How the election could impact the education sector

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten joins Wealth! to give insight into how the election may impact teachers and what a career in education might look like under either candidate.

“If you compared even up on the top of the ballot…Donald Trump was doing political talk about reopening schools as opposed to really attempting to do it. We, our union, said we needed to reopen schools safely in April 2020. We understood it needed to be a priority. It never was with Trump. Biden put a lot of money in and helped us reopen schools with the guidance that was needed to deal with the failure and deal with the funding. In fact, some of that funding is going away right now, which is part of the problem in terms of cuts,” Weingarten tells Yahoo Finance.

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This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

Randy.

We know that education has been kind of perversely under attacked in some states as a political kind of bargaining chip this general election coming up in 2024 especially for some of the down ballot voting that will be taking place.

How, how critical is it for ensuring that teachers for education at whole teachers getting the right compensation or improved compensation and benefits and whatnot students being able to be taught true subjects that either happened in history or just have the tools necessary in their learning facilities.

How, how critical is this?

It’s absolutely essential and, and just, I’ll, I’ll give you three quick reasons why.

Number one, what if you compared even up on the top of the ballot, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Donald Trump was not, you know, was doing political talk about reopening schools as opposed to really attempting to do it.

We, our union said we needed to reopen schools safely in April 2020.

We understood it needed to be a priority.

It never was with Trump Biden, put a lot of money in and helped us reopen schools with the guidance that was needed to deal with the failure and deal with the, the funding.

In fact, some of that funding is going away right now, which is part of the problem in terms of cuts.

That’s number one, number two, there’s a whole lot of things we need to do to help kids learn not to teach them what to think, but to teach them how to think, including critical thinking.

And then when you have superintendents like the Oklahoma superintendent who’s decided we have to teach the Bible, teaching about the Bible is fine teaching the Bible.

This is public schools, not Sunday schools.

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Why would we do any of this stuff this way?

And I say this as an observant.

So it’s ridiculous that we have book banning and you know, and, and, and this kind of uh uh undermining of honest history when we really have to teach kids critical thinking and, and relationship building and, and, and how they have the confidence to seize the world, particularly in light of what’s going on in social media, in light of what’s going on in the aftermath of COVID.

So this is an essential election because we need to get back to the basics of how we help kids learn, particularly relate to each other, critical thinking, have a voice and confidence in their lives.

And a lot of that starts with making sure that teachers are paid.

School districts, districts are funded as well.

Randy Ween Gard, who is the American Federation of Teachers president.

Thanks so much for taking the time here with us today.

Thank you.