Teachers union boss Randi Weingarten says she is concerned that shutting down the Department of Education could be as harmful to students as the school closures were during COVID.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of shuttering the department.
The executive order asked McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
“You know, you can eviscerate a department by laying off its people, by shutting down a web service or online service,” Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said Friday on Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power.”
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION SIGNIFICANTLY DISMANTLED IN NEW TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDER
U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order to reduce the size and scope of the Education Department alongside school children signing their own versions, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. ( (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images))
“And so, what I don’t want is, I don’t want it so shut down in so many ways that kids are really hurt. And then somebody says, ‘Oops, we didn’t mean to do that.’ Kids go through kindergarten once,” Weingarten added. “We already saw during COVID the longstanding problems that happened when schools were shut down too long. We got to make sure we get this right for kids.”
Weingarten, AFT and other teachers’ unions have been criticized for years for their reactions to the coronavirus pandemic and reluctance to reopen schools.
In July 2020, Weingarten slammed the Trump administration’s guidelines to reopen schools by fall 2020 as “reckless,” “callous” and “cruel.” She later called on Congress for more federal funding for schools and threatened a strike if they reopened without implementing expansive safety precautions like mask mandates, 6-foot social distancing requirements (up from the CDC’s recommended 3-foot distance at the time), and updated ventilation systems.
Emails from February 2021 showed AFT had successfully lobbied the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention to be more cautious in its guidelines for school openings.
RANDI WEINGARTEN ‘REALLY ANGRY’ OVER ED DEPT ELIMINATION MONTHS AFTER SAYING UNION MEMBERS ‘DON’T REALLY CARE’
President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten appeared to have conflicting thoughts regarding the Department of Education. (Photo: MSNBC screenshot)
American students’ reading skills have continued to decline since the COVID-19 pandemic, while their math skills have barely improved in the last two years, according to the “Nation’s Report Card,” the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released by the Department of Education in January.
“Today’s NAEP results reveal a heartbreaking reality for American students and confirm our worst fears: not only did most students not recover from pandemic-related learning loss, but those students who were the most behind and needed the most support have fallen even further behind,” the Education Department said in a statement. “Despite the billions of dollars that the federal government invests in K-12 education annually, and the approximately $190 billion in federal pandemic funds, our education system continues to fail students across the nation.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
In a Wednesday press release, the AFT said that the dismantling of the Department of Education is “a move that most people in America don’t want because it will diminish opportunity for students.”
Weingarten suggested that she will be suing the Trump administration with a quote in the press release that said, “See you in court.”
Leave a Reply