Teachers’ union bigwig Randi Weingarten on Wednesday clarified flippant remarks she made over the weekend that her members “don’t really care” if the Department of Education survives under President-elect Donald Trump.
Weingarten, who leads the American Federation of Teachers, first raised eyebrows during an MSNBC interview on Sunday that also discussed WWE co-founder Linda McMahon’s nomination to lead the department and public schools.
“My members don’t really care about whether they have a bureaucracy at the Department of Education or not,” she said.
“In fact, Al Shanker and the AFT in the 1970s were opposed to its creation,” she said, referring to the former president of the union. “We thought it should stay within HEW [Department of Health, Education, and Welfare] because of the whole child.”
On Wednesday night, she made clear that “something like the Dept of Education” is needed.
“Why we need something like the Dept of Education is because it creates career pathways and ensures federal aid reaches our poorest students while protecting vulnerable learners’ rights,” Weingarten tweeted.
“Reorganization can’t become an excuse to cut funding for those who need it most.”
She also said Sunday that an education agency and the Department of Labor are needed to work with the Department of Commerce to ensure federal support is there for students preparing for college or a job after high school.
Republicans have eyed possibly eliminating the federal agency that was created in 1980 with South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds offering legislation last week that would scrap the department.
The bill, the Returning Education to Our States Act, would redirect responsibilities to other agencies in the US government, Fox News reported.
Weingarten argued on MSNBC that Rounds’ bill would “get rid of money for poor kids.”
“How do you do that? We need federal dollars to help level up opportunity for children,” she added.
But a senior fellow at the American Culture Project, Corey DeAngelis, told Fox News that Weingarten may have “misread the bill.”
“It sends the money back to the states in the form of block grants to be used for education,” he insisted.
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I’m glad Randi Weingarten and I can agree on one thing: it’s time to abolish the bureaucratic mess that is the Department of Education.”
DeAngelis said he hopes some Democrats in Congress will support getting rid of the education department because it “is an unconstitutional waste of time and money.”
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