Hillary Clinton Booed at Teacher Union Meeting

Hillary Clinton was reportedly booed Tuesday for talking up charter schools, scolding dissenters at a meeting of the National Education Association — the nation's largest labor union — that there's "no time for all of these education wars."

"When schools get it right, whether they are traditional public schools or public charter schools, let's figure out what's working . . . and share it with schools across America," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told teachers gathered at the labor union's annual conference, Politico reports. 

Some delegates in the crowd booed the remark.

"We can do that," she pressed, Politico reports. "We've got no time for all of these education wars."

She then drew a line between charter schools in general and those run by for-profit companies, warning against pushing "for-profit charter schools on our kids."

"We will never stand for that. That is not acceptable," she declared.

Clinton, who was endorsed in October by the NEA, has been critical of charter schools in the past, remarking last November that charter schools "don't take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don't keep them," Politico reported at the time. 

"For us, the anger comes from the growing franchise of for-profit charter schools," NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia tells Politico. "When they move in, they devastate the local school district."

The schools group founded by charter schools supporter Campbell Brown
reports Clinton's comments reflect the latest draft of the Democrats' national platform, which supports charters. 

But it also notes an endorsement of charter schools is "a heresy among teachers unions," with unions generally opposing them largely because most states don't require charter teachers to belong to unions.

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