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SALT LAKE CITY — About 150 protesters, including the president of the Utah Education Association, stood outside the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building on Monday in a show of opposition to U.S. Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos.
Utah Indivisible, a new organization that describes itself on Twitter as a grass-roots movement dedicated to providing "resistance to the Trump agenda," organized the rally, attended mostly by teachers and their families.
Organizers said they want Utah's Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee to vote against confirming DeVos at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Donald Aguirre, spokesman for Utah Indivisible, contended DeVos takes hostile policy stances toward public schools and has no experience in the classroom, which worries some Utah teachers.
"The people who are here to talk today, they are our educators," Aguirre said. "We need to listen to our teachers."
Utah Education Association President Heidi Matthews spoke to protesters, encouraging them to contact Hatch and Lee and voice their opposition to DeVos. DeVos' nomination was "unacceptable," she said.
"We will keep fighting," Matthews said. "Yell and scream (to) 'vote no.'"
Matthews and others criticized DeVos for her support of the charter school system in Michigan, which they said has created poor results for students. DeVos is the co-founder of the Great Lakes Education Project, an organization that describes itself as "support(ing) quality choices in public education for all Michigan students."
DeVos was also chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000.
At the rally, protesters held signs decrying DeVos as unfit for the secretary of education post, with signs reading, "Betsy Devos' buddies are more important than your child's education," "Don't DEVOstate our public school system" and "Has she ever taught in a classroom?" They repeated a few chants, including one insisting "DeVos has got to go."
Matthews said President Donald Trump's choice of nominee was "like hiring a football coach who hates football."
"We need a coach ... who inspires us unto greatness. She's not that leader. And don't you think our students deserve better?" she said to cheers.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is scheduled to hold a review hearing Tuesday morning with DeVos. A U.S. Senate vote on her confirmation is anticipated to be held in February.
Hatch's Facebook page published a statement Monday afternoon in support of DeVos.
"Despite what many will have you believe, for over 20 years Betsy DeVos has put her money where her mouth is and donated her time and energy to improving educational outcomes for the hardest-hit children in Detroit and throughout America," the statement said. "While she could have stayed silent and left children in failing schools, she chose to support an innovative system to give poor parents the same choices for the children that rich parents have always had."
Aguirre and others said that they were discouraged by the difficulty of getting through to Hatch's office by phone in recent days.
"They can leave phones off the hook, but we will not stop calling," Madalena McNeil, an admissions counselor for the University of Utah, told the crowd.
Hatch's office released a statement Monday morning saying that robocalls from outside Utah were tying up phone lines, accounting for about 80 percent of the incoming call volume. The statement said that a solution was being sought. Constituents were encouraged to reach out over email or other means.
Despite those logistical difficulties and Hatch's initial signs of support for DeVos, Aguirre said, he is hopeful the senator will be responsive to the opposition to DeVos' confirmation.
"He's a smart person. He's not somebody who doesn't know what he's doing," Aguirre said.
