
state, ``Our emphasis will follow Randi's statement pushing on 
needing a closure trigger.'' Then, in a February 12, 2021, 
email from you to Members, you mentioned the CDC did not 
install a trigger stating, ``While the CDC guidance does not 
contain a closure trigger, the guidance indicates schools may 
temporarily close to in-person learning.'' In that same 
newsletter in bold font, the CDC is not mandating the reopening 
of schools. Why was that in bold? Why was that to be 
emphasized?
    Ms. Weingarten. So, which of these questions do you want me 
to answer?
    Dr. Wenstrup. Well, I gave statements that we had documents 
on.
    Ms. Weingarten. Right. Mm-hmm.
    Dr. Wenstrup. What I am asking is, why was that statement 
in bold? The statement that says, ``The CDC is not mandating 
the reopening of schools.'' Why would that be in bold?
    Ms. Weingarten. I have no idea.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Usually, it means some type of 
emphasis, I would think, but you don't recall. That is fine.
    Ms. Weingarten. I mean, what----
    Dr. Wenstrup. By this point though, schools----
    Ms. Weingarten. Sir, what I did was, if I may, the document 
I did write was our press release that day, which you are not 
referring to, where I said that the CDC has met fear with 
evidence, and that we were embrassive of the fact that they had 
clear science-backed evidence so that we could actually reopen 
schools more forcefully than had happened before.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Yes. By this point, schools had been shown to 
not be a driver of community transmission. Children were not 
nearly as at risk as the elderly. Children rarely transmitted 
to adults. But despite all this science, AFT still wanted to 
install some way to automatically close schools, which deviates 
from the narrative of doing everything we can to get them open.
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, actually----
    Dr. Wenstrup. I haven't asked you question.
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I am sorry.
    Ms. Weingarten. I am sorry.
    Dr. Wenstrup. At any point in 2020, after science making 
clear, did the AFT push for a trigger to open schools rather 
than the clear push to have a trigger to close school?
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, I did, sir. In fact, at the Cuomo 
Commission, which was in my testimony, the only commission that 
I actually sat on myself, we had triggers in that commission. 
And the reason we were asking for triggers, which is what the 
WHO had, about nine percent, Cuomo Commission had five to nine 
percent. The reason we were asking for triggers was for the 
same reasons as you were complaining about the CDC's February 
2022 guidance as well because we thought that what they had 
done with these three different tranches was confusing and 
confusing to people. We actually just wanted----
    Dr. Wenstrup. So, I thank you. Was this Committee----
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. We wanted a number, because 
most of us are not scientists, so we wanted a number. And then, 
let me just address, if I may, what you just said about 
community versus school. I assume----
    Dr. Wenstrup. No, let me----
    Ms. Weingarten. I am sorry.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I appreciate that, and we have your 25 pages 
that you sent us and all of that.
    Ms. Weingarten. No, but----
    Dr. Wenstrup. And we have got a lot of people to get on 
both sides of the aisle.
    Ms. Weingarten. OK. But you just raised the issue, sir, 
about school versus community, and I think you are talking 
about the two studies. Are you talking about the Wisconsin 
study and the Massachusetts study?
    Mr. Wenstrup. Well, we do have studies that we have 
documented.
    Ms. Weingarten. Right.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I am not going to go into those right now, 
but the fact of the matter is in your communications that we 
have now, there is discussion to that regard. And so let me 
just say----
    Ms. Weingarten. May I clarify, sir?
    Dr. Wenstrup. Here is what I would like to do. You 
referenced the Cuomo Commission or whatever.
    Ms. Weingarten. Mm-hmm.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I would like for you to present that to us 
because I could not find anything where teachers, or the AFT, 
at least in particular, through these communications with the 
CDC, and that is what we are talking about today. The 
communications with the CDC, not the Cuomo report.
    Ms. Weingarten. So, sir, you asked me the question about 
what the AFT did.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I am not asking you a question right now. 
Please. Please.
    Ms. Weingarten. I am sorry.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I will let you finish. Today, I am asking you 
about your communications with the CDC. This is a process 
problem. This is a process concern. I didn't see anything in 
that that talked about opening. It was only metrics for 
closure. That is the point. That is why I am asking those 
questions. So, if you did something later, not necessarily with 
the CDC, I would be glad to review that as part of the record 
for this body. I really would, and I think that that is fair.
    So, at this point, I now recognize the Ranking Member, Dr. 
Ruiz from California, for his questions.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. Let me just take a step back as a 
public health expert, an emergency physician. The request to 
have vulnerable, immunocompromised workers have accommodation 
because they are at high risk from dying from COVID and we want 
to make sure that they live through COVID, seems reasonable to 
me. In fact, it is pretty good public health practice. The 
other request of keeping an open mind and not have a one-size-
fits-all because we know how much that this virus changes, it 
could drastically change in its properties, and, therefore, we 
should be able to respond to new variants as they come also 
seems reasonable, seems pretty scientific in the sense that, 
you know, you don't want to have a one-size-fits-all because as 
we are realizing, these variants eventually may lead to a 
steady state, but they may also not.
    And then, the third accusation here about wanting some kind 
of guidance to open or close, is the same thing that the 
economists were asking and all the other organizations in our 
society that didn't understand all these different nuances. 
They just wanted some basic help to understand when to open, 
when to close. Help us understand this. That was asked by so 
many in so many different sectors, not just for schools. But at 
the end of the day, the CDC didn't even accept that one. The 
CDC didn't even put triggers into opening or closing. So, what 
are we doing here?
    So, we all agree that the pandemic took an enormous toll on 
our Nation's kids. Learning loss and the mental health crisis 
facing America's youth are serious issues caused by multiple 
dimensions of the pandemic, like a parent dying from COVID, and 
the suspension of in-person learning, done to slow the spread 
of a deadly novel virus, especially in high-risk communities. 
And as a father and a physician, I have a profound appreciation 
for the magnitude of these challenges and the importance of 
working together to address them through forward-looking policy 
solutions.
    Instead of discussing policies that can help our students 
overcome learning loss or bring relief to the millions of kids 
and teens struggling with their mental health, we are here to 
examine partisan allegations by House Republicans seeking to 
vilify our Nation's dedicated educators. These uncredible 
allegations will do nothing to prepare us for the next deadly 
airborne pandemic and keep our schools safely open while 
reducing its transmission.
    Ms. Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers 
represents 1.7 million teachers, nurses, and staff members, who 
keep our Nation's schools running. What steps have you and your 
members taken to accelerate learning and support students' 
mental health, which is what we need to be focusing on 
following the pandemic?
    Ms. Weingarten. So thank you, Dr. Ruiz. We have done many 
things over the course of the last 3 years to do that, and I 
would be happy to give you many of them. But my most recent 
speech on March 28th talked about two things that we have to 
do. No. 1, we have to meet the social and emotional needs of 
children. Children are really suffering right now and have been 
for a very long time, but it has been escalated because of the 
pandemic. So, what we thought was, if we do things like we have 
done at Wolfe Academy in Baltimore, where we wrap services 
around schools, and as a result, this academy is now the second 
highest-performing school in Baltimore. If we do more of those 
kinds of community schools with wrapping services around--my 
understanding is that one of your witnesses in the last hearing 
talked about all of those things--we can actually accelerate 
learning by meeting the needs of kids.
    And the second thing is, we have to bring joy back to 
schooling, and things like experiential learning. I started as 
a high school social studies teacher in a career tech school, 
Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York. What we now 
know is that 94 percent of kids in career tech ed, graduate 
from high school. Seventy percent go to college. What is the 
difference? It is hands on. It is robotics. It is debate. It is 
all the things that we need to do in this new economy. Let's do 
more of that kind of experiential learning and do things that--
--
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. Although, I know the Chairman is going 
to give me the same allotted time that he has, I just want to 
be more efficient in the questions.
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry.
    Dr. Ruiz. While we sit here today under the false pretense 
of needing to protect kids from teachers' unions, House 
Republicans are trying to pull the wool over the American 
people's eyes. Look, as we speak, Speaker McCarthy is holding 
America's full faith and credit hostage so that he can jam 
through a budget with draconian cuts to programs that kids in 
each of our districts rely on for mental health and academic 
success. For example, House Republicans' extreme budget cuts 
would slash funding for the 988 Suicide Lifeline, leaving 
nearly 1 million people facing a suicide or mental health 
crisis unable to access support and stabilization services. 
House Republicans proposed this cut at a time when suicide is 
the second-leading cause of death among kids ages 10 to 14, and 
the third-leading cause of death among adolescents ages 15 to 
24.
    Ms. Weingarten, how would cutting funds for resources like 
the 988 Suicide Lifeline hamstring efforts to address the 
mental health crisis facing America's youth?
    Ms. Weingarten. Look, we need these resources. Kids feel so 
anonymous right now, and they focus too much on their devices. 
We need places for kids to be able to talk, and these suicide 
lines----
    Dr. Ruiz. So, removing that----
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Are very helpful for kids.
    Dr. Ruiz. Yes, in fact, it will make it worse. It will take 
the help away, and it will hurt our kids. House Republicans are 
also proposing a 22-percent cut to the Health Center Program, 
which would cutoff services to roughly 2 million of our 
Nation's most vulnerable patients and families, especially 
those who receive services through school-based health centers. 
For kids with less access to care, school-based health centers 
are a critical lifeline to primary care services, tooth and eye 
exams, mental and behavioral health counseling, and so much 
more. So, Ms. Weingarten, how does gutting funding for 
community health centers, including school-based health 
centers, undermine children's health and educational outcomes?
    Ms. Weingarten. Look, I very much appreciate, Dr. Ruiz, 
that I was asked to speak today and talk about what kids need, 
and talk about it in the context of what happened in COVID and 
going forward. All of what you said, we need these services for 
kids. Schools are centers of communities for our kids and our 
families, so we need these services connected to schools.
    Dr. Ruiz. Well, you know, I totally agree, but while House 
Republicans continue to push an extreme agenda through hyper 
partisan investigations, Democrats will continue to put people 
over politics and develop meaningful solutions to the 
challenges facing America's kids. They need our help now with 
policies that will help improve their mental health and their 
academic success. Thank you. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Dr. Ruiz. As Chair, I do have to 
comment. I am a physician also, and there were no partisan 
questions that I was asking you. I was asking you about 
process. That is what this hearing is about. This Committee is 
to address some of the many things that Dr. Ruiz was talking 
about. That is not what today was about. That is fine. If that 
is what you want to spend your time and maybe the whole dais on 
that side is going to talk about policy, politics, and things 
that we may debate. I didn't disagree with the guidelines that 
you recommended, as you inferred. That was not the case. I 
didn't disagree with them. I just asked about the process. 
These were guidelines you recommended. These were guidelines 
that were accepted.
    I am just trying to go through the process so that we have 
a good process----
    Ms. Weingarten. Mm-hmm.
    Dr. Wenstrup [continuing]. So that your voice is heard in 
the proper way and that we are using science and that the 
process is very clear from the beginning so the next time--the 
next time--we can do a good job. So, you can continue the 
policy debates, which we will have, but that is not what 
today's hearing was about.
    Ms. Weingarten. Dr. Wenstrup----
    Dr. Wenstrup. And so, you will see from our side, we are 
going to ask about the process.
    Ms. Weingarten. I am just trying to answer just like you 
want me to answer the questions you have asked----
    Dr. Wenstrup. I don't mind you answering his questions.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. I was just answering questions 
Dr. Ruiz asked.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I don't mind you answering his questions. And 
he is right, I will give him the time that I took, and that is 
fair, and that is what I am trying to do, conduct a fair 
hearing. But this is about the process we are trying to 
understand because school closures had such a tremendous effect 
on our children. And so can we move forward some day and have a 
process that is very efficient, and that we can do it better 
because, let's face it, on both sides of the aisle, a lot of 
mistakes were made along the way.
    Ms. Weingarten. I don't know if you have seen this book 
yet, Dr. Wenstrup.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Chairman Comer of the full 
Committee for his minutes of questions.
    Chairman Comer. Thank you. On February 12, 2021, the Biden 
Administration released its first school reopening guidance, 
which, frankly, might be better described as school closing 
guidance since it recommended keeping 90 percent of America's 
schools closed. Documents and testimony gathered by this 
Committee show the CDC and AFT, American Federation of 
Teachers, worked closely on this guidance. Some of the AFT's 
suggestions were included nearly word for word by Director 
Walensky herself. In a transcribed interview, a career CDC 
official testified that this level of coordination was 
``uncommon.'' That is what we are here to find out, as the 
Chairman said. Why did AFT get uncommon access to the CDC and 
the Biden Administration? According to documents we reviewed, 
AFT first received a copy of the draft reopening guidance on 
January 27, 2021. Is that correct?
    Ms. Weingarten. No.
    Chairman Comer. Do you know when you first got a copy of 
the guidance?
    Ms. Weingarten. According to the documents that we sent to 
you, we believe is that we got the draft guidance from NIOSH, 
which is a Committee within the CDC, as well as the CDC 
themselves----
    Chairman Comer. OK.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. After the conversation we had 
on January 29.
    Chairman Comer. OK. And NIOSH is part of the CDC?
    Ms. Weingarten. Correct.
    Chairman Comer. All right. So----
    Ms. Weingarten. I think you are looking at a document. Can 
I see the document you are looking at?
