The Union Leader Who Says She Can Get Teachers Back in Schools

In cities and suburbs where schools remain closed, teachers’ unions are often saying: not yet. Can Randi Weingarten change that?

Randi Weingarten, head of the country’s most powerful teachers union, says she is committed to reopening the nation’s classrooms.  
Randi Weingarten, head of the country’s most powerful teachers union, says she is committed to reopening the nation’s classrooms.  Credit…Ira Lupu for The New York Times
Dana Goldstein

By Dana Goldstein

  • Published Feb. 8, 2021Updated Feb. 10, 2021

Randi Weingarten, the nation’s most powerful teachers’ union president, has a message: She wants to get students back in the nation’s classrooms.

She spends 15 hours per day on the phone, she says — with local labor leaders, mayors, the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — trying to figure out how to reopen the three-quarters of school systems that remain fully or partially shuttered.

But with the pandemic approaching its first anniversary, and a new president — a union ally — vowing to reopen elementary and middle schools within his first 100 days, she faces a difficult truth: In the liberal cities and suburbs where schools are most likely to remain closed, teachers’ unions are the most powerful forces saying no, not yet.

Read the rest of the NY Times piece here.