We thank all our teachers, parents, and the public for their tireless efforts—the rallies, the flood of phone calls, and the deluge of emails—in opposition to Betsy DeVos as secretary of education.
While the odds were not in our favor and we are certainly disappointed with the outcome, we succeeded in raising the level of public opposition to DeVos and her anti-public education schemes to new heights.
For the first time in history, the vice president has had to step in to cast the deciding vote on a nomination. With Mike Pence’s vote, DeVos, who called public education a “dead end,” was confirmed as the nation’s secretary of education. Despite the outcome, we are stronger than we were when we started this fight.
A special thanks to our senators, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, for standing strong with teachers and voting against DeVos. But our fight is not over yet. We will not stop in our defense of our students, our profession, and public education. We will continue aggressively opposing DeVos in this position and any efforts she makes toward harming our public education system, including privatizing our schools.
We look forward to continuing to work with our senators to protect our students and public education in the years to come.
The Connecticut Education Association represents 43,000 teachers in Connecticut.