    Chairman Comer. Well, we will get them to you. The draft 
guidance----
    [Cross talking.]
    Chairman Comer. No, listen. I am talking. I run a 
committee, too.
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry.
    Chairman Comer. We are trying to work together. We have 5 
minutes, so we are trying to get as much out as we can. This is 
very important. I have kids in the public school system, in a 
school system that was shut down longer than average in the 
state of Kentucky. It is bad. Parents are mad. Our kids are 
behind. We are trying to find answers. We want to prevent the 
problem in the future.
    The draft guidance is marked pre-decisional and says please 
do not distribute, yet it was provided anyway. Now, do you know 
if any other groups the CDC consulted with received a copy of 
this guidance at the time?
    Ms. Weingarten. I have no idea.
    Chairman Comer. Do you know when the guidance was finally 
published?
    Ms. Weingarten. I believe the guidance was published on 
February 12th.
    Chairman Comer. When asked, is it common to send 
deliberative or pre-decisional guidances outside of the 
government to CDC partners? A career CDC scientist responded, 
``We may send summaries, like, the day before we are going to 
release something.'' But the American Federation of Teachers 
got a full document, and you got it 2 weeks before according to 
our record. And----
    Ms. Weingarten. Do you want me to respond, sir, or no?
    Chairman Comer. I will ask a question. Did AFT provide any 
draft language to the CDC for inclusion into this guidance 
before it was published?
    Ms. Weingarten. So, we had the meeting with the CDC on 
January 29. My recollection is that we got a draft of the 
guidance after that, even though I think the document that you 
are reading has another date on it.
    Chairman Comer. Is it common for outside groups to send 
draft language to the CDC?
    Ms. Weingarten. What we did was we went through the areas 
that we raised because the presumption was, how do we reopen 
and keep schools open, and we talk about issues of 
immunocompromised adults, and the CDC says----
    Chairman Comer. So, did the CDC accept any of the edits 
that you all proposed?
    Ms. Weingarten. The CDC asked for language on that, which 
we provided. So that one piece of language----
    Chairman Comer. So, they accepted it. OK.
    Ms. Weingarten. So, they asked us for language on 
immunocompromised workers, and we presented that language to 
them.
    Chairman Comer. So, during the interview with the CDC 
career employee, it was asked if between 2001 and 2021, had he 
ever incorporated edits or additions that came from an outside 
group, and the career scientist responded, ``I don't remember 
any assistance.'' So, to summarize, AFT was provided with a 
full draft copy of the guidance 2 weeks before publication, 
suggested line-by-line edits.
    Ms. Weingarten. No, we did not, sir.
    Chairman Comer. You did not?
    Ms. Weingarten. We did not suggest line-by-line edits to 
the document.
    Chairman Comer. Well, do you remember how many edits that 
you suggested?
    Ms. Weingarten. We suggested concepts, sir, which we have 
submitted as part of the document request you asked. We 
suggested concepts, including robust testing.
    Chairman Comer. Do you know how many edits were included?
    Ms. Weingarten. One. One.
    Chairman Comer. Do you remember what that edit was?
    Ms. Weingarten. The reasonable accommodation issue. And 
then, in addition, about a week later when we were going back 
and forth with all of the groups, there were several other 
meetings with different groups and things like that, you saw 
and the Chairman just said this, the issue about having a 
review if there was a new variant. Someone had leaked language 
to either the New York Times or The Washington Post, and so 
that is when we suggested that if there is a new variant, there 
should be a review. And there were variants. My recollection is 
there were variants at that time. So, those were the two things 
that we suggested in the 38 pages that showed up in the 
guidance.
    Chairman Comer. Well, I will yield back, Mr. Chairman, and 
say that it is unusual for a political union to have such a 
role in scientific guidance process, and hopefully we can find 
more answers in this hearing. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize the Ranking Member of the 
full Committee, Mr. Raskin, from Maryland.
    Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, thank you. COVID-19 is the 
deadliest, most disruptive public health crisis we have seen in 
more than a century. It has already killed 1,129,573 Americans 
and remains the third-leading cause of death behind heart 
disease and cancer. Five people in my family have COVID right 
now--two sisters, two brothers-in-law, and a 5-year-old 
nephew--And yet, this default on America's debt plan would 
actually try to claw back money that has already been 
appropriated for combating COVID-19 and promoting public 
health. So, I have been to some weird hearings in this 
Congress, Mr. Chairman, but this one might be the weirdest 
because it is convened in order to accuse a Federal agency of 
the crime of consulting with American citizens.
    Ms. Weingarten, you are the elected president of 1.7 
million members of the American Federation of Teachers. You 
represent double the number of people any of us do and 
definitely a lot more teachers, and I need some enlightenment 
right now because I am baffled. As a Member of the Select 
Subcommittee on COVID in the last Congress, I was involved in 
trying to address this plague when it started, and I remember 
this specific debate very precisely.
    So, let's talk about process. No leader was more outspoken 
or more forceful than you were, Ms. Weingarten, in not only 
demanding but developing specific strategies to safely reopen 
America's schools. I remember your school reopening plan 
developed with health and education experts released in April 
2020. I don't know if that is the one I remember. It is the 
first one I ever saw. It was in the middle of all the terror 
and panic when Donald Trump had no plan at all and was still 
spreading disinformation about COVID-19 disappearing by Easter, 
and encouraging people to try quack medical cures and 
aggressively defending his friends in the Chinese Communist 
Party.
    In July, I remember the effort you led with the NEA, the 
American Academy of Pediatrics, and the school superintendents 
to advocate for safe resumption of in-person school at the 
start of the 2021-2022 school year, and you gave a specific 
blueprint to reopen schools in November. And you continued all 
of this even after the CDC released its operational strategy in 
February of the next year.
    And when I went back to Google this to confirm my memory, I 
found nothing but a bunch of op-eds you wrote demanding school 
re-openings across the country, countless speeches and articles 
about your advocacy. Here is one I found in New York Times 
about you with a headline, and I would like to submit it for 
the record, ``The Union Leader Who Says She Can Get Teachers 
Back Into the Schools.'' I don't know if you remember that one 
from February 8, 2021. It is about how you were on the front 
lines of saying let's get the kids back into schools. So, I 
would like to submit that for the record, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Raskin. Look, my question for you is, why are you of 
all people being scapegoated today by the Republicans for doing 
the exact opposite of what you were actually doing during all 
of that time? How did you get my friends mad?
    Ms. Weingarten. Look, maybe it is because we tried to do 
something that nobody else was trying to do. We asked the 
President of the United States, the then President. I am sorry, 
Congressman Raskin. We spent every day from February on trying 
to get schools open. We knew that remote education was not a 
substitute for opening schools, but we also knew that people 
had to be safe. And maybe it is because I live in New York 
City. I live near a hospital. Every other minute there was an 
ambulance. There was terror.
    Our members were terrified, others were terrified, and what 
we were simply looking for was clear scientific guidance. And 
when we couldn't get it, we did it ourselves and we worked with 
doctors, and we worked with others, and we just tried to get it 
out there----
    Mr. Raskin. OK. Now, all of your efforts took place without 
any support from the Federal Government.
    Ms. Weingarten. None.
    Mr. Raskin. On the contrary, President Trump never produced 
a school reopening plan while he did produce the worst record 
of per capita civilian deaths of any developed country in the 
world. Education Secretary DeVos never offered any guidance----
    Ms. Weingarten. None.
    Mr. Raskin [continuing]. For a safe return to school and 
continued to undermine public schools in countless ways. So, 
how did the chaos and recklessness in the Trump Administration 
undermine your efforts to advocate for a safe nationwide 
reopening of the schools?
    Ms. Weingarten. What essentially happened was that because 
it was such chaos and such conflicting information, and because 
at the beginning of the pandemic so many of, frankly, our 
activists who were in schools had died, people were fearful. 
And so, what we thought to do was, how could we make very 
tangible layered mitigation so that people saw ways of 
reopening schools. I agree with Dr. Wenstrup that when schools 
had layered mitigation, they were safer than in the 
communities, but we were looking for that layered mitigation to 
keep our kids and their teachers and their bus drivers safe, 
and that was what we were trying to do. We knew that remote 
education was not a substitute. We knew that kids were not 
eating the way they needed to. We knew that adolescents were 
not developing the way they needed to. That is why we need to 
do it.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much. I yield back, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Malliotakis 
from New York for 5 minutes of questions.
    Ms. Malliotakis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to 
the teachers, the bus drivers, paraprofessionals, who have 
joined us today. And speaking with the teachers, the 
principals, and the parents in my district, they think it was a 
grave disservice that schools were closed for as long as they 
were, in some cases up to 2 years. Your union, as we have found 
through the Committee's investigations, undoubtedly played a 
role in ensuring that these schools would remain closed for 
longer than they should have. And we saw indoor dining and bars 
operating at 50-percent capacity. Schools were still closed. We 
saw private schools open. The public schools were still closed. 
While countries in Europe, such as Sweden and Germany, would 
reopen their schools just months after the virus pandemic 
began, it would take almost 2 years, as I said, including my 
district in New York City.
    We now know that in February 2021, the CDC would allow for 
the American Federation of Teachers unprecedented access to 
help draft guidance and would adopt, in some cases, almost 
line-by-line AFT edits, including direct language to install a 
trigger, which was mentioned earlier, ensuring that schools 
remain closed and making it more difficult as possible to 
resume in-person learning. It is no secret that your union, 
your local affiliates spent $20 million on political donations 
with nearly all of the funds going to Democrats and liberal 
groups in the 2021 cycle as the debate about reopening schools 
raged.
    And I think a question that we have is whether you had this 
type of access because of those contributions. We don't see the 
parents being asked their opinions or the private schools being 
asked their opinions on school reopenings. In fact, I know my 
Principals Union also was supporting schools to reopen after a 
reasonable period of time. But after lobbying for and securing 
$122 billion in the American Rescue Plan to safely reopen 
schools, after $60 billion had already been allocated through 
the CARES Act, the AFT still continued to push for schools to 
be closed.
    Private schools opened a year earlier than the public 
schools did in New York City. We got $190 billion to reopen 
schools safely, but guess what? As of November, do you know 
what percentage of that funding was actually used----
    Ms. Weingarten. I know----
    Ms. Malliotakis [continuing]. Of that $190 billion?
    Ms. Weingarten. I know that in New York, in September 2020, 
because as you know quite well--we both are from the same 
city----
    Ms. Malliotakis. Mm-hmm.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. That we opened, and the AFT 
and the Principals Union, and the then mayor did open every 
single school in 2020. I don't know how much money----
    Ms. Malliotakis. But in the fall of 2020, yes, in the fall 
of 2020----
    Ms. Weingarten. No, no, no, in September 2020, every single 
school was opened.
    Ms. Malliotakis. Yes, but the triggers were put in place 
that, you know, you had a couple of cases and the whole entire 
schools were shut down. But my question is, you lobbied for the 
$190 billion in the CARES package. You actually blame 
Republicans for voting against the American Rescue Plan because 
you needed that money so badly to reopen the schools, but guess 
what? Only 15 percent of that money was spent as of November. 
So that means you didn't need that money, and Republicans 
actually had been vindicated in the sense that we were right. 
All this inflationary spending, it actually didn't even go to 
what it was supposed to go to. But I will say this, the damage 
has been irreparable to our children, right? And in New York 
City, which you and I care about very much, 50 percent are now 
failing their reading exams. Seventy percent are failing their 
math exams. One in three children, K through three, can't read 
at their grade level. New York is now lowering their test 
standards as a result, all right?
    And this is, by the way, a state where we spend more per 
student than any other state in the country, over $25,000 per 
student, and we are seeing these horrible results, and I think 
the school closures had a lot to do with it. Obesity is another 
problem we are seeing, mental health. You know the suicide 
statistics. This tweet, you even acknowledged that remote 
learning--I can see you squinting. You can't see----
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry.
    Ms. Malliotakis [continuing]. But that is all right. And 
you tweeted out in 2023, ``What we have seen in public 
education is that technology can't replace teachers. Remote 
education didn't work in part because you have to have 
relationships. You have to build trust.''
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes.
    Ms. Malliotakis. But yet your union continued to advocate 
for these schools to have triggers to close, to keep them 
closed unlike private schools. And by the way, some of that 
money, that 15 percent that was spent from that $190 billion, 
it was not spent to reopen schools. It was spent for CRT, for 
implicit bias, for anti-racism training, for restorative 
justice programs, especially in cities like ours in New York 
City. Are you disappointed that the funding that was meant to 
reopen schools was spent on programs like that instead?
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, first of all, let me just say that I, 
over and over again, as Representative Raskin said, wanted 
schools to reopen and wanted them to reopen safely, and there 
were moneys that we used in terms of that. We needed far more 
money in terms of testing and moneys that were used in terms of 
that. The guidance was about the presumption and the guidance, 
both the Cuomo Commission guidance as well as this, because the 
Cuomo Commission guidance was what governed New York City, and 
that guidance was about reopening schools. As to the money 
spent for programs, my understanding is that under the American 
Rescue Plan, 20 percent of that money was for programmatic 
work, and one of the pieces of programmatic work was 
curriculum, and another piece was how do we help address the 
emotional and social needs of kids. And that is what the money 
was used for.
