[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
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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
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Page
Hearing held on April 26, 2023................................... 1
Witnesses
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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.]
[all]