with about 60,000 teachers and other educators this week, and we raised this idea as one of the ideas that the president has said, and universally, including gun owners, people said no, this is crazy. and then you saw what happened with the sheriff's deputy. so the whole idea of the good guy with the gun is debunked. that guy, being completely immobilized, a guy who had a gun right outside of the school. for all of these reasons, it is a terrible idea. teachers do want to protect students. their instinct is to protect students, but we should not ever become a shooting gallery in a school. >> randi, the president also proposed providing bonuses for teachers who are armed in -- or who could be trained with these guns in schools. what do you make of this

proposal, as teachers in west virginia went on strike for not having received a raise in years , and teachers are fairly underpaid. >> that is what is ironic, that the president, when it comes to something that he thinks is important, he wants to pay for it. as opposed to what we know is important, which is how do you attract and retain brave people into-- graeat people teaching? that is the issue in west virginia this week. and it has been an issue for a while. i was in charleston this week. and i have never seen that level of anger and that number of educators in and around the capital in west virginia. as you know, i spent a lot of

time in west virginia because the aft has started this partnership to revitalize the eighth poorest county in the country. i spent a lot of time at that capital, and i spent a lot of time in west virginia. here is the deal with west virginia. teachers in west virginia are paid 48th out of 50 in the nation. and teachers in the surrounding counties and states are all paid a lot more. in fact, there are 1.1 million 1.8 million people that live in west virginia. 1.1 million people living near surrounding states that pay their teachers between $5,000 and $30,000 more. the straw that broke the camel's back was that not only have teachers in west virginia not gotten raises in the last few years, as more and more republican-controlled states has

given tax cuts to businesses, which has not actually increased economic development, teachers have not gotten raises tax cuts have gone to businesses, schools have gotten cut, and that the same time, the premiums for health care have been shifted to teachers. so this year, november 2017, teachers -- because of a huge premium hike -- are seeing a decrease in their salaries so that their salaries are lower than they were in 2012. and that -- in january, the republican legislature and the governor decided it was important to give correctional officers a raise, which it is important to give correctional officers a raise, but proposed nothing for teachers. so that level of disrespect was what stoked and provoked this. ultimately, what we need to do in west virginia is teachers

need to be assured that they are -- their health insurance plans are going to be funded. not just that there will be a patch on it until the day after election day. and they do not trust this legislature in doing that. and that is why there is a strike. every single state, every single county closed, and parents are supporting teachers. you do not want teachers to be doing the second and third job hardee's when they should be preparing papers. and they do not want to do that, they want to teach kids. and like any other state in the nation, -- i am a big coal person. me and the coal miners are very close, and the coal miners are supporting the teachers. but west virginia's economy is going to change. some coal may come back, but coal is not going to be the dominant industry there. you need to have a public education system and a higher

education system in west virginia as the bridge to that. that is what teachers are saying, and the legislature there refuses to listen. >> if federal funding did come from the government for school safety, how do you think it should be used? >> i believe there are three buckets we need to focus on in terms of school safety. you know, unfortunately, this comes from -- my knowledge on this is from this series of terrible incidents that have happened in and around schools. even from handgun usage in schools when i was the president of the uft in new york city years ago. remember, thomas jefferson high school?

there was a handgun there. so there is a lot of work that has been done on this. and i really want to lift up like abby clemens in sandy hook elementary school. like the teachers in stoneman douglas right now, like the kids in stoneman douglas, like the sandy hook promise, because they have taken these tragedies, these massacres and have been relentless and tenacious in trying to fight for common sense reduction of gun violence measures, as well as a safety measures in schools, as well as resources for well-being and mental health measures. three buckets -- school safety. i think that we need school safety resource officers in entrances of schools.