    Ms. Malliotakis. OK. So, you still to this day believe it 
was a good use of money to use that COVID that was supposed to 
be meant for reopening schools for CRT and other type of 
training?
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, Congresswoman, I don't----
    Dr. Wenstrup. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Weingarten. We don't teach CRT----
    Dr. Wenstrup. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. In elementary or middle 
schools.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Dingell from Michigan 
for 5 minutes of questions.
    Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the 
witness for her attendance today. I am concerned about this 
hearing. I, quite frankly, am here to learn. I share all my 
colleagues' concerns on both sides of the aisle about the 
impact of this pandemic on our children. I just do not believe 
we should be scapegoating unfairly. We all support our 
teachers, and I think that there is very unfair scapegoating 
going on here.
    I regularly met with teachers throughout my district, both 
private schools and public schools, and to a person, while many 
of them were fearful about not infecting their kids, the 
teachers wanted to reopen the schools. And I want to remind 
this Committee that Director Walensky was questioned regarding 
this topic at a March 2022 hearing before the Subcommittee 
under Mr. Clyburn. In response to questions from then Ranking 
Member Steve Scalise, Director Walensky noted that the CDC 
consulted with over 50 organizations prior to releasing the 
school reopening guidance, and that this ranged from parents 
groups to superintendents to boards of education as well as 
AFT. And my understanding is that responses received thus far 
from recipients, the Chairman's March 28 letters confirm this 
assertion.
    Director Walensky also explained that the CDC allowed the 
groups more time than usual to offer feedback due to the 
importance of schools reopening safely. She noted that within 
months of the guidance being issued, the percent of schools 
that safely returned to in-person learning rose from 46 to 60 
percent. And I will remind my colleagues that in January 2021, 
roughly half of school districts were open--that is when 
President Biden took over--and by the end of May, over 95 
percent of schools were offering in-person learning.
    And candidly, I don't personally think the input provided 
by AFT and that was adopted by the CDC was unreasonable. The 
first proposed edits sought to address an issue that the CDC's 
first draft did not mention at all, which was how to 
accommodate immunocompromised teachers when returning to in-
person learning. My colleagues' accusations aside, I struggled 
to see how that was unreasonable. Our Nation had entered a new 
phase in the recovery of the pandemic, or we have now. Look 
around. We are in this Committee room without masks, largely 
thanks to the efforts of the Biden Administration.
    But remember where we were then. We have to keep in mind 
that it was January and February 2021. The first vaccines had 
only been authorized for emergency use a few weeks prior. At 
this point, there was not enough vaccine supply to meet demand, 
and only 23 million doses had been administered in the United 
States. Meanwhile, the death toll was over 400,000. Under these 
conditions, to suggest that immunocompromised teachers might 
require some degree of workplace accommodation not only does 
that not seem offensive. It seems compassionate and fair as 
anyone who is immunocompromised with loved ones can attest.
    And the second edit that they proposed, I think is a matter 
of common sense. They suggested that if a new variant were to 
emerge and cause high community transmission. Mr. Chairman, I 
know that there is a difference for you between school and 
community, but communities do impact what is happening in the 
schools, and if it was more deadly, that we would want to 
revisit our public health guidance. It didn't say close the 
schools again or keep the schools closed. So, I don't think 
that that was unreasonable.
    And I am also going to remind people that at the time in 
late 2020 and early 2021, schools had a lack of resources. I 
was on the phone every day finding masks and gloves and tests 
for my teachers. There was chronic underinvestment in schools 
and education that resulted in overcrowded classrooms. There 
were windows that wouldn't open, poor ventilation systems that 
were incompatible with COVID safety measures, and the rollout 
of the vaccine was just beginning. So, you know, and I am going 
to remind you what Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who was the former 
commissioner of FDA under President Trump said. Kids are less 
susceptible to the infection and less likely to transmit it, 
but less susceptible doesn't mean they are not susceptible. And 
at that time, he agreed that the country needed to take 
measures to make sure that the coronavirus didn't become an 
epidemic in children.
    So, can I ask one question or am I out of time, Mr. Chair?
    Dr. Wenstrup. Go ahead.
    Mrs. Dingell. So, despite knowing the challenges teachers 
were facing and acknowledging the pandemic's health risks, 
especially in hotspots, Ms. Weingarten, were you ever given 
guidance by the Trump Administration on how to safely return to 
in-person learning?
    Ms. Weingarten. No, and that is part of the reason why we 
kept on pushing at it. And, frankly, between the Rockefeller 
Foundation, Dr. Shaw, who I penned an op-ed with about the need 
for surveillance testing, that we could reopen schools with 
surveillance testing even before the vaccines and with the work 
with the Cuomo Administration, then Governor Cuomo, and 
actually worked with Larry Hogan, then Governor Hogan. We were 
working with Governors; we were working with superintendents 
because no one at the Trump Administration would work with us 
in terms of how to reopen school safely.
    Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Miller-Meeks from Iowa 
for 5 minutes of questions.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just 
remind everyone in this room in this Committee that the 
vaccines that we have touted numerous times on both sides of 
the aisle were developed under the Trump Administration and 
were available in November 2020. Let me also say, Ms. 
Weingarten, on April----
    Ms. Weingarten. Not for teachers.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Ms. Weingarten, I recall----
    Ms. Weingarten. I am sorry.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks [continuing]. Very distinctly and was in 
those hearings as the teachers union lobbied in order to get 
teachers moved to the front of the line for vaccines. On April 
19, 2023, your council on your behalf sent the Select 
Subcommittee a 10-page letter attempting to rebut previous work 
on this Subcommittee and statements made in previous letters. I 
am sure other Members will touch on various aspects of these 
claims, but I want to focus on one in particular.
    On page 4 of your letter, you roundabout say that the 
American Federation of Teachers has scientific expertise and 
is, therefore, well-positioned to opine on science-based school 
guidance. So, on your science-based expertise, can you tell me, 
were you aware of publications by the American Journal of 
Pediatrics in the summer of 2020 that indicated that children 
had very little to no transmission of COVID-19? I presented 
that to our state legislature as a State Senator for us to 
reopen schools in Iowa, which we reopened half and half in the 
August 2020. Did your scientific experts present to you that, 
as June 2020, among 1.8 million children in this age group, do 
you know how many died from COVID?
    Ms. Weingarten. So, sitting here right now today, Doctor, I 
don't have that number in my head.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Zero.
    Ms. Weingarten. I do know----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. On July 20, 2020, Swedish and Finnish 
public health agencies issued a public report comparing the two 
countries, concluding that closure or not of schools has 
little, if any, impact on the number of laboratory-confirmed 
cases in school-aged children. Did your scientific experts 
provide that data to you?
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, Doctor or Representative, what we 
were presented with was documentation, including from the 
Pediatricians Association, and including from doctors like Dr. 
Kelly Henning, who worked----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. So, did they present you data that showed 
children were a very low transmission, very low risk of death?
    Ms. Weingarten. We knew that children----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Did they present to you data from other 
countries that showed continuing in-person schooling was, in 
fact, safe for children and save for teachers?
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, we were presented with data, thank 
God, that showed that kids had less COVID and have less----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Yes, COVID was not influenza, and I can 
certainly understand education----
    Ms. Weingarten. But no, no, we totally know it was----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. I reclaim my time, ma'am.
    Ms. Weingarten. I am sorry.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. I understand that, you know, the 
education system has a great deal of expertise with influenza, 
and the challenges of influenza, and the contagiousness among 
children. However, influenza is not COVID. Did your experts 
present to you August 7, 2020 the CDC published an MMWR study 
on COVID-NET data from March 1, 2020 through July 25, 2020, 
which clearly established the low risk to American children? In 
the analysis, children comprised less than 0.1 percent of 
hospitalizations and 0.0005 percent of associate COVID-19 
mortality.
    Ms. Weingarten. The data----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Did your experts present that data to you 
to be able to develop your assessment for whether or not 
schools should reopen?
    Ms. Weingarten. So, may I answer?
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. I am waiting.
    Ms. Weingarten. So, what our experts showed us, and that is 
why I was giving the names of our experts, is that they showed 
us the two reports, the one from Massachusetts and the one from 
Wisconsin, and we also saw the reports from the other 
countries--I don't know if I saw all of them that you saw--that 
showed that when you had this layered mitigation, there was 
much less transmission in schools----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. I think----
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. That we saw. And that is part 
of the reason why we were confident that if we had the layered 
mitigation----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. The layered mitigation was in 
relationship----
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. That we could do this.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks [continuing]. With influenza, and I would 
say that----
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, there was a Wisconsin study----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks [continuing]. Perhaps in the future we 
could get different experts, because what I am doing is, as a 
physician, as seven physicians on this panel, challenging what 
your experts said.
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, look----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks . And as we continue to learn from COVID-
19----
    Ms. Weingarten. Doctor, I----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks [continuing]. What the medical facts were.
    Ms. Weingarten. OK.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. You know, these facts are non-negotiable, 
ma'am. The fact is, schools were relatively safe places for 
both students and educators.
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, they were----
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. These are scientific questions that a 
scientific organization should be able to study and answer, and 
the AFT is not a scientific organization. Not only am I doctor, 
I am a former director of the State Department of Public 
Health, and I know how important it is to work with 
stakeholders to bring people to consensus, but I would say that 
the AFT was out of its league in this regard. The effect on 
children has been vast and to have no remorse on closing 
schools and keeping them closed for the length of the time is 
unconscionable. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Mfume from Maryland for 5 
minutes of questions.
    Mr. Mfume. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I want to 
thank Ranking Member Ruiz for having us here. My thanks to you, 
Ms. Weingarten. On a point of order, let me just point out the 
fact that we claim to love teachers, we claim to care about 
teachers, but we don't really embrace teachers. We talk the 
talk, but we never walk the walk. And this Congress and 
previous Congresses are replete with instances where that has 
been shown to be true.
    Now, I just want to point out the presence of a teacher who 
is here before she slips out of this door, and some of you will 
recognize her. She was the 2015 JFK Teacher of the Year. A year 
later, she was selected as the National Teacher of the Year 
from Connecticut, and we are happy that she is a member of our 
ranks and a representative from Waterbury, Jahana Hayes. Thank 
you very much for being here.
    [Applause.]
    Mr. Mfume. So let us not get it twisted. If teachers are 
important, we ought to act like it, and we ought to stop all of 
this castigating, finger pointing, accusations, innuendo about 
what went wrong. All kinds of stuff went wrong during the 
pandemic. Nobody got it right because we were moving in real 
time. I serve as a member of the business committee, the Small 
Business Committee. Do you know how many loans went out that 
shouldn't have gone out and we are trying to reclaim them now 
because people just in real time weren't doing what they had to 
do and how many accusations come out of that? We just can't 
continue down this track.
    And, you know, I just don't like angry people who use bully 
pulpits to make other people look small. If there are some 
issues and there are some complaints, that is fine, but the way 
we present what we are doing underscores really who we are, or, 
more importantly, who we are not. Now, my teacher taught me do 
unto others as you would have them do unto you. I wouldn't want 
to be a witness that just got the you-know-what smacked around 
out of them for coming here to testify to this group.
    Now, this pandemic has had a real and lasting consequence, 
we all agree, on our students, on our teachers, on our Nation, 
and there is still a lot that needs to be done to make sure and 
ensure that we are making up for lost classroom time. That is 
really the bottom line here. How do we make up and catch up, 
and how do we stop pointing fingers. Getting families the 
support they needed then and need now is important, and then 
helping schools to recover, and to rebuild, and to help 
students get back on track. But the solution to these issues 
does not lie in politically charged hearings that mislead the 
American people and have nothing, nothing to do with advancing 
the protection of children's health, their well-being, or their 
education.
    So, I want to go back and reiterate and be deliberately 
redundant of what my colleague Mrs. Dingell brought out and 
correct, again, this testimony by reminding us that the 
transcript of the hearing that took place 1 year ago in this 
Committee, when Ms. Walensky came and testified under oath to 
this Committee and was questioned by Members of the Committee 
about consultation. She said they consulted with over 50 
organizations, not just with the American Federation of 
Teachers, 50 organizations, dozens of stakeholders, including 
dozens of parent groups, and school boards, and 
superintendents, and National Associations of School Nurses, 
and others to come up with the guidance that we are here 
talking about today. They didn't just go to AFT and say, what 
do you think. If they had done that, everybody would be correct 
here in lambasting what took place. They sought to get the 
broadest amount of information they could, and that is 
reasonable, very reasonable. In fact, it is something that we 
expect will happen because we want great input.
    It is also startling to me that even as this Committee is 
holding this hearing today supposedly--well, let me take that 
back because I don't want to judge their motives, anybody's 
motives--but as we are holding this hearing today out of 
concern for America's children, some on that committee are 
threatening to defund the American education system in the 
upcoming budget. Now, I don't understand that. Is that a 
sleight of hand or is that deliberate? Budget cuts, 22 percent 
totaling $3.1 billion in different areas of education that will 
affect children are all under assault.
    So, I am glad that you are here, Ms. Weingarten. I suspect 
that you know that nobody is going to sort of treat you with 
kid gloves, but continue to tell the truth over and over and 
over again, and in the end, we hope and pray that the truth 
will win out.
