Powerful socialist teachers union influenced CDC on school reopenings, emails show

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://nypost.com/2021/05/01/teachers-union-collaborated-with-cdc-on-
school-reopening-emails/

The American Federation of Teachers lobbied the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention on, and even suggested language for, the federal
agency’s school-reopening guidance released in February.

The powerful teachers union’s full-court press preceded the federal agency
putting the brakes on a full re-opening of in-person classrooms, emails
between top CDC, AFT and White House officials show.

The emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by
the conservative watchdog group Americans for Public Trust and provided to
The Post.

The documents show a flurry of activity between CDC Director Dr. Rochelle
Walensky, her top advisors and union officials — with Biden brass being
looped in at the White House — in the days before the highly-anticipated
Feb. 12 announcement on school-reopening guidelines.

“Thank you again for Friday’s rich discussion about forthcoming CDC
guidance and for your openness to the suggestions made by our president,
Randi Weingarten, and the AFT,” wrote AFT senior director for health
issues Kelly Trautner in a Feb 1 email — which described the union as the
CDC’s “thought partner.”

“We were able to review a copy of the draft guidance document over the
weekend and were able to provide some initial feedback to several staff
this morning about possible ways to strengthen the document,” Trautner
continued. “… We believe our experiences on the ground can inform and
enrich thinking around what is practicable and prudent in future guidance
documents.”

Walensky wasn’t on the Feb 1 email, but it was forwarded to her by Carole
Johnson, the White House coronavirus testing coordinator. Many emails
included Will McIntee, an associate director of public engagement at The
White House.

“We are immensely grateful for your genuine desire to earn our confidence
and your committment to partnership,” Trautner said in another email to
Walensky on Feb 3.

Emails show a call between Walensky and Weingarten — the former boss of
New York City’s United Federation of Teachers — was arranged for Feb 7.

The lobbying paid off. In at least two instances, language “suggestions”
offered by the union were adopted nearly verbatim into the final text of
the CDC document.

With the CDC preparing to write that schools could provide in-person
instruction regardless of community spread of the virus, Trautner argued
for the inclusion of a line reading “In the event of high community-
transmission results from a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, a new update of
these guidelines may be necessary.” That language appeared on page 22 of
the final CDC guidance.

The AFT also demanded special remote work concessions for teachers “who
have documented high-risk conditions or who are at increased risk for …
COVID-19,” and that similar arrangements should extend to “staff who have
a household member” with similar risks. A lengthy provision for that made
it into the text of the final guidance.

The final CDC guidance won high praise from the AFT. “Today, the CDC met
fear of the pandemic with facts and evidence,” the union said in a Feb 12
press release.

Many others, however, were puzzled and angered by what they saw as the CDC
willfully ignoring the science and slow-walking a return to in-person
learning even as mounting evidence showed schools were not a primary
source of coronavirus infections as long as they followed mitigation
strategies.

In a widely viewed CNN interview on Feb 14, anchor Jake Tapper grilled
Walensky and demanded to know why the guidelines would allow schools in
areas with high coronavirus community spread — know as “red zones” — to
opt out of in-person reopening, noting that 99% of US kids fell within
those areas, according to a CNN analysis.

“Can you point to any scientific reason for students in the United States
not to return to in person classes tomorrow?” Tapper demanded several
times.

“If you’re in middle school or high school we would advocate for virtual
learning for that group … We really don’t want to bring community disease
into the classroom,” Walensky replied, repeatedly refusing to offer a
scientific explanation for the reopening avoidance. “We also know that
mask breaching is among the reasons that we have transmission within
schools when it happens. Somewhere around 60% of students are reliably
masking. That has to be universal. So we have work to do.”

Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of
California, San Francisco who has written extensively on coronavirus,
called the CDC-AFT emails “very, very troubling,”

“What seems strange to me here is there would be this very intimate back
and forth including phone calls where this political group gets to help
formulate scientific guidance for our major public health organization in
the United State,” Gandhi told The Post. “This is not how science-based
guidelines should work or be put together.”

The close communication between the union and the feds came despite
repeated assurances from CDC and Biden officials that the medical
guidelines would “follow the science” and be free of political
interference.

“I can assure you that this is free from political meddling,” Walensky
said when the guidance was released.

The AFT and its affiliates have long been one of the most reliable and
deep pocketed donor constituencies of the Democratic party, dropping
almost $20 million to elect party members during the 2020 election cycle,
according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The union defended its role in shaping federal COVID policy.

“The AFT represents 1.7 million educators, healthcare professionals and
public employees who spent the last 14 months serving on the front lines
of the COVID-19 pandemic. So naturally, we have been in regular touch with
the agencies setting policy that affect their work and lives, including
the CDC,” said AFT spokeswoman Oriana Korin, adding the union also worked
closely with the Trump administration.

The CDC also insisted such conversations are routine.

“As part of long-standing best practices, CDC has traditionally engaged
with organizations and groups that are impacted by guidance and
recommendations issued by the agency. We do so to ensure our
recommendations are feasible to implement and they adequately address the
safety and wellbeing of individuals the guidance is aimed to protect.
These informative and helpful interactions often result in beneficial
feedback that we consider in our final revisions to ensure clarity and
usability,” Jason McDonald, a spokesman for Dr. Walensky, told The Post.

McDonald said the agency had worked with a number of other non-
governmental parties that would be affected by the guidance and provided
them draft copies — including the National Education Association, National
Association of School Nurses and National Association of State Boards of
Education.



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