>> we are having technical difficulties with this program. we'll air it for you laettner our schedule. more now from this morning's "washington journal." " host: we are back with randy weingarten from the american federation of teachers. let's begin with congress yesterday. the education secretary was testifying before lawmakers about presidents budget request for 2023. what did you hear that you liked from the education secretary? guest: the education secretary, it's a -- he is a great educator and he has a way of explaining the budget request in real terms. then regular folks who are in schools and parents and teachers can understand if instead of talking about it in ways that don't feel acceptable.

he talked about how we help our kids after a two-year pandemic recover and thrive. what are the pieces of the budget that are aimed to do that? have to kids in public schools are poor and there is a federal program called title i that started with johnson that essentially says let's make sure the kids who are poor, white kids who are poor, black and brown kids in cities that are poor, lots of people remember having to fill out lunch forms and that's how you know whether the schools get extra money. that title i money, they want to grow it by a billion dollars so that we lower class sizes and get more guidance and

professionals can help kids and supplement and tutor them. that's one of the things i thought was important stop another piece that's important is we have a mental health crisis right now and some of it is because of the pandemic and a lot of it started before the pandemic but the pandemic had tremendous disruption for kids. even kids who schools were open really early, there is tremendous disruption in their lives. then social media has a lot more disruption in a lot more anger that is focused on kids. how do you get more social/emotional help in the schools? the budget proposes about $500 million more for something called community schools. when you wrap services around the school, you make sure like

in cincinnati, ohio, that we are helping these kids in parents and answering questions and we are making sure that schools can be the hub of the community. those are a couple of the things , special needs kids. we need to make sure we are helping special needs kids in every way we can and that was a program that was started in the 70's it was never funded the way it was supposed to be funded. there is funding for that as well. those were many of the things that he said yesterday, what's the funding that actually addresses the needs that kids have and how do we deal with them? we talked about teacher shortages. we have huge teacher shortages right now going into next year.

he talked about what we need to do to make our profession attractive so that people come into the profession and stay. host: we want to invite our viewers to join this conversation with randy weingarten and here is how we have divided the lines, parents and students 748-8000748-8001 and all other lines are80 and02 you can text us. let's talk about parental rights in school and that's debate happening across the country. i want to get your reaction to florida governor ron desantis trucking -- talking about a law, a measure signed into law called parental rights in education bill. here he is expanding it. [video clip] >> today we will sign the

parents rights in education bill. this takes three main steps. first, the bill prohibits classroom instruction about sexuality or things like transgender in k-3 classrooms and at the third rate, those curriculum need to be age-appropriate. at the beginning of every school year, parents will be notified about health care services offered at the school with the right to decline any service offered. [applause] finally, this bill ensures whenever health training is given to our young students, parents receive it first and give permission for the school to give it to their child. there has been a lot of discussion about this particular piece of legislation. you have seen a lot of sloganeering by leftist politicians and activists and corporate media. you still see it even today

after this stuff has been debunked. it's true that many of the people helped whip this up of never read the bill and haven't taken the time to do that when we rather further their narrative. i must tell you, these leftist politicians, corporate media outlets in some of these activist groups actually have read the bill. they are sloganeering because they don't want to admit that they support a lot of the things we are providing protections against. for example, they support sexualizing kids in kindergarten. they support injecting woke gender ideology into second grade classrooms. they support enabling schools to transition students to a different gender without the knowledge of the parents, much less without the parents consent. what they are doing with these slogans and narratives is they are trying to camouflage their true intentions. they know and every hole that

reads language in the bill will find overwhelmingly americans oppose injecting this type of material into the classroom of young kids. american support the right of parents to be informed and be able to withhold consent over certain types of medical treatment in school. host: randy weingarten, your reaction to the bill and the governor? guest: i have been a teacher and parent and a student advocate for a long time. parents obviously have not only rights to that they are there children's first teacher and they are there children's advocate and they have to do everything we can to support parents as they support their kids. the same is true in terms of teachers. we have to do everything we can