    Dr. Wenstrup. The gentleman's time has expired. I now 
recognize Mrs. Lesko from Arizona for 5 minutes of questions.
    Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I do want to thank 
all the teachers throughout the United States for their work 
educating our children. It is really important. I remember some 
of my teachers very vividly that taught me things. I think what 
we are here for today is to try to analyze what we did right, 
what we did wrong. I am very thankful that we are all here 
today. We don't have masks. We are not sitting apart, you know, 
six feet apart from each other, so I am thankful for that. But 
I do think that we did some things wrong, and one of those 
things that I believe we did wrong was keeping schools closed 
for too long. I have grandkids. I remember when they were 
sitting in front of their laptops at home, and my daughter was 
trying to work remotely and help teach the kids remotely. It 
was insane, quite frankly. It was a very difficult situation.
    The thing that I don't understand, it is confusing to me, 
and so some of my questions are going to relate around this, is 
in many states, like the state of Arizona, the schools opened 
up, and they had not teachers there in the schools, but they 
had lower-wage school employees that would watch the kids on 
their laptops being taught by teachers remotely. And that 
really puzzles me because I am, like, well why would it be that 
these employees are less susceptible to COVID-19 than teachers? 
Maybe you can help me understand that Ms. Weingarten.
    Ms. Weingarten. So, thank you, Representative. First off, 
that puzzles me too. We don't represent every jurisdiction. We 
have 3,500 locals, and one of the things that has not come 
through in my testimony yet is we represent 200,000 nurses and 
healthcare practitioners in hospitals. I think we are the 
fastest-growing healthcare union as well as the teachers union. 
And so, one of the things that we tried to do in the 
jurisdictions that we were in, and you saw me recognize a bus 
driver and a nurse, was it was about all of us and trying to 
make sure that we were all going to either be opened and try to 
get more and more kids, or, you know, what was going on, not to 
separate out two classifications of people. So, I saw that in 
remarks that you had made earlier, and it didn't happen in the 
jurisdictions that we were in.
    Mrs. Lesko. It didn't make any sense to me, yes.
    Ms. Weingarten. And I completely agree with you that the 
work that people tried to do in terms of juggling remote was 
terrible. And that is part of the reason from April 2020, we 
were trying to find what we needed to do in terms of safety 
guidance to reopen schools.
    Mrs. Lesko. Thank you. I just have to----
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry.
    Mrs. Lesko. I only have a minute 44 seconds left. The other 
thing that puzzled me is that a lot of other establishments 
were open. Grocery stores were open. Walmart was open. I assume 
that teachers went to grocery stores, and they went to Walmart, 
so why could they go there and not go to the classroom? That I 
don't understand.
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, part of the problem was, unlike in 
Europe, and I wish I had the moment to answer this question. 
Unlike in Europe, the economy was prioritized in so many 
different places in America--gyms, bars, restaurants--and look, 
was a Hobson's Choice. I think the Congressman Mfume said it. 
It was a Hobson's Choice. But the difference between schools 
and a Walmart is that kids were in school all day.
    Mrs. Lesko. Yes, it still mystifies me. The other thing we 
have already brought up is about the science. Were you aware 
that Sweden, they had no closures of daycares or schools and 
that zero Swedish children died?
    Ms. Weingarten. What I am aware of is that Sweden and 
Denmark and other places in Europe prioritized the reopening of 
schools and had the layered mitigation that we were 
championing. So, they prioritized over ours----
    Mrs. Lesko. I have one last question in the 14 seconds I 
have left. I am a Member of Congress that sits on two 
committees that deal with the CDC. I don't have a direct number 
to Director Walensky. Do you?
    Ms. Weingarten. I do not talk to representatives----
    Mrs. Lesko. Do you have a----
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Of the government.
    Mrs. Lesko. Do you have a direct number to Director 
Walensky?
    Ms. Weingarten. Do I have Director Walensky's direct 
number?
    Mrs. Lesko. Yes.
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, I have Director Walensky's direct 
number.
    Mrs. Lesko. Well, hopefully she will give it to me, too. 
Thank you, and I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Ross from North Carolina 
for 5 minutes of questions.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Instead of using today's 
hearing to meaningfully examine the challenges facing America's 
kids in the wake of the pandemic, this Select Subcommittee is 
continuing a partisan crusade against our Nation's educators. 
Allegations here are just not credible, and they polarized 
pandemic oversight and don't do anything to help overcome 
learning loss, bring relief to kids struggling with mental 
health issues, or better prepare us for future health crises. 
Ms. Weingarten, my colleagues have leveled some 
mischaracterizations against you and your organization. Is 
there anything you would like to say to correct the record?
    Ms. Weingarten. Thank you, Congresswoman. No. 1, the 
guidance that the CDC did in February and that they then 
revised in March, and they, again, continued to revise, the 
presumption of that guidance was to reopen. There was not a 
presumption to close. The presumption was to reopen with those 
safeguards. And what has happened in a lot of places, and that 
is why I raised the Cuomo Commission because that was the only 
commission that I served on personally, was that there were 
ways of trying to have this layered mitigation, which is why 
schools had a lower transmission rate than communities.
    That is what we saw in the Wisconsin study. That is what we 
saw in the Massachusetts study. That is what we saw in San 
Antonio. That is what we saw in New York City when it had 
surveillance testing. We were trying to see what was an 
invisible disease and where people were still getting hurt and 
killed. And so ultimately, our goal was to have clear guidance 
so that teachers in classrooms, bus drivers--the school nurses 
knew--but most of us did not know what this meant, and we 
needed clear guidance from the scientists that we could follow 
because what we also saw, and I will stop here, is that the 
more people we got back into school, the more they were 
comfortable doing it.
    And so from June 2020 poll to our February 2021 poll, we 
saw an increase of about 20 points of our members. The more 
they were there, the more they were comfortable with the 
layered mitigation, the more they were comfortable being in 
school teaching because they wanted to be in school teaching. 
They knew that remote was not right for our kids. We knew we 
had to be in school. We just wanted to be safe. So, thank you.
    Ms. Ross. Well, thank you, and I also want to note that in 
some of the Scandinavian countries that have been mentioned, 
there was also universal childcare----
    Ms. Weingarten. Correct.
    Ms. Ross [continuing]. Universal healthcare----
    Ms. Weingarten. Correct.
    Ms. Ross [continuing]. Paid sick leave, and many of the 
things that our teachers do not have in this country.
    I would like to enter into the record a letter the Select 
Committee received from the Leadership Conference on Civil and 
Human Rights condemning today's hearing and the efforts to 
smear Ms. Weingarten while ignoring the real challenges that we 
are facing post-pandemic, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Wenstrup. No objection.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you. This hearing has been way too partisan 
under the guise of protecting children. At the same time we are 
having it, we are talking about a debt limit bill that would 
have dangerous cuts to programs that protect the health and 
well-being of some of our Nation's most vulnerable kids. For 
example, Speaker McCarthy's budget proposal includes a 22-
percent cut across the board for domestic and social programs, 
including Head Start, which promotes school readiness for tens 
of thousands of underserved infants, toddlers, and 
preschoolers. My mom was a preschool teacher. North Carolina is 
a leader in early education.
    With the 30 seconds that we have left, Ms. Weingarten, what 
kinds of services does Head Start provide that is so crucial 
for the next generation?
    Ms. Weingarten. Separate and apart from the custodial 
issues that are so important when so many women are going to 
work, separate from that, development of kids. Kids' minds are 
so nimble when they are 3, 4, and 5 years old, and what Head 
Start does is Head Start helps create that development and 
helps create confidence for kids to be able to actually make 
those connections and start applying knowledge and being 
confident about themselves and their well-being.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Cloud from Texas for 5 
minutes of questions.
    Mr. Cloud. Hello. Thanks for being here. I want to just 
first echo the Chairman's statements from the beginning and 
just the general sentiment of this Committee that, of course, 
we support and are so thankful for the teachers throughout our 
Nation, who, through a pandemic, worked very hard to get kids 
and to keep kids going. Now, we have learned a lot of course 
since, and my wife is also a teacher, and whether pandemic or 
not, there is a lot of work that gets done. I have seen the 
late hours. I have seen the papers being graded, and we are so 
thankful for teachers.
    I do want to talk about the concern that some of the 
guidance was politicized. Very early on, we knew that COVID-19 
didn't have the same effect on children as it did as adults, 
especially vulnerable populations. Early data said that 
children were unlikely to suffer serious illness or death as a 
result of COVID-19. Children comprised, I should say, 0.01 
percent of hospitalizations and 0.0005 percent of COVID-19 
deaths in a study published by the CDC. And we are talking 
about data as early as March through July 2020.
    In June 2020, the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly 
recommended that all policy considerations for the opening 
school year should begin with the goal of having students 
presently in school. When former President Trump similarly 
pushed for schools to be reopened in the fall of 2022, the ATF 
activated their membership, and I believe you said that it was 
too little too late at the time. In February 2021, the AFT 
celebrated the CDC's release of the final operational strategy, 
and it was said, ``For the first time since the start of the 
pandemic, a rigorous roadmap based on science that members can 
use to fight for safe reopening.'' And Director Walensky 
assured the public that the operational strategy was developed 
by medical experts and free of political meddling.
    Just before the guidance came out, of course, you had 
communication and provide guidance when it came to some of the 
logistics of reopening. I don't take issue with that. I do find 
it odd that part of the communication was scheduling the 
communication and the concern that the union and the Biden 
Administration might stand apart from a messaging standpoint, 
and the need to make sure that you are coordinating----
    Ms. Weingarten. I don't----
    Mr. Cloud [continuing]. In regards of a political 
statement.
    Ms. Weingarten. I don't----
    Mr. Cloud. Are you a medical expert?
    Ms. Weingarten. I am not a medical expert.
    Mr. Cloud. And I wanted to bring your attention to this 
because I found this enlightening as well. This is your State 
of the Union report?
    Ms. Weingarten. Which one? Which year? We do many.
    Mr. Cloud. 2020 to 2022.
    Ms. Weingarten. OK.
    Mr. Cloud. So, I am sure you are familiar with this. It 
reads with all the passion and gusto of a political manifesto. 
There is everything in here on thoughts from promoting 
government-run healthcare, inflation, immigration, abortion, 
voting and election law, efforts to promoting unionization, not 
just for teachers, but for all industry, Second Amendment 
issues, weighing in on the war of Ukraine. I was also struck by 
what wasn't in here. The word ``political'' appears 29 times 
and almost always in the context of dollars spent on campaigns. 
``Reading'' only appears 16 times and usually in the context of 
promoting books that many parents are concerned about being in 
their schools. ``Science'' only appears 5 or 6 times and 
related to COVID. ``Math'' only appears once, and it was at a 
time when the American Federation of Teachers was advocating 
against a community that wanted to streamline and focus funding 
on math, reading, science, and social studies.
    It went on to talk about how some of the money is being 
used. Colorado used solidary funds to maintain the Democratic 
majority in the Colorado House of Representatives, the Florida 
Education Association, and went on to say, ``For the first time 
in Florida, Republican voters outnumber Democratic voters.'' 
And it went on to talk about the efforts to reverse that trend 
that the Union has. Georgia Federation of Teachers contributed 
to the school board race and state Democratic causes.
    All that is allowed and fine, but the concern I have is 
when the White House comes and says that there was no political 
input, that what we constantly see is an organization, that you 
are not an education organization, while though you have 
education, you are not a medical organization. You are a 
political organization, and you are weighing in on the 
guidance. Are you still a super delegate to the Democratic 
Party?
    Ms. Weingarten. I am still a delegate to the DNC, yes.
    Mr. Cloud. OK. Which, again, you have all realms to do, and 
you should participate. I have a concern when the White House 
is making decisions based on political science versus real 
science. I think my time is up, and I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Frost from Florida for 5 
minutes of questions.
    Mr. Frost. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. During today's hearing, 
Republicans on this Committee are attempting to paint the 
American Federation of Teachers as a destructive specialist 
interest group out to harm students. They are not. AFT 
represents our talented, generous, and compassionate educators 
who are the backbone of this Nation's childcare in in our 
children's home away from home. This is personal for me. My 
mother has been a public-school educator for 37 years teaching 
special education. She actually retires this year. And this is 
rich. It is ironic, and it has no one fooled. This is to 
distract from the real special interest group that is the real 
threat to children all across this country, the NRA.
    And look, I recognize that the pandemic has had real 
impacts on American children, but make no mistake, for a brief 
time in this country, children didn't have to memorize 
emergency exits. Children didn't have to practice active 
shooter drills more than they are doing fire drills. Children 
didn't have to walk around with a Kevlar backpack or figure out 
what they have to do if a shooter were to come into their 
classroom. Students are begging for Congress to have the 
courage to act on gun violence. If you care about students, if 
you care about schools, fight for a world where students are 
not dying in a pool of their own blood in the classrooms that 
they are supposed to be learning in.
    If Republicans gave a damn about America's children, they 
would pass legislation to end gun violence to keep students 
safe, to keep teachers safe, to keep administrators safe, and 
the staff of the schools. If Republicans gave a damn about the 
next generation, they wouldn't be actively trying to cut 
funding for your kids' school and turning a blind eye to the 
gun violence that is killing children every single day in this 
country. If they give a damn about gun violence, they wouldn't 
be going after teachers over some emails about school safety 
from 2 years ago.
