COVID-19 Policy Update #171
COVID-19 Policy Update
MONDAY 12/21
So tonight's update is extra long. It's a Monday which brings with it all the weekend COVID developments. Plus we have a federal government spending bill that contains a COVID relief package that contains a package of higher ed reforms.
We have some new people joining us this week. So to catch them up - we started a bit of a tradition a few weeks ago to provide a wine or cocktail pairing with the Monday updates given their length. So get comfortable, turn on the fireplace and make yourself a Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme Gin and Tonic or pour yourself a Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 2010. Normally, I would suggest a glass but given the developments of the last couple of days - open up that bottle.
TOP THREE
Vaccine Prioritization: The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended that police, firefighters, teachers and grocery workers and other essential workers will be among those next in line for a COVID-19 vaccine. The committee voted 13-1 to recommend that Phase 1b include people 75 and older and front-line essential workers. Phase 1c will include people 65 to 74 and people 16 to 64 who have high-risk medical conditions, along with other essential workers. The Coronavirus Closed Schools. Our Diseased Politics is Keeping Them Closed: Super, super long piece but worth reading. Some excerpts:
"The other day, I listened to my daughter’s first lesson of the day, which is conducted over a video feed, like every lesson of her day has been since last March."
"No amount of teacherly gusto could change that brutally unpleasant reality, especially if that gusto were itself coming across a grainy video feed."
"Children aren’t just not learning, they are unlearning the things they had learned before the pandemic."
"On Monday, Nov. 2, public school teachers in D.C. decided not to attend virtual school. “I hope you had a fun Halloween weekend and that you have a good day today,” my daughter’s teacher wrote at 7:01 that morning. This one-day strike was in opposition to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s plan to bring some students back for in-class instruction. The lack of warning by striking teachers may have had little impact on families who had tired tutors or placed their children in micro-schools. Most families do not have the means to make such outlays. What they were supposed to do on this day when the teachers called in sick was never made clear."
"Fed up with this state of affairs, parents in large urban districts are beginning to leave public schools; here in the quasi-suburban precincts of upper northwest Washington, families are now on the hunt for elusive spots at Georgetown Day and Sidwell Friends. Others have decided that they can make homeschooling work, as long as they can conduct it on their own terms. It is easy to dismiss such families as selfish strivers, but they are telling us something, and we would be wise to listen."
COVID Relief:
Congress reached a deal on a $900 billion coronavirus relief package. They'll vote on the package along with a full-year federal spending bill.
Process:
They'll vote on two packages in the House: The first will be DOD, CJS, FSGG, and DHS appropriations. The second will be all other appropriations, the COVID relief package, and other add ons. Final House votes should happen around 8:30pm tonight. They will then be merged together so the Senate votes on one package.
What's In The Package:
Bill Text - all 5,593 pages.
Section-by-Section summaries.
More information on specific provisions is here.
A division-by-division summary of the coronavirus relief provisions is here.
A division-by-division of the authorizing matters is here.
And below is a summary of the education provisions done by PennHill.
Funding Highlights:
Title I – increase of $227 million to $16.537 billion
Title II (of ESEA) – increase of $11.25 million to $2.143 billion
Title III (of ESEA) – increase of $10 million to $797.4 million
21st Century Community Learning Centers – increase of $10 million to $1.260 billion
IDEA Part B State Grants – increase of $173 million to $12.937 billion
Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants (ESEA) – increase of $10 million to $1.22 billion
Charter Schools – level funded at $440 million
CTE State grants – increase of $52.25 million to $1.335 billion
Adult Education State grants – increase of $18 million to $675 million
Maximum Pell Grant – increased by $150 to $6,495
TRIO – increased by $7 million to $1.097 billion
GEARUP - increased by $3 million to $368 million
Higher Education Reform:
Reinstating Pell Grants for incarcerated students. The legislation would lift the prohibition on Pell Grants for prisoners that Congress imposed in the 1994 crime bill
Simplifying the FAFSA and federal financial aid formula. The bill would reduce the number of questions on the form and streamline the formula for calculating who qualifies for Pell Grants. Reducing the FAFSA from 108 questions to 36 will remove the biggest barrier to helping more low-income students pursue higher education.
Loan forgiveness for HBCU students.
Restoring Pell Grants for students defrauded by their college
Expanding subsidized federal student loans: The bill would lift the cap on the amount of time undergraduate students can go to school without accruing interest on their need-based federal student loans.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Child Care Development Block Grant – an increase of $85 million to $5.911 billion
Head Start – an increase of $135 million to $10.748 billion.
U.S. Department of Labor
WIOA grants to States - $25.5 million increase to $2.845 billion
Apprenticeship Grants - $10 million increase to $185 million
YouthBuild - $2 million increase to $96.5 million
COVID-19 Relief Measures
Education Stabilization Fund - The bill provides $81.9 billion through a slightly modified version of the Education Stabilization Fund that was first included in the CARES Act.