to support teachers as they support children. you heard governor the real push by governor desantis. this is to divide parents and teachers and parents from schools. you heard him at the end of what he said which is he's really taking on children's freedom to be and to learn and what these bills are doing across america is stopping supporting us as teachers for eating the needs of kids, kids who come to us who may be a trans kid who trying to decide what their sexual identity is, what this bill does and i've read it, it basically

threatens the teachers that the teacher can't actually engage the kid in conversation. a kindergarten teacher in florida who happens to be gay loved by his children has the picture of his partner up and he got threatened and bullied. one of the parent groups came to his aid and assistance. what's happening is i don't know why ron desantis is scared of us actually trying to help kids see who they are and have the freedom to learn and the freedom to be? i don't know why he is scared about us talking about slavery and teaching about slavery. i don't know why he scared about us talking about the holocaust and teaching that. i would rather all of these things get done in an age-appropriate way in a school

under the guidance of a teacher who knows what they are doing as opposed to it being done on the internet. this is the same kind of political propaganda that starts hate and derision and polarization and it's really hurtful and harmful to kids. ultimately, we are seeing school board elections across the country where this has become the thing, the way in which to define and so distrust. people who are pro-public education are winning and people that we believe we should have a heart and empathy and those people are winning school board elections. we need guidance stuff to deal

with we help teach kids, how we help accelerate learning. those of the things we should be doing and what he is doing is getting rid of words that have empathy and it will step what is he afraid of? why is he using kids politically in this kind of way? host: let's get to our viewers, north carolina, you are an educator, what grade? caller: i am actually retired after 35 years. i am joining every moment of it. i actually talk is. i'm amazed at ms. weingarten. the last time she was on, she complained about needing funding constantly. this time, she is complaining about needing funding constantly. i really wish, and this is a

statement/question. how about teaching the students critical thinking skills? reading, writing, arithmetic and stop with the social engineering scenarios? i thank you and i will take your answer off the air. guest: i could do the answer either way but i agree with you, we have to teach about critical thinking. we have to teach kids how to think and not what to think. that's what i hope i did all the time. i was asked the question about the president budget and i'm not sure -- i was trying to be responsive to the question. i don't know weary taught but thank you for teaching for 35 years. i appreciate that and thank you for teaching kids.

i taught in brooklyn. when i taught, we had to scavenge for chalk. we need to have all kinds of material in school. we ended up as a union, making sure about 800 people, it hundred school teachers this year, look at the needs that school teachers have. on march 4, we decided to fulfill every teachers request who was trying to get math and some other supplies for the kids. it would be great if school systems did this instead of teachers reaching into their own pockets. they do that all the time, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and i bet you did as well. that's the kind of stuff that professions do for their workers

but we don't. we have to reach into her own pockets. money is an issue but not everywhere. thankfully, if you want to reduce to small classes so you have 20 kids in a class? money is an issue. you want to have up-to-date textbooks and up-to-date internet materials and wi-fi, money is an issue. those are the kinds of things that we are talking about. money well spent has to be our standard but money is an issue. host: ellen in minneapolis -- caller: hi there. nice to see you this morning. my daughter is a teacher and she's been a teacher for nine years and had covid twice and has long-haul symptoms because of it. i am wondering -- it's hard breaking to actually see what educators go through with respect to who they are.

she said the kids were great through all of this but parents were horrible. they were abusive at times. of course, she came close to quitting. she loves teaching. she is great at teaching reading which is fundamental. she's got a union that is completely senseless. how in the world can we actually bring some respect to educators in this country finally? is it finding a way to pay them for what they do? it is so frustrating to watch her struggle financially, watch her struggle the debt she has to get into to actually teach and then witness the whole -- just

the verbal abuse from people all over this country about teachers. it's like they thought they were babysitters or something. during covid, it was so disheartening. host: i will jump in and have randi weingarten respond to you. guest: if you want to text me or email me afterwards and me to reach out your daughter, i would love to. please, give her a virtual hug from me. one out of five educators have long covid. number one, during much of the disruptive time from april, 2020

