Class in Session- Schools, not Wargrounds, with Randi Weingarten

This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.

Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,

educated educators talking education.

Yes, it is. It's Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk,

educated educators talking education classes in session.

I'm going to do this quickly, Johnny, how you doing?

Awesome. Glad to hear it. Jess, how you doing?

Fantastic. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome to hear it.

Hey, public education is under attack from ice raids and schools to vouchersheans

and now the push to funnel public dollars into religious charter schools.

But if there's one person who's never backed down from a fight for educators,

students and democracy itself, it's Randy Winegarden.

Today she joins Busted Pencils to break down.

Let's at stake in how we fight back because when public schools are on the

line, silence is not an option. Randy, how are you?

You know, I've had better years.

2025 started with an amazing signing of a self-security fairness by Joe Biden

before he left the presidency that helped literally three to four million people.

But since January 20th, we've been, it's been a lot of chaos.

There's been a lot of confusion. There's been a lot of cruelty.

But the one thing there hasn't been is the price of eggs hasn't gone down.

The price of gas hasn't gone down and it feels like with all these tariffs,

the thing that most working people voted for in terms of voting for Donald Trump

about really wanted to have a better life seems like the prices haven't gone down.

And there's a lot more fear certainly in schools and in communities than we have beforehand.

So I'm not, I'm not sure what people thought they were voting for.

But this is, there's a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety right now in America.

There's so much to that we can read out.

We could talk about that, the price of eggs and all of that.

But as you point out to the fear, just thinking about that, you know,

we, we saw your letter to President Trump, particularly dealing with the

ICE potential raids and schools and kids, you know, you're out there.

I mean, there's, there's a real fear you're, you're hearing.

Yes.

There's a, there's a real.

So, you know, let, let me say this.

Our immigration system is broken.

Our healthcare system is broken.

These things need to get fixed.

What government should be doing is fixing it.

What government needs to do is improving public education, not defunding it,

not undermining it, but fixing it.

That's what the American people literally want from, you know,

their public officials.

But when it comes to schools,

the number one thing we need to do in schools is we need to create a safe

and welcoming environment for the students, the young adults,

the kids, the little kids that come into our classrooms and our schools.

The second thing that we need to do is create opportunity.

And that means making schools more relevant, doing things like project-based learning.

We need to do that because the schools, the purpose of schools is to help

kids have the skills and knowledge they need to navigate their lives and navigate this very diverse and complicated world.

So, safe and welcoming environment and the skills they need to create opportunity for all.

That's what schools are supposed to be.

That is not political.

That is what schools were supposed to be 100 years ago.

That's what schools are supposed to be right now.

So, for a long time, Republican and Democratic administrations,

even when they had, you know, immigration services, you know,

basically, you know, go out there and arrest the bad guys.

No one ever thought that they should go into schools or hospitals or churches.

Schools hospitals and churches were always safe ground.

They were just not, don't, don't do that.

And so, when President Trump lifted the order, the guideline that said,

schools and hospitals and churches are now not off limits.

They're no longer sensitive locations.

Ice can go in there and arrest people, take kids out.

It created all sorts of fear throughout the United States for a couple of reasons.

Number one, both for immigrant and non-immigrant families.

Could you imagine your children or grandchildren seeing their best friend taken out of a classroom

by a burly guy with a gun or taken out of a school or seeing those videos?

That's going to be trauma that never, ever goes away.

Why would anybody want to do that?

Number two, for teachers, for principals.

We are in Locust Parentes.

We have an obligation to keep kids safe during the school day

while we have responsibility for them.

How do we just give somebody over to somebody with a gun,

some burly guy with a gun?

How do we do that?

How do we break that responsibility we have to parents and to families?

It puts us in an untenable situation.

You scare the bejesus out of us versus our responsibilities to parents and to our communities.

That's why this whole thing is crazy because schools are supposed to be safe and welcoming.

The position we've taken, which is where teachers across America are,

we protect our children, period, which means that nobody has given anybody to ice

unless there is a judicial ward.

That's the advice we have put out.

That's what we did on a webinar this week.

That's the advice we're saying publicly and as clear and concise away.

And I begged President Trump in that letter, don't do this.

Don't make it harder on parents.

People are already have a lot of anxiety.

Don't do this to parents or kids.

Put the order back that makes schools and hospitals and churches sensitive locations.

And if you don't, we're going to protect our kids.

And we're going to require there be a judicial warrant because how do we?

You're undermining our responsibility to children.

If we did anything other than that.

Johnny.

Oh, no, I mean, I appreciate this time, Randy and our listeners, especially here in this kind of update,

you know, where things are and how important it is to just amplify that teachers are.

You know, like we are assuming responsibility for children's safety in these.

These policies, you know, they, they really threaten that they threaten that our schools are safe places for all the children in our community.

And that should be a baseline.

Yes. And, and frankly, what people don't maybe not know is every child in America has the right to go to school.

It's a case called Pliler versus dough that was that was decided long ago.

And I know that there are some extremists that want to change that too.

But that's our responsibility.

We have to maintain our responsibility, our moral and our legal responsibility to children in America.

That's who teachers are.

Why would anyone in public office want to put us at dissonance with that?

Why?

The point that out to us, it's, it's the law, you know, to protect the children as you point out there, you know, it was every, every child, every child regardless of status in America has that right.

It's been decided it's law.

I can just hear other people going like you just said, well, I don't like that law.