    Let me tell you what people are actually going through. My 
friend, Manuel Oliver, lost his son, Joaquin, in the Parkland 
shooting, Joaquin Oliver, in Parkland, Florida. And when I 
think about what our children are going through and the real 
threat to them, I think about the autopsy of Joaquin Oliver, 
``a significant amount of bleeding. The bleeding went into his 
right chest cavity and started compressing his lungs. By 
basically drowning, he died in a pool of his own blood.'' That 
is what happened to Joaquin Oliver. That is the threat that our 
students are going through. Five hundred and forty-nine 
children and teens have already been lost to gun violence this 
year alone, and yet, here we are, burying our heads in the 
sand, ignoring the problem, and refusing to put legislation on 
the floor.
    Ma'am, thank you so much for being here today. What impact 
does a child living through mass shooting or other gun-related 
events have on their development, mental health, and ability to 
learn?
    Ms. Weingarten. Look, it is terrible. I mean, we represent 
the educators in Parkland and the educators in Sandy Hook, and 
gun violence is the No. 1 cause of deaths of kids. And yes, 
obviously, we should be doing a lot more about that, and I just 
hope that this caring that I have heard all day long about kids 
on both sides, it will translate into what we do today and 
going forward about helping our kids.
    Mr. Frost. Yes.
    Ms. Weingarten. That this sentiment that I have heard is 
actually taken to help our kids and not just questioning me 
about when I talked to Dr. Walensky.
    Mr. Frost. Yes. I mean, if we held an oversight hearing on 
this and invited survivors, teachers, students, parents, do you 
think that the Committee would find that inaction in Congress 
on gun violence to be appropriate? How do you feel like the 
parents and the students would feel?
    Ms. Weingarten. Look, I hear from teachers and kids all the 
time. What this Committee hasn't asked me is, I have been in, I 
think, 147 worksites or 150 worksites between April 2021 and 
April 2023. I walked the walk with parents and teachers and 
children, and they are scared about gun violence and about the 
ready access of guns. They are scared. I hear it all the time.
    Mr. Frost. Yes, thank you so much. Thank you for your work, 
and thank you for your perspective on children, their overall 
health, well-being, and development. This is one of the 
greatest threats to kids in schools. This is one of the 
greatest threats to teachers and our families in the school 
system, not whatever they are talking about right now to score 
political points, but the fact that our kids are being shot, 
that if your child, and I am speaking to the parents of this 
country. God forbid if your child were to die before the age of 
18, the most likely reason is because they were shot to death. 
I find that unacceptable, but Republicans on this Committee do 
not, and that is why we are here today. Thank you. I yield 
back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. Joyce from Pennsylvania 
for 5 minutes of questions.
    Dr. Joyce. Thank you for yielding, Mr. Chairman, and thank 
you for appearing here today in front of us, Ms. Weingarten.
    Throughout the pandemic, we all heard ``follow the 
science.'' In guidance released back in June 2020, the American 
Academy of Pediatrics called for a return to in-person 
learning, and they further stated in their guidance for safe 
schools and the promotion of in-person learning, ``Remote 
learning exacerbated existing educational inequities, was 
detrimental to educational attainment and drastically worsened 
the growing mental health crisis among children and 
adolescents.'' Ms. Weingarten, do you agree that in-person 
learning provides the best educational opportunity for 
students?
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes.
    Dr. Joyce. Do you agree that remote learning may exacerbate 
educational inequities, be detrimental to educational 
attainment, and worsen a growing mental health crisis in 
children?
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes.
    Dr. Joyce. One of the worst side effects of prolonged 
school closures has been learning loss. Is the pandemic 
associated with learning loss? Is that real?
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, yes, of course, it is real.
    Dr. Joyce. I agree with you it----
    Ms. Weingarten. But what we also saw, sir, is that, in 
places, and this is what I think the LCCR was getting to in the 
letter that they sent to the Committee. Take a place like L.A., 
which actually was closed for the whole 2021 school year, and 
yet, its NAEP scores for English increased. And----
    Dr. Joyce. But overall----
    Ms. Weingarten. Wait, wait, wait. So, what they did----
    Dr. Joyce [continuing]. You have acknowledged----
    Ms. Weingarten. No, no, no----
    Dr. Joyce [continuing]. The pandemic is associated with, 
not one instance----
    Ms. Weingarten. But what they did----
    Dr. Joyce. My time is limited.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. The work. They did the work.
    Dr. Joyce. The pandemic is associated with learning loss 
and that is real, correct, overall?
    Ms. Weingarten. But what I am saying is equity and poverty 
and other things are associated as well. This is what was so 
interesting about their results. They did a lot of this work. 
They fed kids. They made sure that kids had reading 
instruction. They made sure that kids had internet access. They 
actually did the equity work that the LCCR has been asking for 
and that we have been asking for. And what happened was----
    Dr. Joyce. And yet in face of that----
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. They did OK.
    Dr. Joyce. Please, I am on limited time. In the face of 
that, the pandemic is associated with real learning loss, 
correct? ``Yes'' or ``no.''
    Ms. Weingarten. Look, kids need to be in school----
    Dr. Joyce. Thank you.
    Ms. Weingarten. And they learned----
    Dr. Joyce. Thank you. Let us leave it at that. Kids need to 
be in school.
    Ms. Weingarten. And they----
    Dr. Joyce. And their learning is better in school.
    Ms. Weingarten. And their learning is better in school, of 
course.
    Dr. Joyce. Thank you. We agree on that point. The goal now 
has to be doing everything that we can do to provide students 
with the ability to recover these losses.
    Ms. Weingarten. Completely agree.
    Dr. Joyce. Do you support adding additional time to the 
school day to help students get more in-person instruction 
time?
    Ms. Weingarten. We are actually doing additional time 
during the school day, and----
    Dr. Joyce. Great. I think that students need that. Do you 
encourage your members to teach during expanded summer school 
to help the students get that necessary, what you just 
described----
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, sir.
    Dr. Joyce [continuing]. That needed in-person instruction?
    Ms. Weingarten. In fact, John King and I made that proposal 
in an April 2020 op-ed to have summer school even back then 
because we knew the importance of kids being together. It is 
not just academic. It is the adolescent's development, and it 
is the relationship building, so we knew that.
    Dr. Joyce. I think that is so important. So, to be clear, 
you do not support increasing access to additional educational 
services to correct for learning loss that occurred as a result 
of the school closings that your organization has advocated and 
supported. You are in favor of additional time in the classroom 
and expanded summer programs. Is that correct?
    Ms. Weingarten. We are in favor of that. That is why we are 
calling for community schools and things like that. We are in 
favor of wraparound services and community schools and having 
additional time available for kids.
    Dr. Joyce. Additional time, summer training, I think that 
is awesome. The AFT though, is inherently a political 
organization. In fact, political activism is in your mission 
statement. Is that correct?
    Ms. Weingarten. Academic achievement, welcoming and safe 
environments. There are many----
    Dr. Joyce. Is political activism in your mission statement?
    Ms. Weingarten. There are many things in our mission 
statement, sir.
    Dr. Joyce. Including political activism?
    Ms. Weingarten. Including political----
    Dr. Joyce. Political activism.
    Ms. Weingarten. Including ensuring that people have a 
voice, yes.
    Dr. Joyce. So political activism is part of who you are. 
CDC guidance, especially guidance based on complex immunology 
and epidemiology, requires scientific expertise, and earlier in 
your testimony with us here today, you said most of us aren't 
scientists. Does the AFT employ any epidemiologists?
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, we actually consulted with 
epidemiologists.
    Dr. Joyce. Does the AFT employ immunologists?
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, we consulted with immunologists.
    Dr. Joyce. In-house, do you employ any infectious disease 
specialist?
    Ms. Weingarten. We have people who are industrial 
hygienists, yes.
    Dr. Joyce. Do you have any board-certified pediatric 
infectious disease specialist on your payroll?
    Ms. Weingarten. In consulting with them, yes.
    Dr. Joyce. Do you have anyone with experience with treating 
novel coronaviruses?
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, to the extent that there was any 
expertise in the country, yes.
    Dr. Joyce. Wow. I am a physician, and I knew of no one who 
had any experience treating novel coronaviruses. If you don't 
have the ability----
    Ms. Weingarten. Sir, I just said to the extent that it was 
available. I can give you----
    Dr. Joyce. There was none available.
    Ms. Weingarten. I could give you----
    Dr. Joyce. There was none available, and yet you----
    Ms. Weingarten. I can give you the names of the people that 
we relied on.
    Dr. Joyce. Great. Forward those to us, please.
    Ms. Weingarten. Would you like me to say them publicly so 
that you hear them?
    Dr. Joyce. No, I would like you to forward that because my 
time is limited.
    Mr. Joyce. You also talked about over reliance of kids 
spending too much time on electric devices, and you put up your 
phone just like I am pulling up my phones, but they need to be 
connected person to person. And I think we can all agree that 
removing students from in-person learning has really 
accelerated the issues affecting mental health that you, Ms. 
Weingarten, have mentioned repeatedly throughout this.
    And the only conclusion that I can make as a doctor, as a 
parent, and as a legislator, is that the AFT recommendations 
harmed so many children. And I think we have to learn, we as a 
Select Subcommittee, have to learn, and we have to move forward 
when faced with a crisis like the pandemic was, we have to 
understand that those who are not susceptible to this must 
remain in school. Those students have suffered, and we are 
making up time, we are making up that lost time, and we need to 
do that in a conjoined effort. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I 
yield.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Takuda from Hawaii for 5 
minutes of questions.
    Ms. Takuda. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ms. Weingarten, thank you 
for being here today. As a mother that has two boys that attend 
our public schools, I experienced firsthand the impacts of the 
COVID-19 pandemic on my children's education, their learning, 
their mental health, their social-emotional development. We 
witnessed, all of us, we witnessed a lot of loss during this 
pandemic. You talked about it. But students didn't just lose 
academic learning. As you mentioned, we lost family members. 
Others lost a caregiver, a parent, a classmate, a teacher, a 
friend.
    I am glad to see my colleagues across the aisle talk so 
much about how they care about our kids, their learning, their 
mental health. However, I find it ironic that we are once again 
talking about school closures, closures, by the way that were 
done to keep children safe when the last administration had no 
plans in place to safely reopen them, while Republicans have 
proposed a 22-percent reduction to non-defense spending to deal 
with the debt limit, once again closing doors to our children 
and their education. Today, we are talking about the impact of 
the last pandemic on learning loss, yet I will be clear. I am 
worried about the pandemic being created by House Republicans. 
Cuts of these proportions will make learning loss and impacts 
to everyday life for everyday Americans from COVID-19 pale in 
comparison to what they will soon experience. I personally 
struggle to understand how anybody who cares about our children 
genuinely could advocate for these kinds of cuts.
    Ms. Weingarten, perhaps you could offer your view on this. 
How might Republicans' proposed budget cuts to childcare 
funding, educator supports, nutrition, feeding programs, among 
other critical safety net programs, contribute to a whole new 
generation of children experiencing devastating learning loss?
    Ms. Weingarten. So, thank you for your comments, and I hope 
your kids are OK. The work that we need to do now is how we 
engage kids and how we meet them socially and emotionally, and 
how we meet the whole child. There were colleagues here who 
talked about obesity. One of the things we need to do when we 
feed kids in school is to give them nutritious programs. We 
need to have that. We need to have the social workers and the 
guidance counselors that meet kids' needs and families' needs. 
That is why we are proposing a big expansion. So, we need more 
funding, not less, for an expansion of community schools and 
wraparound services so the services that all these doctors have 
been talking about, we can do in school with kids and families.
    Ms. Takuda. I agree. I completely agree. We are looking at 
a whole-of-child, whole-of-family approach----
    Ms. Weingarten. Correct.
    Ms. Takuda [continuing]. When we look at education and how 
we are supporting our kids. Many of us here in Congress in this 
room right now represent small towns, predominantly rural 
communities, like mine in Hawaii. Rural school districts and 
rural students suffered greatly during this pandemic. How might 
the Republican cuts that we are looking at right now 
disproportionately impact, again, our ability to overcome 
learning loss, address mental health issues, impact academic 
achievement in our rural communities across our country?
    Ms. Weingarten. Look, if you already don't have a guidance 
counselor, if a guidance counselor is there for about 400 or 
500 kids, and you start cutting Title I and cutting IDEA and 
funds for special needs, that means we are going to have fewer 
and fewer of them, and it means it is going to get worse and 
worse. So, at the very moment that everyone, I think, seems to 
agree that our kids matter and should be a priority, then the 
funding for them should be a priority.
    Ms. Takuda. Absolutely. If the Republicans' proposed cuts 
are implemented, it would have a significant impact on critical 
programs and resources available to all of our children. In 
particular, I am looking at childcare. A 22-percent cut would 
mean 200,000 children lose access to Head Start slots, and 
another 100,000 children lose access to childcare. Now, this 
undermines our children's basic foundations for education and 
how they will articulate through the system as we know, making 
it more difficult as well for parents to rejoin the work force, 
contribute to our economy.
