the january 6 attack we look back on that day, live on c-span beginning at 7:00 a.m. eastern on "washington journal." president joe biden and vice president kamala harris deliver remarks from the capital. 1:00 p.m. eastern, the library of -- librarian of congress leads a discussion on the january 6's place in american history. at 2:30 p.m. eastern lawmakers share their thoughts and reflections. at five: 30 p.m. eastern members of the house and senate -- 5:30 p.m. eastern members of the house and senate meet for a vigil. the anniversary of the january 6 attack live thursday on c-span or watch on the globe -- on the go with our new mobile app or go to c-span.org where you will find a page with all of the programming including archival coverage from the day.

joining us now is becky pringle, president of the national education association. thank you for giving us your time. caller: it is good -- guest: it is good to be with you again. host: to what level are you concerned about omicron and how it might impact those who go to school? guest: you know, we are coming up on two years, aren't we, with this pandemic? one of the things that we know is that it is ever-changing, it is throwing us curveballs when we think we are coming out of it. that certainly happened with delta, and now here with omicron. but, we have seen strategies and tools in place. if we take advantage, school districts have taken advantage of the american rescue plan to ensure that we can put in place all of the layered mitigation strategies from vaccinations to testing, to distancing, to cleaning surfaces and hands the ventilation.

all of those working together, we can keep our students and educators say. host: we saw $130 billion, specifically for school. $10 billion for testing purposes. can you say that that's money has been distributed or is it now the school's issue? guest: it has varied kind of an evenly depending on what was going on in a particular state. i know you saw that happening in the fall where some states and governors were refusing to allow school districts to use the money. secretary cardona did intervene to make sure that the school districts did actually get the money they needed so they could purchase those tests and make sure that they had enough for all of their students and educators, making sure that there were repairing ventilation systems. but we know that there are still schools that do not have the resources available to them, or

they just have not had the time yet or do not have the people to do the kinds of repairs needed to ensure that all of those mitigation strategies are in place. we have to stay vigilant, because we know that there are schools that have work to do. host: you probably heard the word, the decision by the chicago's teachers learning -- union about concerns about testing among them. they are not the only union or school association expressing concern. what is your message to teachers if they are concerned about omicron and going back to school to teach? guest: i taught science for over 30 years and this is what i know and what i have heard from teachers all over the country as i travel from los angeles to kentucky. they want to be back with our students. they want to be in person because i know that is the best and safest way for them to be and the best place for them to learn and for teachers and other

people to teach. they want to work collaboratively to do what they must to keep our students and educators safe and to keep them in person, and so they continue to make sure that everyone, all of the stakeholders are at the table, educators, parents, community members, infectious disease experts and students themselves to make the decision that is best for the school district in that area depending on what the virus is doing, how high the transmission rate is and whether they have tools in place to keep students safe. our guest host:host: -- our guest is becky pringle. 202-748-8001 -- 202-748-8000 for educators. and all others, 202-748-8002. that being said, is there a scenario that you can envision or maybe the nea has talked

about if a certain amount of caseloads happen, people or schools would be recommended to go back to eight remote learning scenario? guest: what i have been saying from the beginning very consistently is follow the science, listen to the experts and bring together the people who are closest to the students and those communities to make the decisions. they have to collaborate, communicate and develop contingency plans which we saw school districts doing before the holidays. they did not know the impact in their area because they have to deal with the virus community by community. the spread varies from one committee to another, so they have to have comprehensive contingency plans in place because not only do we want students to be safe but learning in person -- and learning in person together but we have to

make sure that learning continues even if we realize that the infection rate is too high to bring them together or we have so many educators that we cannot bring them into in person learning because we do not have enough teachers or school bus drivers or educators in that building but we want to finish -- figure out how to minimize distractions and provide equitable access to learning and that requires collaboration, communication and comprehensive plans. caller: is -- host: as part of those plans would you recommend a mandatory test for teachers and students returning to school? guest: we have seen different schools doing different things. those who came together to make the decision about what was best for their students are the ones who are open right now and have all of the safety precautions in place. they have all the tests that they need, they have all the

testing location set up so students can come in and get the tests and help with testing and uploading this so they have all of that information. we have some school districts that said they would delay the opening, we are going to learn remark -- remotely for the first week or couple of weeks because we did not get the resources that we needed to be able to test all students and make sure they are safe. we have been living with this virus for two years and we know that we will see a surge in cases right after holidays. it has happened each year and happened again this year. those school districts that planned ahead, whether they got the additional tests or realized that they needed to postpone the in person learning, they made those decisions together and then parents knew what was going to happen and educators knew what was going to happen and the students continued learning. host: as far as vaccinations, what is the rate -- how has the rate of vaccinations change.