i think communities should make a decision about whether or not they should be armed. i have spent much time with my compatriots in the civil rights movements who are very, very concerned about police officers in schools. let's talk about school safety officers, not uniformed police officers. let's talk about the training they need to have. let's talk about the bias training they need to have. i think that people need to see and have that kind of sense of assurance that there is going to be someone in and around a school that is trained all throughout the country. that is number one. number two, as much as i hate all of the active shooter training, but just like fire drills and other drills, we need this, but we cannot

actually do this in a vacuum. activeot have the shooter training drills, which are important, without also making sure we have enough funding for the panoply of services and support services that children in america need today. whether it be guidance counseling, social work, school nurses, mental health support, whether it be in the advent of all the opioid addiction, we need to have all of that. and not just target and say that mr. cruz needed mental health services. we cannot do this after the fact. this has to be baked into schools. frankly what we tried to do with the new education law, is say that title iv should have a lot

of these services. two kinds of buckets should be there. frankly, sorry to say this, two days before parkland, betsy devos put out a budget that reduced these things. reduced summer school programs, afterschool programs, school safety expenditures. the third thing is, and i know this gets controversial. ifaustralia can do this, canada can do this, new york state can do this, connecticut , we need to have commonsense sense gun measures that restrict the ability of people to have access to ar-15's and ak-47s and the munitions that come with that. we need to have background checks. we need to deal with the dickey amendment that has stopped any ability to do research on these things. manufacturersun

should not be immunized as they are in federal law. tobacco manufacturers were not immunized, auto manufacturers were not immunized, gun manufacturers should not be immunized. there are commonsense measures that don't intrude on the second amendment. if you talk to gun owners, of which i am not one, they will say very similar things. >> what, if any, guidelines do teachers have if they have troubled students in their classroom? what is the protocol of how they are supposed to report to authorities a troubled child they feel could be a threat? randi: let's put it this way. this has gone every which way in terms of federal rules and regulations. much of this is governed by state. there are federal civil rights

laws that also need to be in the mix. we have actually had two separate pushes on this. i want to be really careful here. one of the things i think we have actually done right, is to actually look at the data in the last few years. schools were suspending and expelling a disproportionate number of black and brown students. that is wrong. there has been a real focus on how do we find ways to make sure we have justice programs or equity programs to be sure we are meeting kids where their needs are instead of using suspension and expulsion.

that is one piece of work that needs to continue. that is separate and apart from someone like a nicholas cruz. if you talk to kids from stoneman douglas, every single kid will say, or not every kid, , did not speak to every kid many of the kids would say that they knew something was up with this kid. and the school actually did a lot of the right things. one of the stewards at the school said on saturday at a union meeting we had, the school had done everything right. the state had no resources once the kid did not go to whatever mental health facility. they did not track it. they did not follow it. the state did not know that the mother had died. the sheriff had said the were many other red flags. not just the fbi not following the tip.

if you do not have resources, how are people going to do anything but triage? the resources are really important. this is why our union has focused like a laser on wraparound services for schools. we have 50 districts or so talking about that and trying to push that, and there are many advocates out there saying let's make sure our schools have wraparound services. not just having the social worker or psychiatrist who is there to do a special education review or assessment, but having to have real resources in a school. for example, i was a teacher in brooklyn, new york in the dinosaur age, in the 1990's, but we still had in my school guidance counselors and two days a week a psychiatrist.

social workers. one day, i will never forget this, i am in a class and one of my kids comes into class looking completely vacuous. you could see it, touch it, feel it. she was a complete zombie. so i break every rule in the book, every rule. i leave my classroom. i take my kid. i hold her tight to me. i asked one of the kids to lead the class or whatever. i'm on the opposite side of the school. i will never forget this. i walk all the way around the suite, and i say, please, she needs help. because i know the school and these folks, everybody helped her. what happened? her father had been murdered. but she saw the school as safety. she saw my classroom as

something where she would get some degree of refuge. this is what we need in schools. review do not have that in schools, kids are always going to fall through the cracks. this takes resources. this should not just be for the kid who is stigmatized with a mental illness or mental disability. kids have anxieties now, and we need to deal with it. teachers now have lots of anxieties. we need to do it. look at those teachers in douglas. the same thing happened in newtown and so many other situations. teachers find in themselves to protect kids. that is their instinct. >> i want to make sure we talk to you about a major supreme court case. it is a case labor unions have