    Access to affordable, high-quality childcare is a critical 
component, I think as many of us in this room agree, to a 
child's growth and development. Again, if we are truly looking 
at learning loss and staving off learning loss, childcare is 
critical. It affords substantial benefits for these children as 
they grow and age into adolescence and adulthood. I should also 
note that childcare boosts the economy by allowing parents, as 
I mentioned, to once again rejoin the work force.
    In contrast to Republican draconian cuts to programs that 
support working families, we have, as congressional Democrats, 
taking decisive actions to put Americans on firmer footing as 
we emerge from this pandemic. The ARPA funds to the state of 
Hawaii, nearly $80 million, actually helped to keep childcare 
centers open, prevented these children from experiencing 
learning loss in Hawaii, and we know this took place across our 
country, especially our rural communities. I know that my time 
is up, but, Ms. Weingarten, thank you for being here, as we 
talk about what could be the next pandemic if these cuts are 
actually taking place.
    Ms. Weingarten. Thank you.
    Ms. Takuda. I yield back, Chair.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize----
    Ms. Weingarten. Mr. Chair, I did say to you before I am----
    Dr. Wenstrup. You are not recognized.
    Ms. Weingarten. No, no, no. Can we take a break so I can 
have a bathroom break?
    Dr. Wenstrup. Yes, we can do that.
    Ms. Weingarten. Thank you. Sorry.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Five minutes----
    Ms. Weingarten. OK. Fantastic.
    Dr. Wenstrup [continuing]. Because we are pressed for votes 
coming up.
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry. I am sorry.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Yes.
    Ms. Weingarten. Thanks.
    [Recess.]
    Dr. Wenstrup. The Committee comes back to order.
    I now recognize Dr. Jackson from Texas for 5 minutes of 
questions.
    Dr. Jackson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ms. Weingarten, thank 
you for coming today. I don't honestly know if I even have a 
question for you, to be honest with you. I feel like I don't 
know what the point is at this particular point. I think most 
people know what happened at this point. I think anybody that 
has watched what is going on for the last few years knows 
exactly what happened. I am just going to make a statement.
    I just want to say that, you know, this is how most people 
view this. Early on, the data showed that children were 
unlikely to become infected, spread the infection, become ill 
or die from COVID-19. That is a fact. Data also showed that 
school closures, social distancing, masking, and testing 
provided no benefit to the students or their adult educators. 
That is also a fact. Data also showed that those very actions 
that I just described were highly detrimental to the academic 
achievement, the mental health, and the physical health of our 
children. Since the science, the actual science, never 
supported closing schools, we must examine why and who was 
behind these detrimental efforts to promote school closures 
without any scientific support for doing so.
    We now know that you and your organization--it has been 
documented at this point--edited the draft of this 
``scientific-based guidance on school reopening from the CDC,'' 
the document that was used to keep most public schools are all 
around the country closed, in fact. I don't think you were to 
blame. I think the Biden White House and the CDC are the ones 
that really failed our country. The Biden White House and the 
CDC should have completely disregarded any suggestions from 
your politically motivated and corrupt organization, in my 
mind.
    But I guess considering your organization gave millions and 
millions of dollars to Democratic candidates and their liberal 
campaign committees, you and your organization got anything you 
wanted from the Biden Administration. That seems to be how it 
works. This is what corruption in the Federal Government looks 
like. The American people have seen it, and they don't like it. 
Teachers unions are supposed to exist to protect their members 
and to advocate for students. However, your organization, the 
AFT, has demonstrated that what you actually care about is 
gaining and exerting political influence and lining your 
pockets with taxpayer money, even if that is at the expense of 
our own children.
    Since 2020, Congress has allocated more than $190 billion 
to schools across the country through the Elementary and 
Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund to enable schools to 
stay open. Much of this money has been unaccounted for, and 
much of it was spent on woke social garbage, racist CRT 
programs, and other leftist programs. Much of it was provided 
to increase the salaries of teachers, teachers that were paid 
to stay home, thanks to your strong advocacy.
    So big win for you and big win for the organization. Keep 
the schools closed, let people stay home and draw paychecks, 
demand money from the Biden Administration to reopen schools, 
use that money to promote horrible social programs in our 
schools once they finally reopen, provide pay increases to your 
members with Federal taxpayer money, and last, use the dues 
from your members to pay off the Democrats that make it all 
possible. This is what happened.
    I cannot believe that you still have a job after the role 
that you and your organization played in the destruction of our 
children over the last few years. I think it is disgraceful, 
and I think you should be ashamed of what happened over the 
last few years, and you should take some responsibility for it. 
With that, I yield back, Mr. Chair.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Dr. McCormick from Georgia 
for 5 minutes of questions.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, I want 
to state that I have great respect for teachers. I mean that 
sincerely, the most influential people in my life, other than 
my parents and maybe my Marine buddies. I truly appreciate what 
they have done for me over the years. I spent 4 years as an 
associate professor in both private and public schools. I have 
seven kids, so I have a little street credibility when it comes 
to educational experience, and I spent about 20 years in youth 
ministry, so I understand the importance of what teachers do, 
and I sincerely appreciate the efforts.
    With that said, I just wanted to go over something that you 
have already affirmed, which is your tweet at one time, ``What 
we have seen in public education is that technology can't 
replace teachers. Remote education didn't work.'' You did tweet 
that, correct? OK. Thank you.
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, I did.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you. I totally agree with you. My 
son----
    Ms. Weingarten. I have tweeted about 200,000 times, so----
    Dr. McCormick. No, I get it. That wasn't controversial, so 
we just continue. I am not trying to corner you, believe it or 
not. I agree with you. My son actually was having problems 
during this educational experience where he couldn't get a 
teacher to meet with him well into the pandemic where he was 
remotely learning. He doesn't do math so well. He is like his 
dad. And he needed help in-person and even with precautions 
wasn't allowed to come in, so it really affected his 
educational experience. And then he went to a point where he 
had to drop out of a class. It was harmful to him, that 
educational experience, just like many other students.
    We have seen it with countless families across the 
spectrum. We have seen a 5-percent dip in White students, 13 
percent in African Americans, 8 percent in Hispanics, a great 
educational disparity that happened because of this educational 
experience that we experienced because of COVID. Would you 
agree that public education is an essential service? ``Yes'' or 
``no.''
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, absolutely.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you. Me, too. I was on the frontlines 
of the ER during this pandemic. I treated thousands of 
patients. First line, from the beginning, when we didn't have 
any vaccinations all the way to December 28th, my last shift. 
Would you agree that an emergency room doc is also an essential 
service?
    Ms. Weingarten. Of course.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you. Me, too.
    Ms. Weingarten. I mean, sir, you may not----
    Dr. McCormick. No, it is a simple question. No, I am not--
--
    Ms. Weingarten. You may not know. We represent about 
200,000 persons----
    Dr. McCormick. I get you. I get you, and I represent a lot 
of ER doctors, too, I get you.
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes, and my sister is an intensive care 
pediatrician----
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you. Thank you for her service.
    Ms. Weingarten. So, I will tell her.
    Dr. McCormick. And of course, we couldn't do our job 
remotely, correct, as ER physicians, right? I couldn't do my--
--
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, we had over 200,000----
    Dr. McCormick. No, I get you. I get you.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Nurses who we represent----
    Dr. McCormick. I get you.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Who did not do their jobs 
remotely, and we believed in being in school. That is why I 
said earlier----
    Dr. McCormick. Yep. No, I get you.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. We tried from----
    Dr. McCormick. Same as firefighters. Same as law 
enforcement. Everybody has their jobs that are essential 
services that they can't do remotely. And as you said, there 
are people who came in during some scary times that couldn't 
work remotely. I don't think we are trying to argue about what 
is essential services. I think we all agree on what those are, 
whether it be a clerk that actually helps you get your meals or 
your groceries, or somebody who is serving you in very real 
ways and required ways. I think we all agree on those things. 
And I get that it is scary, and I get that at the very 
beginning, there was definitely a reason to be overly concerned 
because we didn't know how this is going. It is a novel virus, 
I get it.
    And as we started developing things, you guys got the wrong 
information a lot of times. So did we because it was 
politicized. And some people who were ``experts'' told us 
things that were wrong, even though they probably hadn't seen 
patients since the 90's, and people like myself, who were 
seeing thousands of patients, were censored by the way, so you 
couldn't get the truth lot of times. So, I understand why 
teachers would be scared to go back to school. I do get that.
    But as this developed and as the evidence became more 
clear, my concern is that we learn from these committees 
because that is what we are here for. I don't think anybody 
disagrees that the whole reason we are here for this Committee 
is so that we don't repeat our mistakes. We have to admit that 
we made mistakes. We all make mistakes. Doctors made mistakes. 
We used to not use NSAIDs. We didn't use steroids. We intubated 
patients. People died because of mistakes we made during the 
novel coronavirus that we learned from. But would you, as the 
head of this union, admit that teachers maybe should have gone 
back to school earlier with retrospective information, so we 
don't make the same mistakes in the future and leave so many 
kids behind?
    Ms. Weingarten. Look, I regret COVID. I regret what has 
happened here.
    Dr. McCormick. So, I am just asking a simple question.
    Ms. Weingarten. I regret----
    Dr. McCormick. I want to learn from this.
    Ms. Weingarten. You know what? I regret----
    Dr. McCormick. I don't want you to regret.
    Ms. Weingarten. I think you would be----
    Dr. McCormick. I have 20 seconds left.
    Ms. Weingarten. If you would let me answer----
    Dr. McCormick. Sure.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. I think you would be surprised 
with my answer.
    Dr. McCormick. OK.
    Ms. Weingarten. You know, I regret the fear that was there, 
and part of the reason we wanted clear information was because 
we had a role in terms of overcoming fear. I think this book 
that just came out yesterday actually gives us a roadmap for 
what we need to do going forward because I do think we didn't 
get it right. I think the ventilation issues, the testing 
issues, actually were more important than the social distancing 
issues. I agree with you. There were things that we really 
didn't get right.
    Dr. Wenstrup. The gentleman's time has expired. I now 
recognize Mr. Garcia from California for 5 minutes of 
questions.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, 
Ms. Weingarten. I appreciate all the work, first, that you do, 
that our teachers do across the country. I am an educator 
myself.
    Ms. Weingarten. Well----
    Mr. Garcia [continuing]. I am married to an educator and so 
I appreciate the hard work. You know, I just want to recenter 
ourselves and remind us that we went through a massive 
disruption to our country, to lives. We lost over a million 
Americans. My city alone lost 1,300 residents within my 
community when I was mayor just right before I got elected to 
Congress. And this was a traumatic, horrific event, and the 
largest loss of life event of the modern era. And so, this idea 
that there aren't going to be mistakes made in our institutions 
or organizations, of course, is ridiculous. There are going to 
be lessons learned. Whether it is in our education sector, 
whether it is in public health, whether it was in the way the 
government managed on the vaccine rollout, we are going to 
learn how to make things better.
    And I want to just uplift the fact that teachers were 
working under terrible conditions, a situation where they also 
have family. I want to remember that teachers also have family 
at home, also have sick parents at home, were also trying to 
protect themselves, their loved ones, and their own children 
outside of the classroom. And so, I just want to take that 
moment that everybody was scared and trying their absolute 
best. During the pandemic, the Long Beach Unified School 
District, it was the largest school district to reopen schools 
when we reopened because teachers were vaccinated, because we 
vaccinated teachers early on and gotten the supplies that they 
needed and the resources that they needed.
    Ms. Weingarten. We often looked at your school district as 
a model for what to replicate.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you. And a big part of that was because 
we made the decision early on to double vaccinate all of our 
teachers and to ensure that everyone had access to the vaccine 
early. We actually were the first school district, the first 
city to actually vaccinate teachers in the entire state of 
California, and vaccinations led to reopening schools first and 
faster. And so there needs to be more emphasis on that vaccine 
access.
    I also just want to note, and, you know, it had been 
mentioned a few times that, you know, it was President Trump 
and his Administration that was really facilitating the 
closures and trying to get us reopened, and it was a total 
disaster. There was very little support early on from the Trump 
Administration to actually get us support to support our 
schools. We worked directly with our schools, essentially 
sidelined the Federal Government, and tried to get as much 
support, whether it was materials, whether it was PPE, whether 
it was vaccines, directly to our schools. Now, I appreciate you 
mentioning Long Beach. In fact, President Biden, also named 
Long Beach and our school system as the national model 
reopening schools, and we appreciate that.
    I want to ask you, the American Rescue Plan was a 
lifesaver, as you know, for schools, for school districts. 
Beyond the American Rescue Plan, what else should Congress be 
doing to assist schools to ensure that in the future this 
doesn't happen again and that we can reopen schools even 
faster?
    Ms. Weingarten. So, several things. No. 1, what we learned 
through the end of this pandemic, and I know that, you know, 
there are some issues in terms of, you know, vaccination or 
not. But 90 percent of our members voluntarily vaccinated, and 
we took a position, and, you know, some people disagreed, and 
some teachers were fired because of it. We took a position that 
we needed to work with our members, work with school districts 
to get as many people vaccinated, and our members vaccinated 
even on a mandatory basis as possible to open schools, but----
    Mr. Garcia. And on that point, and I support that, by the 
way. I think you have made the right decision.
