COVID-19 Policy Update #101
COVID-19 Policy Update
THURSDAY 9/10
TOP THREE
Phase 4:
The Senate Republican "Skinny" bill failed by a vote of 52-47, mostly along party lines. Sen. Rand Paul was the one Republican to vote against it. The bill had been expected to fail, but was intended as a negotiating tactic by Sen. McConnell to show there wasn't support among his members for another expensive package. The "skinny" bill was $700 billion, down from an original $1 trillion package. The Administration has signaled support for $1.5 trillion. And House Democrats have stood by a $2.2 trillion proposal.
Proposing an alternative to a comprehensive package, Secretary Mnuchin has suggested Congress pass items where there is bipartisan support, such as additional relief checks for taxpayers, enhanced unemployment and funds for schools. Speaker Pelosi has been unwilling to consider this, instead preferring to act on one comprehensive bill. It's increasingly unlikely for any deal to be reached by the end of the month.
White House officials have discussed taking additional executive actions that might include providing support for the airline industry, bolstering unemployment benefits, and directing more money for school choice.
Quiet Zones Can Have The Same Impact as Doubling Ventilation: Possible strategy for schools: "A reduction of 6 decibels in average speech levels can have the same effect as doubling a room’s ventilation."
New Homework Gap Program: NCTA (the trade group representing cable operators) announced a partnership with Education Superhighway. The K-12 Bridge to Broadband partnership allows schools to confidentially let the cable companies know which students lack at-home broadband and help pay a discounted rate to connect them.
STATE
Arizona: Sequoia Schools: "If you give a mouse a mask, he can go back to school."
Florida: Miami Dade terminated the %15 million contract with K12 after two weeks of issues leading to frustration among teachers, students, and parents.
Minnesota: Updated data released Thursday will trigger different school openings:
Waseca County now falls under the state's recommendation for full distance learning.
Eight counties have case rates high enough to fall under the second-highest level of recommended guidance, for hybrid learning: Blue Earth, Le Sueur, Lyon, Nobles, Sibley, Watonwan, Winona, and Yellow Medicine.
35 counties have case rates low enough for the state to recommend full in-person learning.
New York:
South Carolina: An elementary school teacher died of coronavirus complications a week into the start of the school year and only three days after diagnosis.
Tennessee: The Department of Education launched a new dashboard to report COVID-19 case data on a school district level.
INTERNATIONAL
Europe: WSJ article discussing how European countries are quarantining students as schools reopen. "So far, relatively few schools in Europe have closed, despite a surge in infections in a number of European countries."
UK: Leaked document suggests the government is developing a plan dubbed "Operation Moonshot” to conduct a massive 10 million tests per day.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Manufacturers: Of the 82% of respondents to a NAM survey who said COVID-19 had or will have a negative impact on their cash flow, 72% noted they had obtained funds through the Paycheck Protection Program, Main Street Lending Program or other liquidity program.
Manhattan Rental Market: The number of empty rental apartments in Manhattan nearly tripled compared with last year. The inventory of empty units, which rose to 15,000 in August, is the largest ever recorded since data started being collected 14 years ago.
OpenAI Wrote An Essay: A computer wrote this article. GPT-3 was given these instructions: “Please write a short op-ed around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI.” A good reminder that COVID could lead companies to speed up their plans to implement new technologies that will replace many jobs and create demand for higher-skilled jobs, worsening an already troubling skills gap in the economy.
LEARNING PODS
Learning Camps: Tulsa Parks is offering support camps for families who might not be able to stay home with their child for school, as many districts are moving to virtual learning.
‘Pod Learning' in Pennsylvania Comes With Rules: Any pod with six or more students must register with the Department of Human Services' Office of Child Development and Early Learning. Other compliance requirements are here. So far, the state has registered 14 learning pods and 37 nonlicensed, school-age programs.
MyVillage: Founded in 2017, MyVillage has hundreds of members across Colorado and Montana who operate home-based child care programs within an online community of support. The company is expanding nationally. Membership includes access to a "virtual teachers' lounge" with everything they need to start a home-based learning program including: billing, tax and insurance resources, sample schedules, professional development opportunities and more.
