AFT President Randi Weingarten on Houston School Board Election

WASHINGTON—Statement of AFT President Randi Weingarten following the Houston school board runoff elections:

“Building on what they did in November, in the runoffs the people of Houston elected school board candidates committed to working with teachers and parents to invest in our public schools and make every school in Houston a school where parents want to send their kids, teachers want to teach, and kids are engaged. Houston now has a school board committed to ensuring Houston families continue to have local control over their public schools, with an agenda for student success that starts with strong community schools focused on both academics and children’s well-being, real learning over high-stakes testing, and fighting for additional funding from Austin. These results are just the latest from elections across the country, from Douglas County, Colo., to Cincinnati, where voters are overwhelmingly choosing public education over privatization for their children and communities, and to invest in those schools, not efforts to defund and destabilize them.”