i know the right wing undermines what i try to say but from april 2020, aft put out a bunch of rules questioning how we open schools or in person learning and how do we keep things safe? both of those things are really important. as the twists and turns of this pandemic happened, we really tried to do everything the experts said. i try to listen to what the experts were saying about this very terrible violence that has affected -- virus that has affected people differently. schools this year, this school year has been open essentially 99% of the time. gets to about 95% during the pe

ri of omicron. od that was because we didn't have the personnel. that was different than the first year of the pandemic when schools were open about -- they were closed from march-june and then they were open from september through february. you have to give this current administration some credit for really trying to get us to keep things open. but still, there has been an effect. people have gotten sick. there are kids whose parents are no longer alive because their parents got sick. communities of color were disproportionately affected. what's happened is that schools, health care in schools tended to be the places where we were

trying to help not only the trauma but the intense trauma and dealing with these issues of death and being the lifeline. i'm not surprised that we had people who were traumatized and are agitated and are angry. because that's with a two-year pandemic the two people. i'm sorry that your daughter has had to do with this. i have heard the story a lot about the kids who were great and parents were scared. you've got to have grace and empathy for everyone. we have to create a safe and welcoming environment stop in terms of your daughter and in terms of the way with this environment is, you heard it from what desantis said earlier in this interview. the level of polarization and the divisiveness in order to win political points are wrong stop

we need to help teachers have the conditions they need to teach. we need to help them. that way they can stay in the profession and we need to make sure we do that in a way that helps lift everyone up regardless of where they are in the country. with the union has done is we have pushed to fix public service forgiveness and we have a program called summer so if you daughter is a member of our union, we make sure that she has this navigator of hope. i will help her anyway regardless if you get to me. if we can connect through c-span because i want to help her. that's what unions do. we have a program about reading opens the world. we are giving out a million

books so the kids see themselves in teachers across the country have said this is one of the ways to create the joy of teaching and the joy of learning. number three, we are doing a lot of stuff. watch for tuesday about teacher appreciation day and we will have a program in july about how we make is profession which is the key to all other professions and all other work make it valued. host: randy in georgia, you are a parent, good morning. guest: and i'm a democrat as well. caller: tell ms. weingarten, she is the biggest liar on tv. instead of letting her take up all the time, don't let her talk all the time. host: explain your accusation.

guest: do you have a question for me? caller: i don't like you. i don't like the union. host: why do you say that? caller: you want to steal the kids money and you want more and you don't educate them. you indoctrinate them and you are brain dead so you need to cut her off. host: you have heard this criticism before i'm sure. the money that goes to unions, how is the money spent? guest: i don't know if that was the question he was asking me that this is the propaganda war that is so damaging and the disinformation war that is so damaging. money that goes to unions, any money that he union gets from its members and the members voluntarily become members of the union.

we actually have reporting requirements that are more extensive than any reporting requirements than a corporation has an those recording requirements are out for everyone to see every single year. the membership makes the decision about whether it wants to be a member. i'm not sure i understand with the gentleman's intention is but it's this kind of level of anger at the other. i'm sorry he is that angry. i don't quite understand why. what unions do is we try to look at what starbucks is trying to do and actually help people get a better wage, better benefits, better health care, retirement

security. paid sick leave, we try to make sure they can do better in their kids do better, that's what unions do. we work with civil rights groups we were to make the world better in the two things in life that help create empowerment and agency for folks is basically education and unions. that's what we try to do. there is a lot of this level of dissembling from people who have never been in unions. if you look at the data, when unions were at their highest point in the 50's and 60's and 70's, there were more people in the middle class. corporations try to undermine unions they been pretty

successful -- successful at it but there is a resurgence now. if the polling means anything, 65% of the public are favorable to unions. if they could have a union, they want it. i've been in a hundred schools and it's important to being with kids and be with educators right now in terms of how we help recover from this pandemic and how we help kids learn. what i am saying is people seeing with the power of unions bring to actually lift up real issues and make sure that people can have a better life. host: in new york, an educator, what rate? guest: caller: i'm a retired middle school teacher i didn't teach long because i realized i

