Hi, I'm Dan Premack, and welcome to Axios Recap, brought to you by Morgan Stanley.

Today's Tuesday, February 9th.

Bitcoin keeps going up, Super Bowl TV ratings are down, and we're focused on reopening

America's schools.

Three quarters of America's K-12 public schools are either closed or partially closed right now,

and they've been that way for nearly a year.

It's unlike anything ever before seen in our country's history, and everyone's pretty pissed off about it.

Parents, kids, politicians, teachers, medical professionals,

fingers pointing in every direction, heads shaking in frustration. In December, there seemed to be

a glimmer of hope, really for the first time since the pandemic began, when President Biden

announced that schools would reopen within his first 100 days. But as Axios has since reported, some White House advisors are becoming increasingly concerned

about unforeseen challenges to that goal, including slower than expected vaccinations

and the emergence of virus variants.

And even if the White House does manage to unstick the vaccine bottlenecks and get new economic

stimulus with money for things

like in-school testing and HVAC updates, he still can't really mandate anything.

Schools being open or closed comes down not to federal decisions, but to negotiations between

local school departments and their teachers' unions.

And that's why today we want to speak with Randy Weingarten, President of the American Teachers Federation, which represents more than 1.7 million

members in more than 3,000 districts about the challenges ahead, the realities of learning

loss, and if we can count on in-person school next fall. That conversation in 15 seconds. We are joined now by

Randy Weingarten. So Randy, let's start here. You obviously want to get teachers back into the

...