The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tightened its mask guidelines for children in schools after the National Education Association (NEA) — the nation’s largest teachers union — threatened to release a statement critical of the CDC’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic and demanding clarification for mask-wearing in educational settings.
The emails, published by Fox News on Wednesday, show extensive collaboration between the White House’s office of labor engagement and the NEA as well as clear communication between the CDC, the NEA, and the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers unions, on the issue of masking in schools — communication that appears to have resulted in a CDC recommendation that all individuals mask up in schools, regardless of vaccination status.
“The Biden administration tightened its masking guidance after a prominent teachers union threatened White House officials with publicly releasing harsh criticism, internal emails show,” Fox News noted Wednesday. “The new emails show further coordination between the White House and teachers unions just months after reports highlighted the extent the unions had influenced the administration’s messaging on school reopenings. The watchdog group Americans for Public Trust obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them to Fox News.”
The flurry of emails follows a May 13th announcement from the CDC revising its masking guidelines and announcing that vaccinated adults did not need to wear masks. The NEA, apparently alarmed by the new guidelines, fired off an email to the White House.
“Would you know when Dr. Wolensky would be able to call NEA-Pres. Becky Pringle?” a representative from the White House office of union engagement asked the CDC. “They’ve gotten significant incoming and are getting targeted for a response from the media. I’ve gotten them to hold on their statement calling for clarification.”
The “statement calling for clarification” appears to have been a public demand to the Biden administration, insisting that the CDC recommend universal masking in schools regardless of whether students, faculty, and administrators are vaccinated.
“We appreciate the developing nature of the science and its implications for guidance, but releasing the guidance without accompanying school-related updates creates confusion and fuels the internal politicization of this basic health and safety issue,” the draft statement read, per Fox. “CDC has consistently said, and studies support, that mitigation measures, including to protect the most vulnerable, remain necessary in schools and institutions of higher education – particularly because no elementary or middle school students, and few high school students, have been vaccinated.”
Following communication from the White House, it appears, from the emails, that the CDC took swift action and CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky spoke to both the head of the NEA and Randi Weingarten, the head of the AFT.
The conversations were apparently fruitful.
“The next day, on May 15, the CDC updated its masking guidance to indicate that all people should wear a mask at school regardless of vaccination status,” Fox News noted. Those recommendations remain in place according to the CDC website, which was updated to reflect stricter masking recommendations last month, in response to the rise of the Delta variant of COVID-19.
This round of collaboration between the CDC and teachers unions came just days after the New York Post revealed a first round of collaboration. Those emails showed that the AFT pressed the CDC to recommend schools remain closed.
“The American Federation of Teachers lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on, and even suggested language for, the federal agency’s school-reopening guidance released in February,” the Post reported in May. “The powerful teachers union’s full-court press preceded the federal agency putting the brakes on a full re-opening of in-person classrooms, emails between top CDC, AFT and White House officials show.”