been facing for a long time. with justice neil gorsuch on the court, it appears there is a conservative vote to strike down agency fees, which nonmembers pay to aid in collective bargaining. i'd like to ask you, realistically, can you talk about the financial threat this purposes, and the threat to your membership? realistically, how bad could it be? randi: let me put the social studies teacher hat on for one second to say this. a lot of people have no idea what this case is about. in the united states of america, the private sector has something called the nlra, the national labor relations act. employees can decide whether they want to have unions, who then negotiate the terms and conditions with employers. the public sector has the same

thing. state by state by state. under the 10th amendment of the constitution, states can decide how they want to regulate activities with their employees. 23 states have decided that their employees are entitled to collective bargaining with one proviso. if the union represents people, like teachers in new york city, then the obligation is to represent everybody. to do that everybody pay a fair share. the people who decide not to be members, and people have the complete ability not to join, but you pay the fair share for that representation. that was challenged by the right wing about 45 years ago. it was in a case called abood versus detroit education.

in that case, a unanimous supreme court said the states have a right to do this and the unions have a right to do this. unanimous. sam alito, one of the supreme court justices, in a case for -- four years ago that was totally unrelated, say come back to us because we think abood was decided wrongly. that is why you see the friedrichs case and now this case called janus. what this is is the right way -- this guy mark janus did not even bring the case. it was brought by the governor of illinois. the right wing essentially wants more power than it has in the country. it is people like the devos family and various others. what we believe, to answer your

question directly, is that this case moved the koch brothers , would not let republicans even get merrick garland a hearing. trump wins. he nominates gorsuch. gorsuch gets confirmed, and this case gets moved to the supreme court a week later. it jumps all other cases to get heard a year later. we know that this is the koch brothers and all of those folks who do not want unions to have a voice representing people, because they know, historically and even now, if a person is actually represented by a union, they have better wages than if a person is not. they also do not want us to do the kind of political work that we do. to answer your question directly, what we know is that

if there was no pr campaign for -- or anything else, probably what would happen is that over the course of a year or so, the people who are fee -- they would get those choices fair directly, and about half of them would say we do not want it. union, of the our 1.7 million members in our union, there are about 87,000. very few in the small district, k-12 sphere. probably half of them. this is what we know will happen because we have already seen it. the koch brothers and others have announced they are going to

spend $400 million. after they got that tax cut from president trump, they have up to to --rom $400 million their words, not mine -- to break us, to break teachers unions, and try to undermine and destabilize public schools. their words again. we think what they are going to do a big public campaign that says you want a raise? get rid of your union dues. so given that, you really do not actually know. we know they want to use it as a defunding of the union, to have people opt out, but this is what we are seeing. nea, this has actually been a pretty cathartic moment for us. i do not want this case. i think this case is brought by those ideological interests that

want to destroy workers' ability to have a better life, which is what unions do. let me be clear, if we did not have this case, it would be better if we did not have it. but this has done within our union, it has been cathartic and transformative, because people are talking with each other in a way that i have not seen in a couple of decades. and what we are seeing within our membership is that when our membership actually sees and understands it is the right wing who wants to take away their power they are really pissed. long-winded way of saying, that we know they want to use it to defund this, and the evidence is pretty clear. when unions have gone through this kind of anti-union suite of

legal changes, the vote share for the democrats go down. in michigan and wisconsin, the vote share would down by about 3.5% after these things were done in michigan and wisconsin. host: we have to leave it there. the president of the american federation of teachers. thank you for being this week's newsmaker. ms. weingarten: thank you. host: we are back with our to reporters. erika, the president has said we should arm our teachers. we have just heard from the leader of the teachers union saying not a good idea. what has the effort and like on a state level, and have states tried this in the past?

erica: the have been a few states that have allowed their school districts to keep weapons in the school buildings if they choose. they have trained -- it is a community decision, and there have opted for. i spoke to the superintendent of ohio yesterday who keeps weapons in the buildings. they have trained response teams composed of teachers, administrators, and school staff who are confidential. they are prepared to respond. they have bullet-proof vests. they say they have three minutes before first responders in their local communities can get to them, the teachers and school staff could get to a gun quicker. in california, the kingsburg school district also allow the teachers to carry weapons. that was revoked on january 1. this was by way of legislation signed by the governor. i spoke with that superintendent yesterday who was not happy that that had happened.

