The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held a recent hearing to discuss and investigate the consequences of Covid-19 school closures.
Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) opened the hearing and discussed the role the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a teacher's union, played in developing and influencing the Centers for Disease Controlโs (CDC) โscience-basedโ school reopening guidance.
Wenstrup highlighted the scientific support for safely reopening schools and laid out the inaccurate recommendations promoted by the union.
You can watch the hearing at the link below.
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Chairman @RepBradWenstrup opens today's hearing with a revealing question for @RWeingarten:
Was @AFTUnion's role in editing CDC school reopening guidance more political than scientific?
American students and families deserve an answer! pic.twitter.com/N6DLLTpq0S
โ Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) April 26, 2023
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Below are Select Subcommittee Chairman Wenstrupโs remarks as prepared for delivery.
This is our second hearing regarding pandemic-era school closures. We are investigating the decision-making process behind school closures, and the effects it had, so that we can do better in the future. Inherently, part of that investigation is evaluating if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention followed science as they knew it, or learned it, or merely accepted outside guidance regardless of available data, during its guidance drafting and publication process.
That is part of the reason we are here today โ to determine to what extent the opinions and suggested guidelines offered by the American Federation of Teachers during the CDC guidance process were accepted and why they were accepted. Americans are curious to know if the AFT access was in line with CDC past practice, and if their influence had a positive or detrimental impact on Americaโs children.
While it is reasonable for the CDC to seek outside opinions, were some opinions accepted and others not considered? And why or why not?ย
To be clear, we are not here to attack teachers, the teaching profession, or suggest pandemic-era teaching was easy โ because it was not.ย We are here to conduct an after-action report, establish lessons learned, so we can better protect our children in the future, and protect our childrenโs futures.ย
During this process, honesty is non-negotiable, and the facts should be facts, not political statements. Beginning in March 2020, in response to Covid-19, schools around the world began to close. Doctors and scientists didnโt know a lot about the novel virus and decisions were made based on whatever facts were known at the time to best save lives.
However, it became clear, in fact essential, long before the beginning of the fall 2020 semester, that schools needed to be, and safely could be, open for in-person instruction. My children have benefitted greatly in every way โ academically, physically, and mentally โ from their schools being open since the fall of 2020. And when the facts become clear, our decisions must change with them. It was important for students. It was important for parents. And it was important for teachers.ย
Further, the facts and science supported the ability to safely reopen. While children could get and transmit Covid-19, it was rare. While children could die from Covid-19, that risk has been estimated as one in a million โ some estimates stated that children actually became ten times as likely to die by suicide โ a crisis exacerbated by school closures.ย ย And with a wide range of mitigation strategies, Covid-19 transmission in a school setting was low.ย
Schools could have and should have reopened.ย The baseline question should have been โ "schools need to be open; are we doing everything we can to make that happen?โย Unfortunately, many schools chose not to re-open, despite the science supporting safe in-person school practices.ย
This all came to a head in February 2021 when the Biden Administration and the CDC issued its first school reopening guidance โ entitled the โOperational Strategy for K-12 Schools Through Phased Prevention.โย
According to reports, when this guidance was issued, its recommendations would keep 90 percent of schools, including in almost all of the 50 largest counties in the country, from fully reopening.ย Why? Primarily because of three recommendations:ย The use of community spread to determine reopening;ย ย A requirement for routine screening testing; andย Six feet of distancing instead of three feet.ย ย None based in sound science at the time, yet all directly supported by the AFT.ย Community spread does not reflect school spread.
Data showed that it appeared safer to be in school than in the community.ย So, if the goal is to get kids in school, and it is essential, then why was the recommendation to follow the community spread data and not the in school spread data?ย
The AFT is, of course, allowed to have an opinion. But opinions should fully explain how the opinion was reached. This is how science works and how science is debated.ย
In an e-mail on February 11, 2020, to Director Walensky from AFT staff, AFT takes issue with the current CDC language that stated, โAt any level of community transmission, all schools can provide in-person instruction.โ To weaken that statement, AFT proposed adding โIn the event high-community transmission, results from a new variant of [Covid-19], a new update of these guidelines may be necessary.โ The CDC obliged and added that edit to the final guidance.ย
Why not โin the event of a high in person school transmissionโ rather than community transmission.ย In an e-mail to you from AFT staff preparing you for a February 1, 2020, phone call with the CDC โ AFT staff wrote that the CDC โshould support the adoption of screening testing.โย In notes provided to you before that same February 1, 2020 call with the CDC โ AFT staff wrote, โEmphasize 6 feet of distancing. The guidance is fairly good on 6 feet or more of distance. It could be made stronger by rebutting directly school systems that are using lower standards to keep students in school.โย
Let me say that again โ AFT objected to schools using less than 6 feet of social distancing so that kids could return to school.ย AFTโs support for these unscientific mitigation policies calls into question why it was offering scientific advice to the CDC in the first place, the scientific expertise of the AFT, and the high level of access and influence the AFT was provided by the CDC.ย
In your letter to this Subcommittee on April 19, your lawyers wrote:ย โReleasing guidance on how to safely reopen schools without attempting to address the concerns of these educators would not only be irresponsible but also futileโย Your lawyers continue:ย โIn short, the failure to consult would have been foolish and self-defeatingโย
To me, these statements sound like a form of intimidation.ย Is this more political than scientific.ย Of course, in the letter and prepared statement you submitted today you mention former-President Trump 12 times. As best that I can tell, President Trump had nothing to do with crafting AFT guideline recommendations.ย
The purpose of this committee is to examine the procedures followed, the decisions made and why, what motivated decisions, and what worked and didnโt work.ย Then, ultimately, I would hope that we can produce a product that will guide future generations, so that we may have the ability to predict the next pandemic, prepare for it, protect us from it, and maybe even prevent it.ย
And in this case, maybe even be able to successfully maximize our childrenโs education, especially in-person. Not just for some of our children, but rather all of our children.ย
I pray that todayโs hearing will produce some of the necessary facts and evidence that this Subcommittee may utilize going forward in order to achieve our altruistic goals.ย
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Every elected government official should be required to write a thesis on altruism prior to assuming office. As the committee moves forward in trying to answer questions about the negative affects of teacher's unions involved in policy making related to covid, two people should be considered to testify about the general failures of public education, and the failures of the government response to covid. Rebecca Friedrichs and Kristi Noem have experience and knowledge in the areas in question, and their altruistic beliefs and practices are beyond reproach. The people are demanding a decentralization of unions and teachers, with the money and power being returned to the States. The reluctance by Washington DC Power Brokers and union thugs is not surprising, their ship is taking on water, and the rudder is old and weak.
very well said, TQ
These remarks are startling, in their indictment of the AFT and in their conveyance of just how out-of-touch with common sense and science were the recommendations made by the AFT to the CDC. That said, more worrying is this. How the absolute flaming hell is the AFT qualified to advise the CDC on anything? Should not the CDC be advising the AFT? That is, unless this was more about politics than science. (Of course, we all know that it was, is, and likely will continue to be exactly that.) The Great Covid Dumpster Fire: the tail wagging the dog for political gain, ad infinitum.