what is happening this year as opposed to last year? guest: we know how important vaccinations are. we have that evidence and we are working hard partnering with community groups and with the department of education to increase those numbers of adults who are vaccinated. that is so critical. we already have seen this happen, we know that when we do not have high rates of vaccination within a community, that is what really feeds those variations in the virus, and we get these mutations and you get different strains like delta and omicron. we have to get the vaccination rates up. we are so encouraged by the number of students who are getting vaccinated in our schools, and the continued work by our medical communities to not only increase the number of vaccinations, but also to increase the medications that are used to treat covid.

we are getting more tools every single day, but vaccinations absolutely essential. and, especially right now when this omicron variant is so infectious, masks are an essential mitigation strategy. host: your first call from jerry in minnesota, a parent. you are on. go ahead with your question or comment. guest: ella -- caller: hello i have a couple of questions. you say you have to listen to the experts and experts are going back to school and teach. the chicago situation is ridiculous. when you said we need to get more vaccines, we are vaccinated it does not start -- stop the spread. the teachers are vaccinated and the kids are at no real risk. the omicron, people saying the sky is falling, as of five days ago, i saw one person documented

as dying from it. and all of the experts in all of the science and all of the stats say that teachers should be in school, and then you unilaterally say that you are not going in a place like chicago, something is really wrong. they should not be paid and stripped of their benefits. you do not get to say where you are going to work as an employee. you want to do that you become an owner. i find this so wrong. host: jerry, a parent in new mexico. guest: so, we are saying exactly what the experts are saying, that we want students to be in school, in person, learning. the experts do not stop there. they say we have to put in place those mitigation strategies beginning with testing. so, we know that for those school districts that were not able for whatever reason to get the tests so that students and educators could be tested many of them made a decision to delay the opening until they got the

tests. the resources arrived so they could do that and all of the students could start together in person learning and minimize those disruptions because it is so incredibly important to do that. if we have teachers and students who are getting covid and they have to isolate, that will disrupt their learning and we might not have enough educators in our schools to teach our students. so, we have to take those recommendations by the experts together. we cannot pick and choose. we have to do them together. host: an educator in florida. vanessa, hello. go ahead. caller: what are they doing within the schools to make sure that there is sufficient airflow within the classrooms? guest: that is a really important question. we said from the beginning that ventilation, proper ventilation is essential and actually, it is

not new information, we already knew that we had crumbling schools, particularly in urban areas. we knew that our black, brown, and native students schools that they were going to had been built almost 100 years ago and never been updated. so over the last two years what we have strived to do is to learn more about what we could do to improve ventilations, and some school school districts han those steps, but, honestly, that is a band-aid. it is why we continue to fight for the passage of the infrastructure money in the build back better plan. that will allow us to address schools across this nation. the modernization of these schools we have been talking about for decades. now it is front and center. everybody can see they are not adequately ventilated.

we have buildings we send our students to for a long time. this is the time to repair our schools, build new schools so our students are going to safe schools. host: how is that addressed through the american rescue plan? guest: billions of dollars went to cities all over the country. they could use those dollars to upgrade their ventilation systems. that is what many of them did, but we know that is a short-term solution. we have got to build new schools in this country. host: connie in west virginia, good morning. caller: my name is connie. i am a grandmother here in west virginia. i have grandkids. in west virginia, we have been going to school, the students here, and i was a cook for tyler county schools. we have had not a lot of problems with the children being in schools. they wear masks.

why is it that we cannot just do that everywhere like we do here in west virginia? guest: connie, thank you for helping to feed our students. that is an important role, as you know. as we look through the fall of this year, we started school. our schools, the majority of them started in september. they were all in person. it varies from community to community, whether or not they had to move back to virtual, remote learning. sometimes it was because in that area there was an outbreak. too often, that was because they were not wearing masks in the schools. that has been a conversation through the fall. in places where they were wearing masks, that kept down the infection rate. if infection rates were not managed, what was happening was it was spreading through the school and we were having more and more sick students and more

and more sick educators. we did not have the educators in school to keep those schools open. the majority of our schools throughout the fall, even throughout delta, we were able to keep them open because we were vaccinating adults and students. we were insisting they wear masks. we were insisting where possible we were employing strategies to keep schools clean and they had proper ventilation. host: as far as cleaning of the schools, is that possible if students are in school all five days a week? guest: we have had our custodians all over the country do an incredible job to keep our schools clean. our school districts have worked with them to develop a schedule so they were cleaning schools initially. some of the schools would actually close down for a day so they would do that.

