Randi Weingarten, the nation’s most powerful teachers union president, has a message: She wants to get students back in the nation’s classrooms.
She spends 15 hours per day on the phone, she says – with local labor leaders, mayors, the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – trying to figure out how to reopen the three-quarters of school systems that remain fully or partially shuttered.
But with the pandemic approaching its first anniversary, and a new president – a union ally – vowing to reopen elementary and middle schools within his first 100 days, she faces a difficult truth: In the liberal cities and suburbs where schools are most likely to remain closed, teachers unions are the most powerful forces saying no, not yet.
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