    Ms. Weingarten. And look, you know, there is someone in 
this audience here today who disagrees with me about it, you 
know? And so, what I am saying, though, is that in a pandemic, 
we need clear information. We need clear guidance. Most of us 
who are not scientists need to trust the scientists to give us 
clear guidance and the mitigating circumstances.
    Mr. Garcia. Absolutely. And let me----
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Including ventilation and 
testing.
    Mr. Garcia. I agree completely. And vaccine hesitancy, 
which we know, in fact, Members of this very Congress are some 
of the largest, most vocal vaccine deniers in America. Would 
that have hurt the reopening of schools? Did that actually 
cause any concerns for teachers on the ground?
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, look, so Dr. Shah from Rockefeller 
and I did an op-ed in January 2021 that said we could reopen 
schools even without vaccination if we had the testing. And I 
think during the Omicron variant, we saw that testing really 
helped us keep schools open, just like it helped the NFL and 
just like it helped the NBA. And so, I think that there is a 
combination of things that we need to know in terms of what is 
the measure to keeping people safe----
    Mr. Garcia. Absolutely.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. And keeping people open.
    Mr. Garcia. And finally, I just want to say if we really 
want to focus on ensuring, because there will be future 
pandemic, ensuring that schools today have the resources that 
they need----
    Ms. Weingarten. Correct. Absolutely.
    Mr. Garcia [continuing]. That teachers have the resources 
they need, that we are actually in reinvesting in our schools, 
that is actually going to help to ensure that if there is a 
future pandemic, we can solve it----
    Ms. Weingarten. Absolutely.
    Mr. Garcia [continuing]. Even faster and learn from our 
mistakes. Thank you so much.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Greene from Georgia for 5 
minutes of questions.
    Ms. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Weingarten, are 
you a medical doctor?
    Ms. Weingarten. I am not.
    Ms. Greene. Are you a mother?
    Ms. Weingarten. I am a mother by marriage.
    Ms. Greene. By marriage, I see. And----
    Ms. Weingarten. And my wife is here with me, so I am really 
glad that she is here, Sharon Kleinbaum.
    Ms. Greene. Ms. Weingarten, and you haven't taught school 
since the 90's, so you are not a teacher anymore.
    Ms. Weingarten. Representative, I am actually on leave from 
my teaching position. And this fall, I will be teaching as a 
guest teacher at Cornell, my alma mater.
    Ms. Greene. When was the last year you taught, 1997? Is 
that correct?
    Ms. Weingarten. The last time I taught a full class was 
June 1997.
    Ms. Greene. OK. That has been quite a long time, 
approximately 26 years ago. Do you believe in the First 
Amendment, Ms. Weingarten?
    Ms. Weingarten. I believe in the Constitution, including 
the First Amendment, of course.
    Ms. Greene. Oh, great. Well, I would like to remind you of 
one of your tweets here where you agreed that my suspension on 
Twitter, in your own words, ``Politicians shouldn't be exempt 
from standards about spreading misinformation. Greene has 
repeatedly shown reckless disregard for those standards. This 
suspension is justified.'' This is your tweet. Just last year, 
January 2, 2022, I was suspended for my statements about COVID-
19, as a Member of Congress, by the way. And also, I would like 
to point out by the emojis by your name here, it looks like you 
are more of a political activist than anything. Clearly, 
unfortunately, you think Ukraine comes before the United 
States. I am not sure what the black flex is. I mean, is that 
digital blackface? But congratulations on graduating from 
school. But I would like to know----
    Ms. Weingarten. No, it is about honoring Black----
    Ms. Greene. Ms. Weingarten, I reclaim my time. I didn't ask 
you a question.
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry.
    Ms. Greene. What I would like to talk about is your 
recommendations to the CDC as not a medical doctor, not a 
biological mother, and really not a teacher either. So, what 
you did is you advised the CDC----
    Mr. Garcia. Mr. Chairman, that is----
    Ms. Greene. Excuse me. This is my time. You advised the CDC 
to have schools provide remote work options for staff that have 
documented high risk conditions, who are increased risk for 
severe illness from COVID-19, to limit the risk of workplace 
exposure, telework, virtual teaching opportunities, modified 
job responsibilities, environmental modifications, scheduling, 
flexibility, temporary assignments to different job 
responsibilities.
    None of your advice had to do to stop the spread of COVID 
19. It was all about teachers staying home, and there was big 
results of that. Let me tell you, I am a mother, and all three 
of my children were directly affected by the school closures by 
your recommendations, which is something that you really can't 
understand.
    Let's talk about the real effects of this. Obviously, we 
know the test results, oh, and by the way, that you are 
celebrating what I had said on Twitter, I had said that 
children should be in school. I had said the truth that 
children were not dying at high rates of COVID-19 like older 
people were. I had also advocated for our children, not for 
teachers getting to stay home and kids being forced into 
virtual schooling. I advocated for the safety of our children 
and further education. But you as a political activist for the 
president of the Teachers' Union were not advocating for 
anything good for our kids, and our kids have suffered greatly. 
As a matter of fact, suicides increased. Their rates of 
learning went down, and you know what else happened to them? 
Anxiety, depression, all kinds of problems happen to kids.
    [Chart]
    And then, ironically, here is something that was shocking 
to me, and I will bring this up to you. You know what else 
happened? While kids were forced to stay home and you approved 
of this, the diagnosis of youths with gender dysphoria surged. 
This is literally 2020, but yet this is 2021, and this is a 
problem. This is a major problem, and the direct effect of 
school closures can be seen here. These are diagnoses of gender 
dysphoria, and you can see it sharply increased after 2020 and 
2021. It went up. The rates went up.
    So, kids were forced to stay home into so-called virtual 
learning where they were spending a lot of time on social 
media, and all of a sudden, we see a direct result of this, and 
this is a major problem. But the other problem is you had no 
business advising the CDC what the medical guidelines were for 
school closures because now we have a Nation of schoolchildren 
who have suffered because of it. The problem is people like you 
need to admit that you are just a political activist, not a 
teacher----
    Dr. Wenstrup. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Greene [continuing]. Not a mother, and not a medical 
doctor.
    Dr. Wenstrup. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Greene. I yield.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Jordan from Ohio for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Garcia. Point of order, Mr. Chairman. I just want to 
make note that the decorum of the attacks on the witness were 
unacceptable that the gentlelady from Georgia just did. And so, 
it would be nice if we didn't attack the witnesses, 
particularly when making a decision about whether or not she is 
a mother. You are a mother. Thank you for being a great parent. 
Thank you.
    Ms. Weingarten. Thank you.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Your point of order is recognized, Mr. 
Garcia?
    Mr. Ruiz. A point of order?
    Dr. Wenstrup. Yes.
    Mr. Ruiz. Given that his point of order is recognized and 
given that that was not just cruel personal attacks to Ms. 
Weingarten, who loves her children, it is reflective of the 
cruel personal attacks to any adopted mother or father who love 
their children. So, I would kindly ask that those remarks be 
taken out of the record for the sake of all of the parents who 
have adopted a child and love them dearly and see them as their 
own.
    Dr. Wenstrup. It was not a violation of the House rules. 
However, your point of order is recognized. I now recognize Mr. 
Jordan from Ohio for 5 minutes of questions.
    Mr. Jordan. I thank the Chairman. Who cares more, Ms. 
Weingarten? Who cares more about a child's education, the 
teacher's union or the child's parents?
    Ms. Weingarten. I would say that Mr. Jordan or 
Representative Jordan, teachers, parents, and teachers care 
about kids obviously. Parents care about their own kids more 
than probably anyone else, but teachers and parents are real 
partners in children's education.
    Mr. Jordan. OK. That is fine, but I asked you, who cares 
more? You would say parents?
    Ms. Weingarten. Look, I am not here to be in a competition. 
Parents are so important in children's lives. Teachers are so 
important in children's lives too.
    Mr. Jordan. I agree. Why do you re-post and praise the op-
ed that was in the Washington Post, parents claimed to have the 
right to shape their kids school curriculum? They don't. You 
have posted that, and you said this was a great piece that 
people should read. Head of Teachers Union praises op-ed 
claiming parents don't have a right to shape their kids' 
curriculum. You really believe that?
    Ms. Weingarten. The headline of that op-ed was not 
appropriate compared to the actual work in that op-ed. The work 
in that op-ed talked about if you actually read that op-ed----
    Mr. Jordan. You disagree with the headline then?
    Ms. Weingarten. No, I disagreed with the headline. The work 
in that op-ed----
    Mr. Jordan. OK.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Talked about how parents and 
teachers have to have a role in kids' education.
    Mr. Jordan. So should the headline have read parents claim 
they have a right to shape their kids school curriculum. They 
do. Should that have been what the headline said?
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, you know, Mr. Jordan----
    Mr. Jordan. Well, let me ask you this. Let me just ask you 
straightforward. Just let me ask straightforward. Do parents 
have a right to shape their kids' curriculum?
    Ms. Weingarten. Parents have a right to have a role in 
their kid's curriculum, yes.
    Mr. Jordan. Who are the extremist politicians? You did 25 
pages of your written testimony. You had 14 pages. Your law 
firm had, I think, the other 11. And right at the end of the 
main body of your written testimony before you get into the 
issue of today about the consultation you guys had with the 
CDC, you say in this last paragraph, ``Attacks by extremist 
politicians have undermined teachers in schools.'' Who are the 
extremist politicians?
    Ms. Weingarten. I think you just heard one, sir.
    Mr. Jordan. So, Ms. Greene is one of them?
    Ms. Weingarten. I think----
    Mr. Jordan. OK. That is----
    Ms. Weingarten. I think the issue is the culture wars that 
are going on in schools right now banning books, undermining 
teachers----
    Mr. Jordan. How about this statement, ``I don't think 
parents should be telling schools what to teach?'' You just 
told me a few minutes ago you didn't agree with that sentiment. 
That is a statement from a politician. Is that extremist?
    Ms. Weingarten. I believe that parents have to have a role 
in kid's education, and, in fact, when I was teaching at Clara 
Barton High School, we had parent engagement all the time.
    Mr. Jordan. Who said this statement?
    Ms. Weingarten. If you want me to finish, I will finish. I, 
like so many other teachers used to do, I was a high school 
social studies teacher. I know you were a wrestling coach. I 
was a high school social studies teacher.
    Mr. Jordan. Yes. My wife taught. Our kids went to public 
school. I appreciate good teaching. I am a high school coach, 
and----
    Ms. Weingarten. I know, and I honor that.
    Mr. Jordan. Same here.
    Ms. Weingarten. You know, so what I would do and so many 
other teachers do as well----
    Mr. Jordan. But I asked you a specific question. ``I don't 
think parents should be telling schools what to teach.'' Do you 
know who made that statement?
    Ms. Weingarten. I don't know.
    Mr. Jordan. September 28, 2021, candidate for Governor in 
the state of Virginia. Do you know who made that statement?
    Ms. Weingarten. I don't. Are you talking about Mr. 
McAuliffe?
    Mr. Jordan. I am talking about Mr. McAuliffe. He made that 
statement. Is that extremist? Is that an extremist political 
statement?
    Ms. Weingarten. In fact, what I did Mr. Jordan, was when I 
heard that statement----
    Mr. Jordan. No, we know what you did. You endorsed him and 
then did a six-figure----
    Ms. Weingarten. No. When I----
    Mr. Jordan [continuing]. Ad buy your organization did 18 
days later.
    Ms. Weingarten. What I did Mr. Jordan, is when I heard that 
statement, I called Mr. McAuliffe, and I told him I disagreed 
with him in that statement.
    Mr. Jordan. But it wasn't enough to get you to not do a 
six-figure ad buy for his campaign.
    Ms. Weingarten. What the ad buy did was do what we thought 
Mr. McAuliffe was, which was----
    Mr. Jordan. In that same paragraph on page 12----
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Really supportive of teachers 
and parents----
    Mr. Jordan. I just got a minute. I just got a minute. In 
the same----
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry.
    Mr. Jordan. In the same paragraph on page 12, you said, 
``Most Americans disapprove with the culture wars that have 
saturated education policy.'' Who started the culture wars?
    Ms. Weingarten. I know that when you have banning of books, 
like a book about----
    Mr. Jordan. Let me ask you this.
    Ms. Weingarten [continuing]. Like a book about Roberto 
Clemente, like a book about Ruby Bridges, that is wrong.
    Mr. Jordan. Those who think----
    Ms. Weingarten. And that was in----
    Mr. Jordan. Let me ask you this----
    Ms. Weingarten. Those things were in----
    Mr. Jordan. Those who think boys should compete against 
boys in sports or those who think boys can compete against 
girls in sports, which side started the culture war? Which one 
of those positions?
    Ms. Weingarten. Sir, when I talk about the culture wars, I 
am talking about things like book banning. I am talking about 
things like stopping teachers from teaching honest----
    Mr. Jordan. Is it starting a culture war if you think 
literature should be age appropriate? That is not staring 
culture wars.
    Ms. Weingarten. I believe that literature should be age 
appropriate, too.
    Mr. Jordan. OK. I am out of time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Although we are pressed for time because of 
votes, I now recognize Mr. Gomez from California, but I would 
recommend, and we have discussed this with the Ranking Member 
in the past, especially if you are waiving on, you be here on 
time. And I know we all have schedules to keep, but go ahead, 
Mr. Gomez.
