Teachers union head says Donald Trump would decimate public education

The 2016 presidential race has been devoid of substantive public policy on a lot of issues, none more so than regarding public education. That’s not the fault of Hillary Clinton, insists one of her top surrogates, Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers.

“I think Hillary has tried to raise the issue of education several times in the last debate,” Weingarten told FloridaPolitics.com early Sunday morning. “She talked about the Trump effect during the second debate. I think that the questions haven’t been asked in the debates, and the three or four speeches she’s given on it haven’t been covered.”

During the second debate, Clinton did talk about the effect that some of Donald Trump’s rhetoric on kids, saying, “Children listen to what is being said. And there’s a lot of fear. In fact, teachers and parents are calling it the Trump effect. Bullying is up. A lot of people are feeling uneasy. A lot of kids are expressing their concerns.”

Weingarten concurs.

“We’ve seen situations where kids come from school and say, ‘I’m really scared they’re going to deport my mother or my father, or kids on a playground saying, ‘Build a wall,’ or, ‘you’re going back to Mexico,'” she said. “It is just shocking the way in which his hate, his spewing of hate and insults have now unleashed it in children.”

Weingarten was in the Tampa Bay area for three separate events Sunday to campaign for Clinton. Her American Federation of Teachers was the first national labor union to make a presidential endorsement in the 2016 cycle this past summer.

Weingarten has been critical of Trump’s $20 billion voucher proposal, which would use federal funds to create state-run block grants allowing students to enroll in private and charter schools. Weingarten said it will take away federal funds for low-income students, in particular, and she says it will eviscerate the public school system in America.

“It’s simply a transfer of money that goes to poor kids that are taught in a public system to unregulated, unaccountable private schools, and so call it what it is,” she said dramatically. “The decimation of public education.”

Weingarten is a New York City native who began working for the United Federation of Teachers 30 years ago. She questions Trump’s sincerity when it comes to wanting to improve public education.

“Donald Trump  has never shown any connection to public schools that I have seen,” she said. “I worked in New York City for many years. I was the president of the teachers union for 12 years, I worked for the UFT for about 20 years, I never ever, ever saw Donald Trump at any civic activity connected to children, and I was at many events, and so there’s no care about kids, and you can see that from both the exploitation at Trump University and the fighting off of the fraud cases now, and just the total morally bankrupt proposal to take $20 billion that goes to poor kids and special needs kids.”