-- that really intensive cleaning. sometimes they would pay custodians to come in after school, at night, to do that intensive cleaning. we have had challenges of retaining our custodians, making sure we have enough, paying them enough to do the job they did not ever think they would be doing. all of our educators are facing that now. we are facing shortages with custodians as well. those schools that work with our custodians provided training so they knew how to clean our schools properly and provided resources for them to do that and hired additional staff to make sure they could do that so students could stay in a safe schools. those are the schools that were able to stay open safely. host: this is becky pringle with the national education association. caller: i was wondering if the education association is going to back the chicago teachers union for deciding to close to keep kids safe even though they

merit chicago had pushed the mandate -- mayor of chicago had pushed the mandate that said they would close restaurants of kids were not vaccinated. it seems she is taking profits ahead of our kids' safety. yet we can keep restaurants open for the same reason why they chose to close the school. guest: i will continue to talk about, and educators all over this country are doing the same, that when we work together to keep students safe we are ensuring that we have all of those mitigation strategies in place for our students. that is what we need to do. we must come together to build relationships that through these last few years school districts all over this country and

parents and educators, health care professionals, have built so they can have and use those collaboration strategies that are focused on making sure our students have what they need and what they deserve. we have the resources to ensure they have the testing. they are taking this other mitigation strategies into play so our students can stay in person and continue to learn. we have to come together so we can ensure every student has access to those safe tools so that they can come together, learn together, and they can continue to grow and thrive. host: you have been talking about the need to have students in school from the experiences of students who spend time learning remotely during the early stages of the pandemic. is there any evidence that shows the education they receive has been impacted in any way?

guest: we certainly over the spring and summer took a look at making sure we did diagnostic assessments to understand what gaps existed for our students. we knew we were welcoming students back into in person learning, into our school building, who had suffered trauma. they had suffer loss particularly in our black and brown and indigenous communities. covid-19 impacted this humidity is to a greater degree and the crises it spawned from the economic crisis to the housing crisis, food insecurity, all of those things impacted those communities to a greater degree. we did an assessment of gaps, not just academic gaps, but social and emotional learning gaps. what we put in place in the spring and fall was accelerated learning. we did that from that place of

not only did we have to close academic gaps but we had students who had not been together for a year or longer. we had to help them learn how to do school, coming together and working together in a way that fostered safety within the classroom and lunchrooms. there was a lot of work to be done over the spring and summer and the fall and throughout this year. we will continue to do that work to assess where students are and how we are going to work collaboratively to close this gap. host: let's hear from jennifer and delaware, and educator. caller: i have a student who is in high school. i tutor students through the program upward bound.

the student just recovered and she is concerned about going back to school and catching it again. she is concerned about her safety. i told her to reach out to the school and see if you can ask to go online if you are concerned, but she is not comfortable with that. that was my recommendation to her, to reach out to the school because it was hard. she had to quarantine. she was not super sick, but she stayed in her room to keep her family safe. it was hard on her. mentally. host: ok. thanks, jennifer. guest: that is an important story to lift up, pedro. as i have been talking with you this morning, our students are part of our stakeholder ship. we have to include them in the conversations we are having. they have been living with this virus for two years as well.

their lives have been disrupted, their lives at school, at home. they have had loss. they are afraid. we have to talk to them and listen to them. her advice to reach out to the school is good advice. i would add that she needs to talk with her parents or family, involve community members in those conversations so those people who are in decision-making -- making those decisions and have the power to make those decisions, that they are listening to students an understanding that this is impacting them in ways that may not have them feeling safe to come back to school. they need to start that conversation, part of developing a solution, so they can feel safe, understand what is happening, and continue their learning, whether they are in person or remote. host: is the remote situation

still available to a student or family that decides they are still concerned about covid and still wants to teach their student at home? guest: it does vary from school district to school district. most districts will work with families, with students who are struggling. either they are predisposed to getting covid, they have health conditions already there challenging for them, school district will work with them to ensure they have tools they need to continue to learn. it is a good idea to reach out to the school district to see what can happen for that family so that student has what they need and deserve. host: canton, ohio, this is dave on our line for others. caller: can you tell us the difference between your organization and the other teachers union, the american

federation of teachers? can you tell us why randi weingarten is always on tv but we never hear from you? can you tell us how many teachers there are in the united states? guest: we have two unions in this country, the american federation of teachers and the national education association. we represent not only teachers but professionals and bus drivers. we represent higher education members as well as students aspiring to be teachers and we represent bus drivers and retired teachers. we also represent nurses and counselors. we represent people who have made a decision to dedicate their lives to educating students of america. we work closely together to ensure that not only do all of our students get what they need