    Mr. Gomez. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I really 
appreciate it. So, I think there should be broad agreement. We 
shouldn't ban books. Like, that is just flat-out pretty simple. 
But I believe my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want 
to distract and rewrite what happened over the last several 
years, everything from the COVID response to the massive tax 
cut that they gave to the top one-tenth of one percent in this 
country. They want to change a lot of the narrative of the 
last, not 2 years, but 4 years from before that when President 
Trump was in the White House.
    So, I want to kind of focus on issues that I think the 
American people really care about. If they cared about 
children, why are they attempting to cut Federal childcare 
funding by 22 percent? That is what their budget would do. And 
why do they want 200,000 children to lose access to Head Start 
and 100,000 children to lose access to childcare? Working 
parents are spending nearly as much of their income on 
childcare as they do on housing. As a new parent and founder of 
the Dad's Caucus, I can tell you one thing: our childcare 
system is in crisis. Not only is it unaffordable and 
inaccessible, childcare workers who are predominantly women of 
color are severely underpaid and overworked.
    Meanwhile, the Biden Administration and congressional 
Democrats have consistently acted to protect childcare across 
the country. For example, the Biden Administration invested 
around $39 billion from the American Rescue Plan to help 
childcare providers to keep their doors open. These efforts 
have helped 220,000 childcare programs, which employ over a 
million childcare workers with the capacity to serve nearly 10 
million children. Additionally, the President's budget would 
expand access to affordable high-quality childcare by enabling 
states to increase childcare options and by lowering costs so 
that more parents can afford care. The president's budget also 
funds a Federal-state partnership that provides high quality 
universal free preschool to support healthy child development 
and ensure children entered kindergarten ready to succeed.
    Meanwhile, congressional Democrats led the fight for 
increased childcare funding in last year's spending package, 
securing $8 billion for the childcare and development block 
grant, increase of $1.9 billion above the Fiscal Year 2022 
enacted level. And before that, House Democrats passed Child 
Care is Essential Act, which would have appropriated $50 
billion in Federal childcare funds. Ms. Weingarten, how does 
adequately funding our Nation's childcare benefit our 
children's development and growth?
    Ms. Weingarten. So, thank you for that question, 
Congressman. All day long, I have been talking about how 
teachers teach kids. I am glad that in this pandemic, thank 
God, it did not affect children the way it affected adults, but 
it is the teachers that teach kids. It is the bus drivers, it 
is the school nurses, but we need help. And so, when we have 
Head Start, when we have community schools, when we have all 
these things that look like they are on the chopping block now, 
it is going to make it harder to teach kids. It is going to be 
making it harder if you cut Head Start for kids to have a head 
start when they get to kindergarten.
    And so, when you cut community schools or the guidance 
services, all these things that we need for kids now, because 
of their development issues, because of suicidal issues. We 
need this help. We can't do it alone. We asked for during COVID 
for teachers to be safe and have clear guidance to have them 
safe. We wanted to be in school. I have said that over and over 
and over again today.
    Mr. Gomez. I appreciate that. Two of my siblings are 
teachers in San Francisco Unified. They teach there for a long 
time. Until recently, they taught a dual immersion Spanish, 
English.
    Ms. Weingarten. Great.
    Mr. Gomez. And if you have ever had a teacher in your 
family or sibling or mother or father, people recognize that 
they give everything. Oftentimes because they don't have enough 
resources from school, they subsidize the supplies for their 
own students. If they see a student without a coat, they give 
them a coat. If they see a student that they need a little 
extra help, they go out and give a little extra help on their 
own time, not because they are getting paid, but on their own 
time, and that is what the teachers have done for our country. 
So, I really appreciate it. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I would now like to yield to Ranking Member 
Ruiz for a closing statement, if he would like to make one.
    Mr. Ruiz. Yes, thank you. I appreciate giving a closing 
statement. I think we heard a lot from both sides of the aisle. 
I think we have very clear differences in methodology and what 
we think are priorities for this Select Subcommittee and what 
we want to focus on.
    I do want to say some things because we heard from 
physicians throughout this hearing, and I also want to remind 
folks, I am a physician and a public health expert. And social 
distancing has been a long-term public health basic way of 
lowering transmission for deadly airborne viruses. It is not 
only shown in literature, but it has been practiced 
retrospectively and studied even from the great influenza 
pandemic, that if you have a virus that spreads through 
droplets from your mouth, the louder your scream, you cough, or 
you even speak, you have micro droplets spreading from your 
mouth. So, the farther people get, the safer they are from 
transmission. So, at the root basis of keeping people safe from 
airborne droplets, people were asked and sometimes regulated to 
stay far from each other.
    So, I really want to defend public health and public health 
practice and say that in the event of a novel airborne deadly 
pandemic, social distancing is one of the crude and also 
rudimentary public health measures to keep people safe. But 
what we want to do for the next airborne deadly pandemic is 
that we want to create safe environments so that people can 
socialize, so we don't have to close the school, so we don't 
have to do these things to keep students apart from each other. 
And I think that is what we should be focusing on here today.
    Ms. Weingarten. Exactly right.
    Mr. Ruiz. We should be focusing thinking ahead for that 
next airborne deadly pandemic on how can we save lives, how can 
we lower transmission, and how can we keep kids safely in 
school, so we don't need to practice the social distancing that 
has shown to work? So, look, the charge of this Select 
Subcommittee is to understand the COVID-19 pandemic so that we 
can prevent and prepare for future public health crisis. Our 
mission is to get ahead of future deadly novel viruses with the 
potential to devastate our communities so that none of us have 
to endure another pandemic. Yet today, instead of doing the 
critical work or the work of addressing learning loss from the 
pandemic, it is what most parents are concerned about today is 
my child's mental health and the learning loss. What can we do 
today to help these children or the work of bringing relief to 
Americans youth facing a mental health crisis? We rehashed Ms. 
Weingarten's emails and her organization's commonsense feedback 
on school reopening guidelines, guidance that, as you may 
recall, led to 95 percent of schools returning to in-person 
learning just 1 year into the Biden Administration.
    Look, we all agree that the pandemic took a serious toll on 
our Nation's kids. The question is, what are we doing to help 
our students and their parents? You know, hyper partisan 
investigations do nothing to repair this harm. And neither does 
an extreme Republican budget that proposes deep cuts to the 
very programs intended to enrich our Nation's kids and help 
working families get by and provide the mental health necessary 
to recover, programs like Head Start, WIC, IDEA grants, and 
more, all of which will be gutted by Republicans' Default on 
America Act.
    So let me be clear. Republicans cannot claim to be serious 
about protecting our Nation's kids and families while pushing 
devastating cuts to programs that pave the way for children to 
grow and thrive. In fact, those cuts do the opposite. They make 
the problem worse. They hurt our children and our families. And 
it is my hope that going forward, the work of the Select 
Subcommittee will focus on the facts and lead with the purpose 
of developing the forward-looking policy solutions to the 
challenges facing our Nation.
    There is still time for us to change course, to discard the 
partisan allegations, the vilifications of individuals and 
organizations to make partisan accusations and investigations 
intended to score some points, you know, and to put people, 
because this is what we must do. We must put people over 
politics and work together to save lives, now and for the 
future pandemic. Thank you.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I thank the Ranking Member, and I think he 
knows, as we have been friends for some time, we have the same 
goals. There may be policy debates. We hear this group doesn't 
care, that group does care, and, you know, I care more than you 
and all this type of stuff. The bottom line is, this Committee 
would not have even been formed if we didn't care.
    Ms. Weingarten. Right.
    Dr. Wenstrup. That is why this Select Committee was formed. 
So, we threw all the stuff you may have heard today from many 
ways. Our goal is to be prepared next time, and you know what? 
Next time, we may have a pandemic that affects kids more than 
adults.
    Ms. Weingarten. Correct.
    Dr. Wenstrup. And how are we going to be ready for it, and 
that is really what we are after. We have 2 years to do this. 
It is a short time, and there are so many topics to cover. So, 
I hope that as we go through the process, understand the things 
that were mentioned we need to talk about, we plan to talk 
about all those. What programs are actually working? It is our 
job for oversight to decide how much are we spending on things, 
and where is the money going, and is it actually having a 
return on investment because that is the smart thing to do.
    Ms. Weingarten. Of course.
    Dr. Wenstrup. So, you know, you hear things today like, oh, 
you don't like these guidelines. As I said to you, these 
guidelines that I questioned you about as being accepted, I 
agreed with them. I didn't have a problem with them. That 
wasn't the issue. So, I hope that you can see that we are 
working toward finding the process, understanding the process, 
make sure that we can do things smartly in the future. That is 
my goal. That is why I wanted to accept this job when asked to 
take it on by the Speaker.
    Look, my family, I have got teachers, and I can tell you, I 
know my teachers from kindergarten through 8th grade. I still 
know their names, and I still get together with my 8th grade 
teacher. You know, they mean a lot to me. Even at my age, he is 
still hanging on. So over and over again, you know we heard 
implied that I was against those things. I wasn't. I just 
wanted to understand the process, and we have had hearings here 
with the School Nurse Associations----
    Ms. Weingarten. Yes.
    Dr. Wenstrup [continuing]. Represented, and we have had 
good discussions. Now, one of the things you said is you saw 
much less transmission in the schools. And so, me as a 
scientist, as a doctor, I am like, well, then why are you 
wanting to base things on community rates? That didn't make 
sense to me. So, these are questions we want to get to the 
answers to, and what data was used, and why did you come to 
these conclusions. You know, the data give us better choices. 
It did.
    And so, you know, you mentioned a couple of things that I 
would like to put into the record, if we can. The written 
guidance from the medical experts that you talked to; I think 
it would be good if we got something from them for the record.
    Ms. Weingarten. Well, I certainly can give you their names.
    Dr. Wenstrup. OK.
    Ms. Weingarten. I think a lot of what we did, sir, was we 
did orally, but so I will give you their names.
    Dr. Wenstrup. OK.
    Ms. Weingarten. And if I can find the written guidance, we 
will find it, of course.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Whatever you can do or whatever they may want 
to submit, and maybe they can----
    Ms. Weingarten. Sure.
    Dr. Wenstrup [continuing]. Recall what they put together, 
and I think that would be helpful.
    Dr. Wenstrup. You know, you mentioned the Cuomo Commission, 
and that you had narrowed your suggestions guidelines. I would 
like to have that as well, the things that were there for 
reopening.
    Dr. Wenstrup. And you did mention that you weren't asked by 
the previous administration. That is fine. Maybe that is 
another lesson learned. You know, look, we are looking at who 
were the groups that were asked to weigh in. OK. Well, was it 
helpful? Was it not? This is where we are right now, and so 
these are legitimate questions. So, you got the Cuomo 
Commission. I know you stated that you had contact with Dr. 
Walensky, and so I would hope that that was submitted to Dr. 
Walensky, who did ask for your input.
    But let me just share something here from Ohio. And it is 
an exchange between reporters and our Governor in Ohio and the 
reporter saying that Governor DeWine, speaking during hastily 
called televised briefing, noted that almost every school 
district in the state agreed to resume in-person classes by 
March 1st, in exchange for teacher vaccines. But he said Friday 
that a handful of schools where vaccines had been distributed, 
including in Akron and Cincinnati, have indicated that they 
will renege on that agreement and delay reopening. Governor 
DeWine said that while anyone who wanted the vaccination in 
Akron schools has received one, school administrators there 
aren't planning to resume in-person learning until mid-March. 
Governor DeWine was quoted saying, ``That is not acceptable 
either.''
    The Governor's remarks came hours after an announcement by 
the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that 
there is strong evidence in-person schooling can be done 
safely, as long as masks, social distancing, and other 
strategies, though not necessarily teacher vaccinations, are 
put in place to protect against COVID-19.
    So, when I read these things, you know, it seems to me fair 
to want an explanation as to why several large public-school 
districts in Ohio refused to open in March 2021 despite having 
vaccines distributed, thus compelling the Governor to take the 
extraordinary actions to compel them to open. And I just bring 
up this story because it is there for further discussion. These 
are the things we want to look back on and ask ourselves why. 
Why did some schools not reopen? They have the right to explain 
themselves, but this is where we need to go so that we can be 
wiser in the future.
    Ms. Weingarten. Mr. Chair?
    Dr. Wenstrup. This is my closing statement, and we are 
finished. We are finished.
    Ms. Weingarten. Sorry.
    Dr. Wenstrup. That is OK.
    Ms. Weingarten. Because I could explain if you want me----
    Dr. Wenstrup. Well, we can talk about that later.
    Ms. Weingarten. OK.
    Dr. Wenstrup. You can send me a letter. This is where we 
are with the Committee, and we are having votes, you know, but 
this is my closing statement. What I am saying is that is what 
this Committee is supposed to be about, and I hope it can be 
that way throughout the rest of it because we are going to be 
doing this for a while. So, questions will come up, and you can 
feel free to answer that to me in writing, and I would 
appreciate that.
    Ms. Weingarten. Thank you.
    Dr. Wenstrup. And with that, I would say that this hearing 
is adjourned.
    And without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative 
days within which to submit materials and to submit additional 
written questions for the witnesses, which will be forwarded to 
the witnesses for their response.
    Dr. Wenstrup. If there is no further business, without 
objection, the Select Subcommittee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 5:08 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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