#Randi Weingarten keeps digging a deeper hole

“Teachers are tired; they are exhausted. We have to find a way to repair and nourish them as well as families in terms of attracting and retaining our teaching force,” American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten whined Friday. We guess she’s trying the “pity us” card after the “naked lies” one fell flat.

Just last month, the union was still publicly lobbying hard to put the brakes on getting kids back in classrooms full-time. Heck, Weingarten infamously used her White House pull to force the Centers for Disease Control to adopt verbatim the AFT’s wildly overcautious language on safely reopening schools.

Among her absurd excuses for why so many public schools failed to follow private and parochial schools in reopening long ago, she actually insisted that (as Reason’s Matt Welch notes) government-run schools uniquely lack enough soap and hot water to keep everyone safe.

Parents fed up with classroom closures and “Zoom” school responded rapidly on social media to Weingarten’s absurdities. “My kids are getting 2 hours twice a week in person,” wrote one father about the short teaching periods offered. “When it was Zoom it was 2 hours 4 days a week. They must be so exhausted. I hope the teachers are ok,” he snarked.

Another tweet: “Medical workers and grocery store workers need to be nourished and repaired too. You. Aren’t. Special.”

On MSNBC later Friday, Weingarten offered another red herring, fretting that largely unvaccinated children pose a disease risk. All the science says they don’t.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday that city schools will reopen full-time, with no remote-learning option but masks required for all — exactly what Weingarten has most recently been calling for, even though kids under 12 simply aren’t COVID spreaders, and with infection rates plummeting, it’s likely that mask mandates will look absurd by September.

Nor does either leader have any good explanation for why city schools aren’t all open now.

Too many of Weingarten’s members just don’t want to return to full-time, in-person teaching. But de Blasio is talking tough here, saying teachers will no longer receive blanket medical exemptions to remain at home. With a few rare exceptions, they should all just get jabbed.

It’s been a rough 15 months for everyone. If teachers’ unions don’t want to earn even more contempt from the furious public, they need to quit the special pleading and focus (for once) on the children’s needs. Demanding pity after their disgraceful performance of the last year is only digging an even deeper hole.