Randi Weingarten heads the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers union in the United States with 1.7 million members. She says the "culture wars" rocking school boards and legislatures are a way to build support for laws to expand private school voucher programs that use education funds to pay students' tuition at private, online or even religious schools. This year, 29 state legislatures are considering bills to either create or expand voucher programs, according to Weingarten, in addition to the 72 voucher and tax credit programs already passed in 33 states. She asserts that efforts by right-wing lawmakers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to ban critical race theory and books containing "woke" messaging are only part of this larger effort to redirect public school dollars.
In a March 28 address to the National Press Club, Weingarten declared that the culture wars and voucher programs are an existential threat to public education. She called for reinvesting in teachers, building out experiential learning and expanding community schools to transform campuses into social centers that offer programs and services like English classes for parents, gardens and even legal and medical clinics.
After her National Press Club address, Weingarten spoke with Capital & Main about her view that educational innovations can strengthen communities and civic culture to beat back the conservative campaign against public education.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Capital & Main: You have warned of a culture war driven by the far right. How does invoking culture advance their cause, or advance a school privatization agenda?
Randi Weingarten: They have a very intentional strategy. [Anti-critical race theory campaign architect Christopher] Rufo actually said this last year — he said, to get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust. So what they're trying to do is create a wedge, then deepen it and deepen it, so that parents will not trust teachers or their unions, and that they will leave public schools at the same exact time as they're trying to create these universal voucher programs.
[Universal voucher programs] both defund schools and give people who already go to private schools money to stay in those private schools. So this is to starve public schools of the funds they need to succeed, criticize them for their shortcomings, erode trust in public schools by stoking fear and division, including attempts to pit parents against teachers, and replace them with private, religious, online or home schools.
This is all towards the end of destroying public education as we know it.
In terms of culture wars, just yesterday I saw that they're banning Harry Potter in Mobile, Alabama. PEN America has shown that between 1,000 and 2,000 books have been banned. You can be charged or threatened with felony prosecution if a state later decides a book is inappropriate.
Public support for unions is at a nearly 60 year high. How can teachers more effectively take advantage of this pro-union sentiment to strengthen public backing for pro-public education candidates and policies?
Gallup has found support for public school teachers and for public schools the highest that it's ever found them. We are seeing huge support for unions.
But actions speak louder than words: We need to deepen the relationships with communities. Just like in L.A., with what Reclaim Our Schools L.A. is doing, just like what we just saw in terms of the SEIU strike in L.A. and honoring of that strike that [Los Angeles teachers' union] UTLA did and that parents did. We have to expand community schools so that the community sees schools and utilizes schools as the center of communities.
Voting will follow all of these things. But we need to work in communities now, not later. We need to build relationships between parents and educators.
That's why one of the things I suggest is expanding community schools, wrapping services around communities, around schools so that the services that families need are there, at public school. Part of that is extended learning opportunities. Part of that is community events. People have to see each other as part of a community to break through the loneliness and the isolation of the vision of America that the Republican right is proposing. [It is not enough to say that] the union supports this person, so please vote for this person. We must help our kids together to have the skills and knowledge they need for their lives, for [their] career, for college, for citizenship.
So you see the community school as almost an antidote to the culture wars?
I see the community school as an antidote to overcome learning loss. To overcome the mental health crisis among students. But it is not a political measure, what I'm proposing. It's an educational measure. That's why I focused on building community and really addressing emotional, social and economic needs. And I focused on something that is addressing academic needs.
How can teachers' unions counter the political threats to public education?
The question is this: Why did Democrats not vote in the last election in Florida? Why did they basically stay home? They didn't feel engaged, they didn't feel that somebody was talking to them. They didn't feel like the Democratic candidates actually had an agenda to help them to help their families. [What I've proposed] is an agenda that helps people help their families.
It can't simply be political. It has to be, what are we bringing to make people's lives better? We have to be in the business of making people's lives better. Parents and educators together, communities together, we need to elect politicians who believe in public schooling, who believe in democracy, who believe in opportunity, who believe in equality, who believe in freedom. But people have to see change in action, and that's why unions have such high approval ratings — because they deliver results.
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