The American Federation of Teachers is planning a national campaign against disinvestment in public education, AFT President Randi Weingarten told the St. Petersburg Times this weekend. Weingarten, also president of New York’s United Federation of Teachers, was in Florida to speak at the Florida Education Association’s annual assembly.
From the interview:
Maybe it’s just because I come from New York City, and I grew up when there was this fiscal crisis, and you had a credit crisis. … So you had these immediate cuts. It took 30 years for that school system to recover. … How many generations of kids did we lose? So, cutting your way through this is saying to kids, ‘You don’t count.’ That’s what it’s saying. It’s saying that we can’t find a way, the adults can’t find a way in this nation, to immunize kids from the devastation and to invest in them with the same importance as it was a year ago or two years ago.
An AFT campaign is only in its “very early stages,” according to AFT spokeswoman Celia Lose, who noted that the union is “already seeing some states cut back” on school spending.
(Via Edwize)