Learning Pods, Low-income Students, and the Micro-schooling Debate: "Now pods represent a new advantage for some – and a challenge to the system. Some groups are supplementing remote learning from schools with additional support from a private teacher or tutor. Others are going as far as starting their own private schools. Mr. Thorpe found that registering as a private school was the only way to meet Ontario regulations and enroll enough learners to make the program financially viable."
RESOURCES
Assessing Young Adult Risks: New JAMA Network paper: Among 780 969 adults discharged between April 1 and June 30, 63 103 (8.1%) tested positive COVID-19, of whom 3,222 (5%) were nonpregnant young adults (age 18-34 years) admitted to hospitals. The mean age was 28.3 years old; 1,849 (57.6%) were men and 1,838 (57%) were Black or Hispanic. Overall, 1,187 (36.8%) had obesity, 789 (24.5%) morbid obesity, 588 (18.2%) diabetes, and 519 (16.1%) hypertension.
Children Have Milder Symptoms: Research from the Canadian Paediatric Society indicates that children experience much milder symptoms of COVID-19. Overall, just 1.3% of children with COVID-19 were hospitalized, compared to 13.5% of patients of all ages.
Caitlin Rivers Profile: Great profile on Caitlin Rivers who has been an instrumental contributor to a number of important COVID guidance including: National coronavirus response: A road map to reopening, Public health principles for a phased reopening during COVID-19: Guidance for governors, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Guidance for K-12 Education on Responding to COVID-19.
Brookings/AEI Paper on Making EdTech Work: A blog and playbook by Alejandro J. Ganimian, Emiliana Vegas, and Rick Hess. Full Report. Instruments to assess availability and use of technology for learning.
Use This Startup's Playbook for Running Impactful Virtual Offsites: Great post and collection of resources from First Round.
Companies Offering Back to School Benefits for Employees: List here.
KPMG: Quadrupled the number of days employees can use the firm's backup care program; expanded its network of discounted one-on-one or small group tutoring, academic support, test prep, and homework assistance, expanded its network of childcare centers with discounted care available from 1,000 to 2,500 locations. Also created "learning pods" for employees, where parents throughout the organization can team up for virtual or in-person learning for small groups of school-age children.
Accenture: Offering school-day supervision for children ages 6 through 12 through a partnership with Bright Horizons. Accenture employees can pay $5 an hour—the company covers 75% of the cost.
Bank of America: Offering a daily childcare reimbursement of $75 or $100.
Carta: Offering a $10,000 annual stipend per employee to help with childcare for kids under the age of 13.
Dell: Offering employees access to virtual learning pods, tutoring services, and help finding childcare providers also trained in education. Also expanded its network of childcare centers from 1,000 to 2,400 locations.
Intel: Offering employees between $75 and $300 a month to help with caregiving costs.
Amazon, Alnylam, Sarepta, and Unum: Have signed up with SitterStream which provides 30- to 90-minute virtual babysitting and tutoring sessions.
Broadband:
Americans Are Voting for Broadband, OpEd from Bruce Mehlman. "A new Morning Consult poll of American voters, commissioned by the Internet Innovation Alliance. Over 90 percent said that the current lack of universal broadband access is a problem, with 63 percent calling it a “major” problem. Three in five American voters (62 percent) want Congress to fix the problem “immediately.”
Pandemic exposes broadband divide, OpEd: "Nicol Turner Lee, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has argued that Congress must direct funding to bring broadband access to all public schools in the next coronavirus relief package before more vulnerable students get left behind."
How Public Schools Can Break the Digital Divide: OpEd: "Your child is not going to die from lack of education, but the damage done from separate but equal is irrevocable."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote members of Congress asking that they provide funding for FCC broadband efforts including the E-rate.
Lessons from the pandemic for broadband and internet policy, AEI post.
Racial Digital Gap, paper from Deutsche Bank. 76% of Blacks and 62% of Hispanics in the U.S. could be shut out or underprepared for 86% of jobs in the country by 2045. "If this digital racial gap is not addressed, in one generation alone, digitization could render the country’s minorities into an unemployment abyss."
A Man Creates: A driveway racetrack for a boy.