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Randi Weingarten keeps many little presents people have given her over the years scattered around her office, including a small statue of four posed monkeys (Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Say No Evil, and Do No Evil) and a magic wand that lights up when waved. She has built up many presents and clippings and blow-ups of articles in her office over her last 10 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).There are two battles ahead as she goes into the summer: one against the proposed school budget cuts of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, which she expects to be fierce, and one for the presidency of her national union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which she expects to be uncontested.
Weingarten recently took some time to reflect on the role of the anti-budget cut “Keep the Promises” coalition, what the current situation leads her to believe about renewing mayoral control of city public schools and the secrets only her dog knows about the future of the UFT leadership.
What follows is an edited transcript.
City Hall: You and the “Keep the Promises” coalition have been engaged in a fight against school budget cuts. Where do you see that headed for its final result?
Randi Weingarten: It's always been that there’s somebody at the Board of Education, whether it was the chancellor or the board president, who would, regardless of where the rest of the city was, someone's out there saying, “I don't care what the other issues are, someone has to champion children.” Where is that person? So what has happened, instead, is that this coalition has become it. This coalition has become the champion of kids. Of course, every single day, some editorial will be in some newspaper about how I really have another agenda. What’s my other agenda? I’m about to be the AFT president. It would be nice to be doing a lot of focus on that. The principals union and the teachers union, we all have contracts. What's the other agenda other than just trying to get decent enough budgets so we can actually do the work that the adults in schools have to do with kids. First issue is where's the champion? Where's the person that is hired to be the champion for kids? In the absence of that, what mayoral control has done is that it has actually silenced any independence from City Hall in terms of that championing when things are tough. So, all of a sudden, for the first time, things are tough. There's a potential conflict between City Hall and the DoE. Where's the champion? Obviously the connection between the mayor and the chancellor thwarts the chancellor from being the champion.
Number two, what we're seeing in the last few days is that there’s no transparency. If you ask anybody who's been involved in this battle, what's the real cut to schools? What number? Forget for a second about keeping the promises. What actual dollar amount would it take to immunize classrooms in schools from budget cuts, and the fact that with this basic unprecedented communication between the DoE and the mayor of the City of New York that nobody can know that number, that that number is unknowable says that there is a lot wrong with the checks and balances or transparency.
CH: Chancellor Klein proposed using some of the CFE money to lessen the budget cuts. What do you think of that?
RW: I think that proposal was one of the most cynical things I have seen the chancellor do ever. If you look at their rhetoric from last year, what they did was they changed their rhetoric 180 degrees from the supposed point of the whole restructuring of the entire financial situation. What they did last year and I thought wrongly, and I think will hurt the schools in the long term, was they fundamentally reshaped their funding formula so that they could shift resources to the very same schools that CFE was intended to be about. So, here you have a 13-year-old state case where we actually have layered state funding for the kids that need it most. Instead of respecting that what they do instead is take their own. They basically create this distraction and this divide-and-conquer strategy to just distract people from their own budget cut.
CH: Does this amount to an argument against renewing mayoral control?
RW: All of it says that there needs to be more checks and balances. A lot of it says that as people used say about Giuliani, “We're not going to give Giuliani mayoral control because he's not going to be judicious enough as a steward.” But what we're seeing is that the Klein-Bloomberg administration in making this argument and pitting schools against schools as an argument for not funding the schools. That's being demagogic. That's not being judicious. That's not being a wise steward of the public school system. So, it does call for a lot more checks and balances.
CH: How will you position yourself as the mayoral control renewal talks begin?
RW: I position myself as always asking, “What should school governance look like?” I'm constantly thinking about what should school governance look like. I think about school governance as not as end towards itself but a means towards an end. The issue is about instruction. Have you heard in the last two years, three years, four years, does anybody talk about instruction anymore? A school system should be talking about instruction. It shouldn't just be talking about accountability. Accountability is an important piece to see if we are doing our job. It's not a be-all and an end-all. Instruction is the be-all and the end-all. Teaching and learning is the be-all and the end-all.
CH: Do you think not having your own children does anything to your perspective as a union leader focused on children's education?
RW: I think I made that fundamental choice. Once I started being on this track, I just knew that, and it was a painful decision, I knew it would be impossible to do both. I love kids. Once I knew I was on this path, and felt the responsibility that would be on it, I knew I just couldn't.
CH: But does not having your own children in the school system affect your view at all?
RW: If I had my own children, they would be in public schools. My nieces and nephews were from public schools. My parents inculcated in us a very strong allegiance to the public school system. They see the public school system not only as a great equalizer but also as a fundamental building block for democracy.
CH: Will leading the UFT and AFT simultaneously be tough? Have you thought about the timetable for the transition or potential successors?
RW: The answer is yes and yes and thought about it. Yes I think about it a great deal and no I'm not going to talk about it. I tease like when people often said during negotiations, “Just tell me your bottom line. Just tell me what it is. I won't tell anybody.” I often tease and say that only my dog knows what I think. Not even my dog, I should say, will know what the appropriate timetable for transition is. The reason one does this is to ensure a smooth transition. That's the only reason that one holds both jobs at the same time.
CH: You are a known personality around New York. Does that help you get things done?
RW: All of that had to be earned. What has helped get things done is that I really respect people. First of all, I love the fact that people just call me Randi. It's a New York thing to do. It's both a familiarity but also a connection. So when people call you by your first name, there's a connection. If you're a school teacher, you have a connection with your kids. You're always looking to figure out how do you unlock their minds. How do you open them up? How do you get that a-ha moment? It's not terribly different in terms of how I try to transact business. Over the course of these years, that is what has happened, but it's been earned. It wasn't just plopped there. You're seeing me near probably my end of my tenure as opposed to the beginning of my tenure. I remember many a time when people would say, “Randi who?”