needed to stay home and educate my kids. this woman deserves an academy award. the fact that she is a union leader, she advocates for teachers, not kids. she wants to make sure teachers work less and make more money. the school system is so broken, it's not even funny. the first thing teachers want to know is when i get tenure because then they can sit at the desk and play with their phone. where i live, the teachers are making $120, is everybody should watch the moe superman because this woman is not authentic. host: randy weingarten? guest: what a morning this

morning. let me just say that i actually run a charter school. i started the charter school in the rocks. you may have heard about it because one of her kids was walking home a couple of weeks ago and was killed. on the streets of new york stop it's one of the best schools in new york city. charter schools were actually started by al shanker, one of my predecessors. what we wanted to do is to get out of the bureaucracy. what's happening with charters now is many of the people who are doing charters are supporting them and don't want them to compete with public schools as opposed to wanting to lift up all schools. what we want is to lift up all schools. that's number one, number two is the nea puts out a survey every

year about teacher salaries. the average teacher salary in the country is about $41,000 which is about 20% less than what people could be making with the same skills in other jobs. you are right, those of us in new york really pushed when i was a teachers union president in new york city, we really pushed and tried to lift salaries up in six years, we were able to negotiate with michael bloomberg some salary increases so we list of salaries in new york, new york city even, about 43% stop if somebody worked for 20 some odd years, they would make over $100,000. you and i both know because we work in new york, we want teachers to actually live in the

places in which they work and be members of the community and to lift up wages everywhere. that's what we try to do. teaching is the most important profession of all. i hope you come back to it. you sound really passionate even though you disagree with everything i do. i talked to teachers all the time and they work really hard. they really care about kids. i'm sorry you have had some bad experiences but the lion share of teachers care and make a difference in the lives of kids. i hope we all honor them. host: bob in humboldt, texas, you are next. caller: thank you, i want to join in and the group that's telling you we don't agree with you. there is 50% of america that you do not represent. teachers unions and you in

particular support only one political side of the spectrum. your problems are manifest and identified by the call letters. it seems that teachers unions are only concerned with feathering the nest of the actual teachers. getting them more money or time or for whatever, not the students. the evidence of that is your strong push during the pandemic to keep students out of schools. a true teacher and most of the teachers that wanted to teach one of their students back in school. and states like florida where you denigrate the governor and all the people in florida that support him have shown that having the students back in school was the best thing. host: let's take your last point. guest: i agree that having

students back in school was the best thing. we tried to make it safe. the issue about teachers, teachers what -- what would kids need and you can't separate out what a teacher does and the kids need. in a classroom, what you are trying to do every single day is to lift up kids and help them learn. what a teachers union does is they actually support teachers and they support the students. what we are seeing around the country is people who see who teachers are are very supportive of them. teachers are trying to do everything they can to support kids during the pandemic and trying to accelerate learning and trying to meet the emotional

and social needs. this is the propaganda war we are up against all the time that something is said a lot and gets the bunker but it said over and over again on fox or other places and that's what you are hearing today. from april-2020 have been trying to figure out how to open schoolsow wmake them safe for everyone. you just heard one of the speakers earlier in the day or early in the hour talk about how one out of five teachers have covid. her daughter has long covid which is really hard. over the course of time, we have an obligation to make sure we keep our workplaces safe and obligation to lift up students. host: port charlotte, florida,

sue is a parent. caller: good morning. the problem is, we no longer trust our public school system. number one, in regards to the union, we saw the union members put on blue t-shirts and register only democrats to vote. we also saw teachers allow children to get out of school to go protest black lives matter. i hope there were permission slips on that one. if there is a gender issue in the classroom, you notify the parents. what i need to know from you is my question, where do we send curriculum requests?

