>> c-span is your unfiltered view of government we are funded by these television companies and more including comcast. >> do think this is just a community center? it is way more than that. comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create wi-fi enabled places so students from low income families can get the tools to be ready for anything. >> comcast support c-span is a public service along with these television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. 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 >> c-span's washington journal, every day we are taking your

calls alive, on the air on the news of the day. we will discuss policy issues that impact you. coming up on saturday morning, we discussed elon musk and the future of twitter. what is acquisition means for the company and larger issues of free speech. then it is our cram for the exam special, where teachers discuss the upcoming exams placement u.s. government exam. watch washington journal, live at 7:00 eastern, on c-span or on c-span now. our free mobile app. join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages and tweets. c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including cox. >> coxes committed to providing eligible families access to affordable internet, through the

connect to compete program. bridging the digital divide one connective and engaged student at a time. cox, bringing us closer. >> coxes support c-span as the public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> now energy secretary jennifer granholm on the cost of oil and gas prices, she discusses noble energy resources, the code-5 gas and electric vehicles. this subcommittee hearing runs three and a half hours.