American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said Sunday that she personally supports her members working with school districts to create vaccine mandates, an announcement that represents a significant shift from national teachers’ unions previous hesitance to endorse such requirements.
In a Sunday interview with Meet the Press on NBC, Weingarten said that the spread of the coronavirus Delta variant is “alarming” and led her to reconsider the issue of vaccine mandates recently. She indicated that she plans to bring together the union’s leadership this week to discuss the AFT’s position about the issue.
“As a matter of personal conscience, we need to be working with our employers—not opposing them—on vaccine mandates,” Weingarten told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on NBC.
Weingarten, who represents 1.7 million members, later told Todd that “we are probably the most vaccinated profession right now” and that her members have largely gotten vaccinated already. “It’s not a new thing to have immunizations in schools,” she said.
Yet she also noted that medical and religious exemptions should be part of discussions about vaccine mandates.
National teachers’ unions have been reluctant to endorse a vaccination mandate. But over the past week, Weingarten sent strong signals that her position might change, again citing the Delta variant and the likely full approval of the vaccines by the Food and Drug Administration in the not-too-distant future.
National Education Association President Becky Pringle has also recently called for everyone who can be vaccinated to get vaccinated. But she has stopped short of calling for mandates.
In addition to other criticisms about the unions’ role in conservative approaches to holding in-person classes since the start of the pandemic, some have recently questioned why unions called for in-person classes five days a week for the 2021-22 school year, yet hadn’t endorsed vaccine mandates.
The national teachers’ unions and the Biden administration have touted survey data showing that about 90 percent of teachers are vaccinated, following efforts by both the AFT and the NEA, as well as the Biden White House, to increase vaccinations among educators as well as students.
However, an EdWeek Research Center Survey from this summer found that 11 percent of teachers said they don’t intend to get vaccinated against the virus.
It remains to be seen how much Weingarten’s personal backing for creating vaccine mandates for teachers affects local unions’ stances on the issue. Earlier this month, the teachers’ union for New York state came out against vaccine mandates for its members; New York State United Teachers is an affiliate of the AFT and NEA.
As coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths rise, political divisions about the new school year, and the best way for leaders and communities to handle masks and vaccines in particular, are growing. Such factors and tough decisions are creating a complicated and tense environments for school communities.
After the governors of Florida and Texas banned local districts from requiring students to wear masks, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona criticized them in a White House press conference Thursday, saying that keeping students and school staff safe shouldn’t be politicized. Arkansas officials are also feuding over school mask mandates, and a judge in the state issued an injunction Friday that allows districts to institute mask mandates and puts a state prohibition on such mandates on hold, at least for now.
Weingarten also criticized governors opposing such mask mandates, saying they are hurting people.
The Biden administration recently announced new measures to try to boost vaccination rates for children ages 12 and up, amid concerns that vaccination rates for that age demographic is lagging.
“The combination of vaccines and masks I think will protect our youngest children,” Weingarten said on Meet the Press. “But we also have to work with parents.”
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This seems to be an internal union problem, not one that the school districts or state education bodies should interfere with. We’ve had enough of the footdragging and continuous whining from the teachers, it should up to the union to supply vaccinated teachers if that’s what they want and up to the school districts to fill the empty postitions with nonunion teachers as they see fit. Legal contracts can be broken and in the case of teachers’ unions the reason is very simple breach of contract if they want teachers vaccinated and can’t supplt them!
What irks me, is even WITH TEACHERS NOt doing a damn thing to TEACH OUR KIDS for 17+ months, they STILL ARE DEMANDING PAY RISES in many locations.
PAY RISE? For what?! IF anything they should all take a 50% (AT LEAST) Pay cut!
Well no doubt President Randi Weingarten would be for the jab…she is a control freak! Free citizen’s that make their own choices about their health is a none starter for control freaks…A virus with a 99.8% survive rate and everyone acts like catching the damn virus is a death sentence…***?
Correction: 100% “survive rate” because no one every proved a) the virus “exists” or b) that it causes any new or known disease.
They lying, folks. Lying to our faces.
How’s about we give her AND ALL OTHER UNIONS< a jab of pure oxygen.. RIGHT IN THE HEAD!
I find it painfully yet hilariously ironic that teachers don’t understand what the words “viral isolation” mean and what actually causes disease.
These are the people you want teaching your kids?
“The combination of vaccines and masks I think will protect our youngest children,” Weingarten said on Meet the Press. “But we also have to work with parents.”
what a bunch of horse ****
She & entire Dem Party are proof that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The American public must refuse to tolerate mask, vaccine or CRT dictates for their kids or themselves as are being arbitrarily decreed by the Dem Party fraudulently elected politically oppressive govt of powermongers & their acolytes made up of militant liberal ideological tyrants, violent race baiters, Marxists & various & sundry perverts & profiteers.
We the law abiding working class public are not going to put up with govt, judges & especially not teachers unions who stupidly assume we are paying them to be our dictators.
All the govt tyrants agree that vaccine & wearing masks keeps you safe from serious illness or death so anyone who wants to can do so.
So there is no justifiable legal or constitutional basis for govt or private entities to basically criminalize, harass, bully & refuse goods & services to those who don’t choose to wear masks or take vaccine they haven’t been proven to even need.
Don’t see govt, teachers union or private entities dictating that gay men &/or drug abusers must stop having sex or sharing needles to prevent spread of incurable HIV/AIDS.
ESPECIALLY since these vaccines STILL ARE ONLY “emergency use authorised!”
This woman promotes schools teaching homosexual sex, anti Americanism and communism to little kids. Do you trust her in any way shape or form?
Wow! I’m really surprised she isn’t calling for more school shutdowns so her teachers could enjoy more unearned vacation time at full pay!
I used to highly respect teachers. but no longer! My family includes a number of teachers. I know the profession fairly well! But the attitudes, actions and BS from the teachers and their unions over the past 18 months disgust me deeply!
WHEN the so-called good teachers, FAIL TO STAND UP against this insanity, then imo, they DESERVE to be tarred and feathered just LIKE THE UNIONS Do.