$22.7 billion would be provided to institutions of higher education for institutional expenses and financial aid grants to students. For this funding provided to institutions, the formula differs from the CARES Act version in that it incorporates factors of total enrollment and distance education student counts versus only full time equivalency. Of the higher education funding, $1.7 billion would be provided for HBCUs, HSIs and other minority-serving institutions and three percent would be provided to for-profit institutions (based on the same formula described above) to provide financial aid grants to students.
$54.3 billion would be provided to State educational agencies and local educational agencies for K12 related expenses.
$4.1 billion would be provided to Governors, with a set aside of $2.75 billion administered by each State’s State educational agency for private schools.
Child Care – The bill provides $10 billion in child care funding to assist both providers and families. Head Start would also get $250 million.
Coronavirus Relief Fund – The bill extends, until December 31, 2021, the State and local funds provided under the Coronavirus Relief Fund that was created under the CARES Act.
PPP – The bill includes $284 billion for first and second forgivable PPP loans, with set-asides for very small businesses and lending through community-based lenders like Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions. Eligibility for PPP is expanded to certain 501(c)(6) nonprofits
Broadband provisions - $3.2 billion for low-income families to access broadband through an FCC fund and a $1 billion tribal broadband fund. Under the $3.2 billion fund, individuals are eligible for a $50 monthly internet subsidy and providers can be reimbursed up to $100 for issuing a Wi-Fi connected device (one per household). Individuals/families are also eligible if a member of their family has participated in the free and reduced price lunch program or received a Federal Pell grant.
Couple of observations:
Think of this as a bridge package to another package in 2021. For example, the PPP will cover up to three-and-a-half months' worth of payroll costs — well short of how long many of them expect it will take to bounce back. The eviction moratorium is also too short given the need. So look for the Biden Admin to pivot to another package likely focused on more stimulus activity than relief.
Direct Cash benefits could arrive as soon as next week.
It's unclear what the Democrats gained in this $900 package that they wouldn't have received under Mnuchin's $1.8 trillion package in the fall. Maybe it couldn't have passed the Senate but we'll never know.
FEDERAL
Transition:
Axios reports that Connecticut state chief Miguel Cardona is emerging as Biden's choice to serve as Secretary of Education.
Good Politico article on the transition team's "all-hands-on-deck" push to ensure smooth confirmation of its picks
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Fast-spreading Variant of Sars-CoV-2: Something to watch.
The chief medical officer for England, Chris Whitty, said the new variant discovered in the south-east could be up to 70% more transmissible
The Guardian on what we know.
"An increase in R of 0.4 or greater is extremely bad news. During the national lockdown in November the best we could achieve was an R value of somewhere between 0.8 and 1.0 around the UK,” said Prof Hunter. “What this means is that even if we went back to the lockdown it would still not be enough to bring the R value down to less than 1.0."
Not taking chances, governments are imposing travel restrictions. India, Pakistan, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, Jordan and Hong Kong suspended travel for Britons. France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Belgium and Canada blocked travel from Britain.
Prioritizing Teachers: U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg: To reopen schools, give teachers priority vaccine access
Fauci Weighs In: CSU Chancellor Tim White hosted virtual Q&A event with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Entire discussion here. “It’s extremely important to get children back in school and kept in school,” Fauci said. “The idea of vaccinating teachers is high up in priorities. As well as doing surveillance in the schools so that you can get a good feel for the penetration of infection, which hopefully will continue to be low, so we don’t have to shut down every time you get a student that’s infected.”
The Pope Also Weighs In: Vatican permits use of COVID-19 vaccines made using aborted fetal tissue
Vaccine Tracker: Bloomberg has launched a vaccine administration tracker. Also, super cool timeline visualization for when to expect additional vaccines.
Did Thanksgiving Gatherings Cause A Rise in Cases? NYT article along with some amazing data visualizations:
STATE
California: In-person learning won't resume at San Francisco public schools due to negotiations over COVID. “The district cannot meet all of the new requirements SFUSD’s labor unions have proposed, and there is not sufficient time to complete bargaining in order to reopen any school sites on Jan. 25,” the district said in an online statement."
Colorado: K-12 school enrollment falls more than 22,000 students for 2020-21
Illinois: Chicago Sun Times Editorial Board: "Move forward with reopening schools come January"
"The Chicago Teachers Union has tried twice to stop Chicago Public Schools from reopening in January — and has lost both times."
"The sticking point, with CPS and CTU, is what constitutes “safe.”
"What’s safe when it comes to fighting this virus is a matter for public health and infectious disease experts — not CTU or CPS — to decide."
"Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady has given the green light to the district’s reopening plan, which her team helped develop."
Nebraska: Nebraska Department of Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt announced the Department has joined a statewide campaign urging people to “Do Right, Right Now,” to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
North Carolina: Guilford County Schools is hiring their own high school students to provide tutoring. $10 per hour & elective credit.