You know, and potentially in times past, the law kind of, we had a little bit of sense to saying the law would at least stop those things.

But today, after what we saw with the January 6th pardons and stuff, I just get this feeling of people going, well, it's not the law I like.

And so I don't get, I don't have to follow it.

We are in America, a nation of law under our Constitution.

We fought a revolution to be free.

Freedom requires us to have responsibility to each other.

And that's what we did when we committed to a Constitution that has a rule of law.

And so somebody wants to change that law, go change it.

But what I would actually ask our listeners to do, I don't care if you have a Republican Congressperson, a Democratic Congressperson, an independent Congressperson.

Don't make schools a warground schools are for children.

We educate all kids and we protect all kids.

Don't make us into a battleground and tell our representatives to stop it.

The representative Espayat is introducing a bill to say, let's make sure that schools and hospitals and churches are sensitive locations.

Don't make us the warground.

And I would ask us to ask everybody in America, go to your legislature, particularly if you're a Republican, go tell them not to make schools a warground.

This is the trauma that will happen to children.

It's something that we, it's foreseeable and we know has stopped it.

Let's not have schools as a warground to stop no ice in schools.

We don't want that.

We can't have that. We have to protect our kids.

How do we, though, too? I mean, because we really want teachers to hear this message to uplift them and again point out, too, as you said, responsibility.

This is our job. There's, you know, we're following the law.

But the constant chaos that gets thrown their way, you know, we also have the executive order.

Come on again, reestablishing the 1776 commission to, you know, enforce patriotic teaching and, and to enforce the potential that if somebody's not teaching that that we've also installed an incentive to turn in our, you know, our fellow teachers and things like that.

How do we encourage people?

So look, all of this, you can see I'm holding my head because

first of they can't decide.

Do they want to have a department of education? Do they not want to have a department of education?

Do they want to, you know, that right now, you know, there's, you know, the state's control education.

The department of education doesn't do any curriculum. So then by executive order, imposing a new curriculum is contrary to the states having control of curriculum.

So I'm not quite sure which way they want to go, but what it does lead to is this.

We do need a federal role in education, because the states have been doing this for years, like take career and check end.

We need, we need schools, high schools, not just to be college prep. We need high schools to be, you know, a way for kids to make decisions about which route they want to go.

And, and I don't want to hear anymore. Well, if somebody shouldn't go to call it doesn't want to go to college is not, you know, is college is not amenable to them, then they can do that.

No, this is let kids decide pathways they want.

Let's make sure our young boys feel really confident and equipped and have project based instruction and have really cool things to do in school so that when they get up in the morning, they say, yeah, I want to do that cyber security.

I want to do that welding. Let's make that as cool as my AP, you know, history course was this is really important to do and you need some federal intervention to actually make this stuff cool and make this a priority.

So there's lots of reasons for federal Department of Education. That's why we have title one in terms of how we help poor kids. That's why we have, you know, IDA, how we help kids with disabilities, you need that.

But the stuff, the culture wars, the stuff about ice, all it's doing is making it's harder for teachers to create a welcoming and safe environment for kids and for them to have an environment that is nurturing for them to be able to seize the opportunity to which they are entitled.

And so that's why I'm trying to get back to first principles and the teachers, the teachers of America are awesome. And, you know, that's what they're trying to do even with all of us is somebody going to find, you know, somebody who is not awesome, of course they will.

But by and large, the teachers in America really want to just help nurture kids and really want to help kids life.

Yeah, that's Randy, why garden sheet is the president of T is busting pencils with us. I know you're on a tight timeline here, Randy, just if you can give us one more comment, the one other thing that's happening that you that AFT is looking at the Supreme Court potential ruling on the religious charter school issue thoughts.

So, you know, this feels very personal to me because I am, if you don't know this already, I'm married to a rabbi. I'm a pretty, I'm not a religious Jew, but I'm a pretty observant Jew and I really believe in the practice of religion.

And one of the things that I'm most proud of about our Constitution going back to our founders is that the First Amendment basically made clear both no establishment of religion by the state and in order to have the free exercise.

And in America, because we had both of those prongs, we actually had more religious goers, diverse religious goers than in many of the countries that have a state sponsored religion.

So, why would you change that and why would you do it outside of the Constitution and just so you want to get some bucks to religious organizations.

Both those things go hand in hand. You can't have free exercise of religion. If the state is actually putting its hand on the scale or its finger on the scale of religion, we need to have to have free exercise, we need there to be a separation.

This school violates that. It's basically a religious school and it's and and so good. Have a religious school. Have parents send their kids to a religious school.

You know, fundraise for the religious school. Don't take public dollars for it. Don't don't merge these two things.

You have got some important work to do. So, we really, really appreciate you stopping by and busting pencils with us. And so, Randy, thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you, both of you. I really appreciate. I love busted pencils. I appreciate what you're doing and really truly all this work that we're doing in terms of civic media and making sure a message is out there and people can hear it. That's what you're doing. So, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you. Thanks, Randy. And now for your moment of sin.

Control in modern times requires more than force more than law. It requires that a population whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion.

We thought that all is right. All as it is.

Hey, make sure you hang out and join us again Friday, face us and free throws, free throws and face us and Saturday, Tim and Johnny. Hey, if you love this interview with Randy Wine Garden, we're going to break it down big time Saturday, three o'clock.

Make sure you check us out across all civic media stations, apps, all of those things. And you know what everybody keep busting pencils.

We'll be there.