it is a real possibility if they could choose to take this route. caitlin: i think i would agree. there has been a lot of discussion recently about what the president is saying. what does it mean coming from the federal government? if this were something pushed by the federal government, it would essentially amount to an enormous costly mandate when it comes to purchasing the guns, training the teachers, possibly providing some sort of bonus for teachers that are trained to use these weapons. i think that realistically, it would be unlikely for congress to take up something like this. it seems like it would be more or less to states and local districts to decide. that being said we had a story , earlier this week that showed in states like texas this is -- like texas where this is allowed. few teachers are comfortable with this idea.

it is sort of few and far between, and even if the states allow it. host: erica, we also talked about the supreme court case that is going to be heard on monday. what impact have you heard this could have if unions lost the ability to charge nonmembers to -- that collective bargaining fee? erica: basically, what randi referenced, it would this -- disempower the unions in political circles. the impact on the ground with teachers and administrators they represent, especially in this political climate. i have heard a lot of teachers express a lot of concern about what could happen to their rights as workers in states. so we have not heard from the union what a defunded union looks like, but in terms of the power, it could have a real impact. host: what about political clout?

caitlin: teachers unions are a stalwart of grassroots organizing and fundraising. what remains to be seen is how much of this decision what impact these unions financially and in terms of membership. both of those combined could definitely dampen their political activity. teachers unions are such an integral part of politics and the community, so it will be interesting to see what happens. that being said i spoke to a , number of local leaders this week ahead of the case, and they are still holding out hope that there is power in numbers. every single school district in the country has teachers that are some of the most engaged in their community. they are thinking along that fact, that you cannot find a congressional district that does

-- does not have a teacher in it. will still have a seat at the table when it comes to politics, but it could be more diminished. >> we thank you both. >> thank you. "landmark on c-span's cases," we will look at a case that solidified the government's ability to take action not specified in the constitution. with a this case university of virginia law professor and a university of arkansas law professor. watch live tonight at 9:00 eastern on c-span, www.c-span.org, or listen with

the free c-span radio app. order a copy of the "landmark cases" book. there is a link on our website the national constitution center's interactive constitution. >> the house gaveling in today at noon, about 20 minutes from now. on the agenda, bills to allow indian tribes to set up amber alerts, research on sickle cell anemia, and coordinating military and civilian trauma care. you can watch live coverage from the house floor on c-span. it little more on capitol hill this week. every time congress goes on break commencing something happens to alter their agenda when he returned. in this case, last week's high school shooting in florida. where do you think this will go?

>> it will be on the front burner. the president has put out some proposals, some supported by the nra, and a few not. we have seen marco rubio change his position. congressional leaders have specifically brian and mcconnell, are going to have to answer questions about what now, what kind of gun legislation are you going to move? there is a bipartisan proposal sponsored by john cornyn and backed by chris murphy, has support on both sides of the aisle, supported by the nr, and this would increase the system of communication on background checks and sending between various government entities , whichtion to the fbi critics say needs to be sure up. -- shored up. some people want more complete

background checks. pat toomey said he would revise his bill that field a few years ago in the wake of the connecticut shooting. i think it is going to be something that congressional leaders are going to have to deal with front and center, and remember the florida movement, the student movement, which marched to tallahassee, that is coming to washington next month. this issue is going to be a dominant one for much of march. >> let me ask you about the momentum, the potential momentum, building for legislation some, starting in a series of hill headlines, with rick scott said he is bucking the nra on age restrictions and a new gun proposal. then there is a florida congressman who is calling for ryan to bring up legislation. and jeff flake in a headline saying he is for increasing the age for rifle purchases. you have covered this issue for

some time in washington. if ever seen a time where potentially some legislation on guns, significant legislation on guns could be enacted? >> the only time that i think is comparable was after the sandy hook tragedy, when president obama took on the national rifle in one of the biggest lobbying battles i have seen in my time in the nation's capital. the nra won that. there was a bipartisan proposal, but it got voted down. this is somewhat different because the movement seems to be thanating the news more so back end. i think the momentum of shifting positions about whether it is rubio other republicans saying we need to rethink this, that is something that you did not see after sandy hook, and certainly, the president has been the