you have to have those in before you can opt out of anything your teachers want to sell our children. host: randy weingarten? guest: i'm not quite sure i understand the question. every school system is different. when i was a teacher, my first day of teaching, i would do a contract with my kids and we would talk about what the curriculum was and is for the year or for the semester. we taught semester by semester. i would ask them to talk to their parents and i would ask them to sign the contract. i try to actually make sure that what i was going to teach that semester kids knew, parents new and it was pretty transparent because i needed parents help. i needed parents to help support

our kids when we were debating. i think every single school system has some way of making sure that parents know whether curriculum is because that's wharton's and that parents are our partners. this is about teaching kids. it's about kids being critical thinkers and it's about making sure kids have the freedom to learn and that they have the freedom to think. i'm not sure, i'm sure there are some places where there is a different protocol for what to do but curriculum in k-12 is basically set by the state. then we have some very limited discretion about what we do in terms of how to teach it. host: to her point about

politics, is it a mistake or teachers and the unions to be involved in politics and political races around election time? guest: in a democracy, everyone should be involved in politics and political races and everyone should have a right of free association. you see right now what politicians are doing to try to curb the teaching of honest history, to try to -- to try to limit -- this is not new for education, you can go back to the scopes trial and the politics of teaching science and things like that. i would argue whatever people are whether they are democrats

or republicans are independent, for democracy to work, everyone has to be involved. host: in silver spring, what do you teach? caller: i am a retired teacher 40 years and i'm still in the education business since i retired. i want to address these critics that are calling in. host: mute your television real quick and then we will listen through your phone. caller: ok, just a second. what i want to say is the same people that are calling in need to look back in their past and see who taught them reading, writing and math. they are so highly critical of teachers but they really don't know what teachers are doing. a teacher is a counselor, a teacher is a social worker, a teacher is an advocate for their students. these critics need to visit the schools and see for themselves how hard teachers are working.

the union has been an advocate for teachers for many years. i feel very resentful for people to come on and criticized unions that have been helping and supporting teachers for decades. that's all i have to say. host: randy weingarten? guest: amen. host: ohio -- caller: thank you for taking my call. as i've said here and listening, many people stole my thunder concerning her position and whether she is representing the union first or representing the children first. obviously, is representing the union first which is fine, that's what she does. i will ask this question and i think i know what the answer will be. i believe that the states should take control of the education and that the money should follow the children.

in the federal department of education is so politicized as the unions are politicized as she has stated that they hinder the performance of teaching the kids properly. if the union was concerned about the better education of children, they would devote more of their money to making sure that children grow up and up proper household with two parents that are the base and foundation for quality education for the kids in the future. host: we are running out of time but the idea that the money comes from the states and the policy comes from the states and the money follows that? guest: the states to actually control education, all 50 of them. education is not in the federal constitution. there is essentially a per child

per capita that happens in terms of this. the state education is funded through basically property taxes and state funds in about 10% of it is funded by the federal government through these civil rights act like title i. the federal government's department of education is a civil rights agency. states to actually fund it. they basically say what kids need and they raise property taxes on that behalf. it's not a great way of funding. it should be dishes should be funded by the state itself instead of by property taxes. they basically control it so i'm not sure i understand the question. host: randy weingarten, if you

want to learn more about the organization, you can follow on twitter at aft union. >> energy secretary-general i ever granholm took questions from lawmakers on high oil and gas prices during a hearing on president biden's 2023 budget request. watch tonight at 9:30 eastern on c-span. online at c-span.org. or full coverage on c-span now, our free video app. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more. including comcast. >> are you thinking this is just a community center? no. it's way more than that >> comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create wi-fi enabled places so families can get the tools they need. >> comcast supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers. giving you a front row seat to

democracy. >> on saturday, the daily show host trevor noah headlines the first white house correspondents association dinner since 2019. president biden is also expected to attend. making this the first time since 2016 that a sitting president has made an appearance. our television coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span. we'll have sights and sounds from inside the ballroom and highlights from past dinners ahead of the speaking program. coverage on c-span.org and the c-span now video app begins live at 6 p.m. eastern where you can watch celebrities, journalist, and other guests walk the red carpet as they arrive for the dinner. the white house correspondents association dinner live saturday on c-span. c-span radio. c-span.org. and on the c-span now video app.

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