American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten claimed Friday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that people are “getting really angry” at the education policies of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
Anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “I want to come back to the other policy which is I think the most unpopular of all in sort of this new mom’s group and the polling that’s out is the book bans.”
Weingarten said, “Two things are unpopular, the book bans and also why you would get rid of social emotional learning when we have a mental health crisis? We have to make sure that kids feel okay.”
She continued, “If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable. But the book bans, what’s happening is that parents are saying, and Michael got it right that 11 parents in Florida had been responsible for 60% of the book bans. And it was only when the Amanda Gorman ban — and that person didn’t even read it and had ‘Elders of Zion’ on her Facebook page. So the craziness here is people are starting to feel the depravation and they’re getting really angry. Just like on Dobbs there’s a sense you’re taking something away from my child because of what you’re doing. This why are you doing this? Why are you taking this away from my child? Why don’t you let my child and her teacher decide what is right? And the other thing I’ll say is there are processes to figure out curriculum. We don’t get it right all the time. But we use those processes that the school boards have. That’s why we have school boards that are voted on by parents.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