Oregon: Oregonian Editorial: Gov. Brown must put schools on path to in-person instruction.
Pennsylvania:
Nine months in, the impact of COVID-19 on education starting to show.
Parents, students find creative ways to show appreciation for teachers they don’t see in person
INTERNATIONAL
Ireland: Northern Ireland's Education Minister Peter Weir defends decision to reopen schools
Uganda: Article discussing how the country's school plan for refugee children could become a global template.
UK:
The Government is exploring vaccinating secondary school pupils to control COVID spread
The Government's Coronavirus Infection Survey has shown a very high proportion of school age children were infected with coronavirus last week.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Safety Net Program Participation: Really helpful set of tables from CBPP on program participation for SNAP, EITC, etc.
How the 2020 Election Deepened America’s White-Collar/Blue-Collar Split: Via WSJ: "The concentration of white-collar jobs “is a good predictor of culture, class, and economic outlook,’’ Mr. Fikri said. Referring to the flipped counties, he said: “The forces sorting Americans along these lines into distinct political camps seem quite powerful. These places resisted the trend in 2016, but the pressure was too great in 2020, and they snapped into place.’’
RESOURCES
Responding to the Winter COVID-19 Surge: What Governors Can Do: New report from the COVID Collaborative, Duke-Margolis, Resolve to Save Lives, The Rockefeller Foundation, Johns Hopkins, American Public Health Association, and Trust for America’s Health.
Why British Kids Went Back to School, and American Kids Did Not: Via the Atlantic.
"Mary Bousted, one of the general secretaries of the National Education Union, said “We have this education policy being run by hard-liners in [the prime minister’s office]. Schools are being kept open at all costs because of an economic imperative—because parents can’t work if the children aren’t in school.”
"In August, Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, announced that “the chances of children dying from COVID-19 are incredibly small,” whereas school closure “damages children in the long run.” By the summer, this way of thinking had hardened into a consensus: The opposition Labour Party supported reopening."
Katharine Strunk, an education-policy professor at Michigan State University, said unions were willing to “support their teachers in strike authorization if teachers felt that they were being forced back into unsafe conditions. That sometimes meant proper social distancing, but it sometimes meant a universally available vaccine.”
"Unions were able to influence decision making in part because, as Strunk said, “when there is no good trusted advice, it’s hard for parents or school boards to argue against [the unions], because what [the unions were] saying was: ‘Isn’t one teacher or one student death too much of a cost when they can learn fine remotely?’”
"The American death toll will rightly be cited as the main indictment of the U.S. government’s handling of the pandemic. But what has happened in schools is an astonishing public-policy failure of its own."
School Closures During the 1918 Flu Pandemic: New NBER paper that found"Linking affected children to their adult outcomes in the 1940 census, we also find precise null effects of school closures on adult educational attainment, wage income, non-wage income, and hours worked in 1940. Our results are not inconsistent with an emerging literature that finds negative short-run effects of COVID-19-related school closures on learning. The situation in 1918 was starkly different from today: (1) schools closed in 1918 for many fewer days on average, (2) the 1918 virus was much deadlier to young adults and children, boosting absenteeism even in schools that stayed open, and (3) the lack of effective remote learning platforms in 1918 may have reduced the scope for school closures to increase socioeconomic inequality."
Education in a Time of Pandemic: Not Making the Grade: Op-Ed from Heritage's Dr. Lindsey Burke and Jonathan Butcher.
Affluent Families Ditch Public Schools, Widening U.S. Inequality: Via Bloomberg
"Parents with means are instead homeschooling; joining with other families to hire teachers in so-called pandemic pods; or signing up for private schools. Poor and minority children often have no choice but to attend inferior virtual classrooms, and some are just giving up entirely."
Fauci Clears Santa for Christmas: During a CNN/Sesame Street town hall, Elmo and several children asked Dr. Fauci "How did Santa get the vaccine and is it safe for him to go in the house?” Fauci responded “Well, I have to say I took care of that for you because I was worried that you’d all be upset. I vaccinated Santa Claus myself. I measured his level of immunity and he is good to go.” More at the CNN clip.
When You Can’t Just ‘Trust the Science’: The vaccine debate is the latest example of how our coronavirus choices are inescapably political. "Many scientific factors weigh in that balance, but so do all kinds of extra-scientific variables: moral assumptions about what kinds of vaccine testing we should pursue (one reason we didn’t get the “challenge trials” that might have delivered a vaccine much earlier); legal assumptions about who should be allowed to experiment with unproven treatments; political assumptions about how much bureaucratic hoop-jumping it takes to persuade Americans that a vaccine is safe."
The Task Force on Next Generation Community Schools: Recommendations for the Biden Administration.
Watch Kansas Teacher Fart Prank Her Students on Zoom: And do your best not to laugh. For 2021, more kids belly laughing please...