Markeshia Ricks Photo
Murphy in New Haven Friday.
Sen. Chris Murphy hadn’t intended to ask Betsy DeVos about guns. He had 30 seconds left, in what would be the only five minutes he had to question the Trump administration’s pick to lead the nation’s public schools during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Education Committee.
“I really wasn’t going to ask her that last question,” Murphy told about 100 teachers from New Haven and neighboring towns teachers’ unions Friday at the Greater New Haven Labor Council headquarters at 267 Chapel St. “It wasn’t on my list of questions to ask, and I had 30 seconds and I asked her what I thought was a softball: Do you think guns should have any role in schools?”
DeVos answered Murphy’s question by citing the example of a school in Wyoming that has a fence to keep out grizzly bears. “I think probably there, I would imagine that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies,” DeVos said.
Murphy said the answer stunned him.
“She knows I’m on that committee,” Murphy, a staunch advocate for gun control, particularly in school zones, said, still incredulous. “How she couldn’t have gotten prepared for a question about guns in schools from me, and expressed at the outset some real understanding about what we went through — what we are still going through in Newtown [since the 2012 school massacre] is beyond me.”
He wasn’t the only one stunned by DeVos’ responses to many of the questions that were asked of her during her confirmation hearing. As the Senate prepares to vote on her confirmation next Tuesday, Murphy said his office has received more than 13,000 phone calls opposing DeVos’ confirmation.
“I have never ever seen anything like it with respect to any appointee since I’ve been in the United States Congress,” he said. “It’s organic. Certainly it’s organizations, but these calls are from parents freaked out that there is going to be someone in charge who called the nation’s public schools a dead end for kids.”
He said the opposition is about more than charter schools, of which DeVos is a leading proponent. To him, it’s the fundamental idea that someone who wants to be in charge of the nation’s public schools should be a fan of public schools and enthusiastic about making them better, not possibly dismantling them.
“Public education wasn’t a dead end for me,” he said. “The idea that you would have someone there who wants to funnel public dollars away from public schools and not just to non-public schools but to private charter schools run by for-profit corporations. That’s what really worries me. The idea that we would start pushing money not just out of our public schools, but into the hands of billionaire investors who are running public schools not always because they care about kids, but because they want to make money.
“We’ve seen this play out already on the college side, you’ve got the big hedge funds and private equity firms that own colleges now and let’s just be honest, they’re not in it to educate kids,” he added. “Now, the people running the schools are in it to educate kids, but the people that are telling the people running the schools what to do are in it to make money. And I don’t want profit motivation to have anything to do with how my kids or how any of your kids are being educated.”
The Way Forward
He meting with teachers unions Friday.
Murphy laid out two strategies for teachers Friday. The first: Continue to oppose DeVos with hopes that more Republicans will withhold their support. The second? Be ready in case she is confirmed.
“We’re going to take this vote on Tuesday,” he said. “It’s uncertain what that vote’s going to be. Right now, there are 50 votes against DeVos, and it looks as if the Republicans are lining up 50 votes for her. It’s not certain, but it’s possible that there are 50 votes for her.”
In a evenly split vote, Vice President Mike Pence would break the tie, presumably in DeVos’s favor. Murphy said the reality is that DeVos, if confirmed, would likely need a vote from Congress to make any policy change that would send public dollars to private education coffers. And given that Congress has just rewritten elementary and secondary education laws, Murphy doesn’t seem to think there is an appetite to do that again. But he said never say never.
He told the teachers to be ready to tell public school stories of success, but also stories of what the needs are. And to also be ready to push back against “this totally misguided belief that capitalism works for kids’ education.”
“We know market principles don’t apply to education the same way they do for automobiles,” Murphy said. “But that’s what some Republicans believe. Some Republicans are ideologically unable to break away from a belief that market economics can solve any problem in the world.
“So we need your continued mobilization around this nomination and if we don’t end up winning it — I hope we do, but if we don’t —we need you and your colleagues to double down on political action,” Murphy said.
Before Murphy had to hop a commuter bus to West Haven, which he likes to do when he’s back in Connecticut, he recorded a video with teachers on how they feel senators should vote on DeVos.
Their advice on how to vote? A resounding no.