Republicans on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic delivered a sharp rebuke to Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), for her organization’s role in delaying school reopenings during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The effect on children has been vast and to have no remorse on closing schools and keeping them closed for the length of time is unconscionable,” explained Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R., Iowa), a medical doctor and a former director of the Iowa Department of Public Health.
Referenced throughout the hearing were consultations the American Federation of Teachers had with the Biden administration and the CDC about school reopenings. On January 29, 2021, Weingarten and senior AFT staff participated in a conference call with members of the CDC in which they suggested ideas. Two of the suggestions were accepted in guidance the Biden administration sent out in February in 2021. The first was to encourage schools to provide options for teachers and staff who had documented high-risk conditions and the second was that the government’s guidance may need to be changed depending upon new variants of the coronavirus. Several members took issue with this, including the committee’s chair, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio).
Miller-Meeks did as well, but she zeroed into the claim that AFT had scientific expertise that allowed it to take science-based positions.
The Iowa representative pointed to publications by the American Journal of Pediatrics that children had very little to no transmission of Covid-19.
“Did your scientific experts present to you, as of June of 2020, among 1.8 million children in this age group, do you know how many died from Covid?,” asked Miller-Meeks, later answering: “Zero.”
“Did they present you data from other countries that showed continuing in-person schooling was in fact safe for children and safe for teachers?,” asked Miller-Meeks, adding that she understands the educational system has a great deal of experience with influenza and its contagiousness among children but “influenza is not Covid.”
The representative then pointed to CDC data from March 1, 2020 to July 25, 2020 showing the exceedingly low risk to children of hospitalization or death from Covid-19.
“What our experts showed us…in two reports, the one from Massachusetts and the one from Wisconsin, and we also saw the reports from the other countries…that show that when you had this layered mitigation, there was much less transmission in schools,” explained Weingarten.
“The layered mitigation was in relationship with influenza,” Miller-Meeks countered. “What I’m doing is as a physician, as 7 physicians on this panel, challenging what your experts said.”
“These facts are non-negotiable, ma’am. The fact is schools were relatively safe places for both students and educators. These are scientific questions that a scientific organization should be able to study and answer. The AFT is not a scientific organization,” Miller-Meeks asserted.
“The AFT was out of its league in this regard,” she added.
In his opening statement, Wenstrup, the committee’s chairman, explained that the “the baseline question should have been: ‘Schools need to be open. Are we doing everything we can to make that happen?'”
He added that the recommendations of the February 2021 school-reopening guidance from the Biden administration kept 90 percent of schools from reopening at the time. The recommendations Wenstrup named were the use of community-spread rates to determine reopening, a requirement for routine-screening testing, and six feet of distancing instead of three feet. Wenstrup said none of these recommendations were based in science and all of them were supported by the AFT.
“Why not follow the in-school spread data?,” asked Wenstrup.
The representative also accused the AFT of playing politics. He pointed to a remark from Weingarten in her written testimony: “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.”
“To me, these statements sound like a form of intimidation. This is more political than scientific,” Wenstrup said.
“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 not to,” Weingarten said in response.
Wenstrup also criticized Weingarten’s assertions that the Trump “administration downplayed the pandemic,” asserting that President Trump had nothing to do with the crafting the AFT’s guideline recommendations.
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