She is on a field trip
Via FOX News
The boss of the American Federation of Teachers is on a field trip — all the way to the Ukraine — on a visit paid in part by dues-paying rank and file members of her union.
Randi Weingarten told FoxNews.com she arrived in Kiev on Thursday as part of a delegation of teacher union leaders from five nations, including the United Kingdom, Poland, Denmark and Bulgaria, as an act of solidarity and to “promote democratic values.” The tab for the trip was split by AFT’s 1.5 million members and the Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine (STESU), which invited the union bigwig.
Weingarten told FoxNews.com during a brief telephone interview from a coffee shop in Kiev that AFT has had a longstanding tradition of supporting democratic institutions around the world.
“It’s always been a part of who we are,” said Weingarten. “I decided it was important enough to go, and the most important thing I’ve learned during this trip is that the Russian propaganda about how the Ukrainian government is fragile and destabilizing is totally and completely wrong.”
But at least one critic said Weingarten should focus more on pressing domestic issues.
“It doesn’t sound like it’s really a policy matter; more publicity than policy,” said Ted O’Neil, spokesman for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based nonprofit educational group. “I would like to hear her say that her next trip with be here to Michigan to try and help Detroit’s public school, which is an AFT affiliate, rather than globetrotting.”