and what they deserve but that we deal with issues of equity and access come a that we deal with issues of resources -- access, that we deal with issues of resources. one thing we said early in the pandemic, march of 2020, when the nea convened over 60 organizations to talk about what we were calling a homework app, now much more, we were talking about the lack of technology and digital tools for our students. we wanted to work with the federal government, with state and local governments, to close that gap. that work has continued through the pandemic. we still have issues of equity and access. that is a priority for our organization, making sure our students have what they need, making sure our educators have what they need, including respect, professional authority,

compensation, and working conditions we know are essential to get to the heart of what we are seeing now, a huge shortage not only among our teachers but among our support staff as well. host: as far as staff as a whole , are the number of teachers we saw before the pandemic back in schools or is there a teacher shortage? guest: we have a teacher shortage, a shortage we have been sounding the alarm about for at least a decade and a half. we looked at the number of students enrolling in teacher preparation programs and we have seen a steady decline over the last decade in the number of students who are making the decision to become teachers. it is alarming. certainly the pandemic exacerbated that with additional stress and workload.

we know too many teachers and professionals are going into classrooms, into schools, and they arrive at school and do not have enough subs so they have to cover classes over their lunch break. they have to combine classes so some of them are teaching as many as 80 students in an auditorium. those are not the conditions students need. we are concerned about the teacher shortage and working hard to address those issues and to address other issues leading to that shortage. for example, teachers being asked to do so much more than what they were trained to do or should be responsible for doing. we are promoting community schools to make sure we have in our school districts additional supports that students need. we are also promoting residency programs and mentoring so our teachers feel they have the

support and are ready to teach and have support. we are doing lots of things to address it, but in this moment our teachers need -- we need to address the well-being of our teachers. they need to hear from us. they need to know we care for them and we are doing things to help them. host: if there was a teacher hesitant on going back to the classroom because of covid concerns, what does the union do for them? guest: we have been working closely with our teachers and other educators across the country to build those collaborative working relations with their school districts, administration, school board, parents so they can have that collaboration throughout the system so they come together to resolve those issues at the local level so all the students are safe, so educators are safe, so they are communicating and

know what plans are as we continue to live with this ever-changing pandemic. host: nick is in pennsylvania, our line for others. caller: thank you to all the educators and the amazing work you do every day. i wanted to ask -- connie mentioned earlier food in schools, important to educate our children and feed them. one of the things that covid has brought to light is the fact of lunch debt in america and the fact that there are over one million students who cannot pay the full price for a school meal. the average meal debt per child is about $170 yearly. feeding america calculates one in five food insecure children lose in a home in eligible for

-- in eligible for free or reduced lunch. we ended up making sure every kid could get a free and reduced lunch. i wanted to ask -- what is the nea doing to make sure once we come out of the pandemic every child in america is never ashamed, never denied a lunch, and that they can get a free breakfast and free lunch for just being a student in your school? host: that is nick in pennsylvania. guest: that is such an important issue that you have lifted up. we have worked hard through this pandemic. the light was shining on the inequities. teachers, food service workers saw this every day. they saw students who did not finish their lunch and put it in their backpack because they knew they had hungry parents and other family members at home. they were not even eating all of their lunch.

they were taking it home to parents. what we saw through the pandemic is these heroic teachers and bus drivers and food service workers who put their lives on the line. we lost a lot of bus drivers and food service workers early in the pandemic because they kept cooking those meals and delivering them to schoolyards and libraries all over the country and they did not just feed the kids. they fed their families as well. what we knew we had to do is ensure that we had resources to feed our students and their families and all the students. that is what we fought hard for and was included in the american rescue plan. we are not done, as i said before. we have to pass the build back better plan because that includes in its healthy meals for all students -- and it

healthy meals for all students. those need to be on -- in it healthy meals for all students. those need to be ongoing meals. kids cannot learn if they are hungry. if they go home to a hungry family, that family cannot help them. that is the work we have yet to do and we are calling on congress to get that work done so our students can be healthy and safe and can continue to learn. host: there is reporting democrats have put build back better on hold in pursuit of other things, including voting rights legislation. how do you respond to that? guest: we are not putting our advocacy on hold. our members live in every congressional district across this country. they are using their power and voice and influence to demand

that members of congress get this done. you will not stop fighting for it because not only are we talking about healthy meals, we are talking about universal pre-k. we all know how important it is for our students to have access to kindergarten. we know that is important. we have evidence of that. we know those child tax credits are essential to our families who are struggling the most. we also know it is essential that we have the resources for addressing the modernization of those schools, for addressing teacher shortages. all those things are in the