PolitiFact – Here’s what AFT’s Randi Weingarten said about reopening schools during COVID-19

As educators, parents and students struggled through the early COVID-19 pandemic to balance learning with health safety rules, teachers union president Randi Weingarten grappled, too.

As president of the American Federation of Teachers, Weingarten represented 1.7 million teachers and school-related personnel during federal, state and local policy discussions about how to effectively educate kids during a global crisis.

When she testified April 26 before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Weingarten faced new questions about the input her union provided during that critical time to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We’re investigating the decision-making process behind school closures and the effects it had so that we can do better in the future,” subcommittee chair U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said.

When Weingarten emerged from the contentious hearing, she tweeted her take on the discussion: “Republicans on the House Covid subcommittee want you to think I wanted to keep schools closed. Here’s what I actually said… over & over again,” she wrote, attaching a video with sound bites in which she repeatedly stated her interest in schools returning to in-person learning.

Republicans on the House Covid subcommittee want you to think I wanted to keep schools closed. Here’s what I actually said… over & over again. pic.twitter.com/TTWuYgC5nN

— Randi Weingarten 🇺🇦🇺🇸💪🏿👩‍🎓 (@rweingarten) April 26, 2023

But her tweet was amended with “community notes,” a Twitter feature that allows users with differing views to add comments that other Twitter users decide is “helpful” to the discussion.

“Weingarten is misrepresenting her prior positions,” the note said. “She called attempts to reopen schools in the fall of 2020 ‘Reckless, callous, cruel.’” The note linked to stories from The Guardian, EdWeek and The New York Times as well as a website called Return to Learn Tracker, which collected data on in-person and remote instruction.

We looked closely at Weingarten’s statements, along with news reports, op-eds, transcripts and video clips of her remarks, and we found that, taken in isolation, neither Weingarten nor the Twitter note represented the full picture of Weingarten’s efforts and statements at the time.

Weingarten advocated for tailored approaches that prioritized safety needs of individual districts, educators and students but stopped short of endorsing a full return to in-person learning all across the country. The AFT’s reopening plan, first released in April 2020, prioritized maintaining physical distance between people, establishing COVID-19 testing protocols and involving school staff and parents in these decisions. It also called for federal aid to help schools prepare.

Here’s a fuller look at some of the comments Weingarten and the community note highlighted, with context. We have bolded portions of the statements that were cited in the tweet, video and community note:

Claim: Weingarten “called attempts to reopen schools in the fall of 2020 ‘Reckless, callous, cruel.'” — Twitter community note

This characterization omits key context. It referred to a July 17, 2020, article in The Guardian headlined, “‘Reckless, callous, cruel’: teachers’ chief denounces Trump plan to reopen schools.”

Without providing a plan for how schools could safely reopen, President Donald Trump and administration officials demanded in July 2020 that schools reopen and threatened to withhold federal funding from schools that didn’t. Weingarten criticized those actions, but it’s misleading to suggest that she didn’t want to pursue reopening schools at all.

“It’s as if Trump and (Education Secretary Betsy) DeVos want to create chaos and want to jeopardize reopening,” Weingarten told The Guardian. “There’s no other reason why they would be this reckless, this callous, this cruel.”

The Guardian article said Weingarten and the AFT had done “months of work” to find ways to safely get teachers back to in-person instruction at least part-time.

Claim: Weingarten said, “We want schools to reopen.” — Weingarten video

When New York City schools closed to in-person learning in November 2020, Weingarten appeared on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” on Fox News. City residents had surpassed a 3% COVID-19 test positivity threshold, which triggered the school closures.

On Nov. 19, 2020, MacCallum asked Weingarten to explain why the schools were closing when schools in other countries had remained open during COVID-19 spikes. Here’s part of that exchange: 

Weingarten: “What they did in Europe and what they did in New Zealand is that they had national leadership that closed — that did masks — that actually closed the bars, that did some of those things, including the stimulus —”

MacCallum, interrupting: “Two totally separate things.” 

Weingarten: “That’s what we need to do.”

MacCallum: “Given all that, they still say that kids are safer in school.”

Weingarten: “No, they’re connected, Martha.”

MacCallum: “The number’s rising, but the kids are safer in school. Those are the two realities from what we’re hearing from all these scientists.”

Weingarten: “Listen, I agree with you. We’ve been trying to get kids back into school throughout the country, and we worked with New York City to do it, but we have to get community spread down now.”

Claim: Weingarten said, “The teachers of this country understand that in-person education is really important.” — Weingarten video

This came from NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Feb. 21, 2021. Weingarten told journalist Chuck Todd that teachers in her union wanted schools to reopen. Todd asked her about what appeared to be a discrepancy between what some local unions were requesting and what Weingarten suggested was her stance — that not everyone had to be vaccinated to return to in-person instruction if there were other strategies in place to stem spread. In her response, she said:

“I think that what we need to do is, we have to meet fear with facts, which is what we’re trying to do. … What we’ve learned in our polling and also in our experience is that when people are actually in school with the protocols in place, they trust it more. And then you just have to educate people in terms of this way. Seventy-one percent of our members are fearful that they’ll bring COVID home. Look, we’ve had 500,000 deaths and we’ve had such grim realities here, but the teachers of this country understand that in-person education is really important. And so, ultimately, let’s do the kind of strategies we need. And the CDC, I watched the CDC director on your show last week. They’re obvious what they are now. We have to just get them implemented.”

Claim: Weingarten said, “It’s full speed ahead for the fall.” — Weingarten video

During a May 14, 2021, appearance on MSNBC, Weingarten discussed new mask guidance released by the CDC, which said that people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 did not need to wear masks indoors or outdoors in most settings. 

“I think if you see the kind of arc of where we see the science and the trust going — the science is saying that kids 12 to 15 are safe to get vaccines. The vaccines have been really big game changers. And what we’re learning is that they not only keep you safe from getting seriously ill, but they also are very effective in stopping transmission. So what we said yesterday morning, given all the evidence that we have seen, is that it’s full speed ahead for the fall. 

“Now, does it mean it’s totally risk-free? Of course not. And will there have to be some people who have accommodations still? Of course. And obviously, as Dr. Fauci just said, younger kids are not going to have vaccines yet. But we think that this … we’re embracing this new guidance about masks.”

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.