Harold Hutchison, DCNF

The president and vice president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers defended a contract provision that states white teachers would be laid off first in a Friday appearance on ABC.

“This contract language was something that we are, first of all, extremely proud of for achieving but it also doesn’t go far enough,” Greta Callahan, president of the teachers’ union, told “GMA3” host Amy Robach. “We need to support and retain our educators, especially those who are underrepresented, and this language does one tiny, minuscule step towards that but doesn’t solve the real crisis we’re in right now.”

WATCH:

The contract language was agreed to after a three-week strike in March, according to CNN. Provisions in the contract require Minneapolis Public Schools to disregard seniority when prioritizing layoffs and instead lay off white teachers first.

“This is the language that we put in and that we went out and marched for,” Marcia Howard, the teachers’ union vice president, said. “We voted on this, the district and the union agreed upon this and now it’s coming out because some Minnesotan website decided to put it out there and the MAGA media picked it up and they were waiting for mainstream media to run with this story. It’s a non-story. It was language about the event of a layoff and we are nowhere near having layoffs this year. We’re down like 250 teachers. We’re down. There are no layoffs. So I ask y’all why? Why is this a story?”

Minneapolis Public Schools Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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