COVID-19 Policy Update #294
COVID-19 Policy Update
TUESDAY 7/13
TOP THREE
Districts Offering Online Options: A Burbio analysis of the top 200 districts found that 64% - 128 - will be offering stand-alone, dedicated virtual academies to students, 60 will not, and 12 have not yet decided. More via The 74.
800,000: Students in England miss school for coronavirus-related reasons
It was "just" 325,000 on June 25.
Why This Matters: This could be a grim foreshadowing of the new academic year in the U.S. A more transmissible Delta variant spreading through the path of least resistance - unvaccinated individuals which include most children. Cases or positive tests trigger quarantining which leads to more disrupted learning and remote learning.
The Kids Are Alright: Good long piece via New York Magazine: Why now is the time to rethink COVID safety protocols for children — and everyone else
"Over the course of the pandemic, 49,000 Americans under the age of 18 have died of all causes, according to the CDC. Only 331 of those deaths have been from COVID — less than half as many as have died of pneumonia. In 2019, more than 2,000 American kids and teenagers died in car crashes; each year, according to some estimates, about a thousand die from drowning."
"Risk is a tricky thing, the spread of the Delta variant and the complications of “long COVID” both real concerns, and all parents should assess their own comfort, and those of their children, in making plans and taking precautions. But very few of them, two summers ago, were sending their children to parks and pools and camps in masks out of fear of pneumonia or flu. Probably fewer were keeping them home entirely."
"Another, perhaps more rigorous recent study in pre-print, looking at NHS data in the U.K., found that among more than one million patients diagnosed with COVID, only 3,000 registered long COVID — well under one percent."
"All of this suggests that, given American vaccination rates and the age skew of the disease, we might stop worrying so much about cases — stop treating them as a proxy for the severity of the pandemic at any time, and stop believing they tell us something obvious about near-future deaths. In countries like this one, with mass vaccination of the elderly already behind us, we could track the course of the disease instead through hospitalizations or deaths, which now have a very different relationship to case numbers than they did a year ago"
"So what does this mean for the remainder of the pandemic? First, we should do what we can to actually, finally, process the basic, astounding fact of the pandemic age skew — to try to put aside our reflex to shield children from any threat of infection, to put aside the additional fear we’ve all felt, all year, because of the simple novelty of this disease, and to instead endeavor to see clearly the real scale of the direct threat to kids, which is and always has been minimal."
FEDERAL
Infrastructure:
Via Punchbowl: "For Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, passage of the bipartisan “hard” infrastructure deal unlocks the larger, far more expensive “human infrastructure” spending in the reconciliation bill."
BUT, some Republicans who supported the Infrastructure Framework are now expressing reservations due to some of the pay-fors which they feel fall outside of the negotiated deal.
"Sen. Manchin warned that he wants both a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a separate Democratic-only bill to be fully paid for," The Hill reports.
The bipartisan group is working to finish the bill this week.
COVID-19 RESEARCH
Booster Shots: "Conflicting statements from Pfizer and the Biden administration were just the beginning of what will likely be a contentious debate over if and when vaccinated Americans need another shot to protect them against the coronavirus."
"Not only is the science unclear, but there would also likely be a global uproar if Americans began receiving a third shot before most of the rest of the world received any."
7 States Pass Laws Preventing Schools from Mandating, Tracking COVID Vaccinations: Via Fatherly
Divorced Parents Are Clashing Over COVID-19 Vaccines: Via WebMD
STATE
California:
It was a rough 24 hours for CA with regard to a masking policy released Monday.
As of yesterday, schools could bar K-12 students from campus if they refuse to wear a mask. More via the AP.
A CA official said last night, "In terms of cultural + political disputes that arise, part of what we’re trying to do is absorb as much of the impact as possible at the state level so that it’s not a local fight.”
Tonight CDPH released an update that wasn't really an update.
However, the LA Times and CNN are reporting that the state will allow schools to determine their masking policies.
The father of a child with disabilities is suing the Palo Alto Unified School District because his son wasn’t allowed to go mask-less at summer school, and could be held back.
Florida: How the Florida Virtual School served as a resource for the nation.
"FLVS saw a significant increase in its in-state enrollment for the 2020-21 school year, with a 57% increase in course requests for our FLVS Flex option and a 98% increase in the number of students for FLVS Full Time."
Mississippi: 12 children are in ICUs with COVID, with 10 on ventilators, according to the Sec. of Health
New Jersey: Nearly a quarter of high schoolers in the Belvidere School District are not on track to graduate
Nevada: North Las Vegas micro-school posts powerful learning gains
"Three out of four children who attended SNUMA last year arrived at the start of the year and six months into the pandemic at least two grade levels behind in their mastery of English language arts and math."
"So, it was even more valuable when 100% of SNUMA students made at least one full year’s academic growth during the year in reading/English language arts, and 87% posted at least two years’ growth."
"The City of North Las Vegas funded the micro-schools entirely out of municipal funds, not per-pupil school funding, for its residents and for children of emergency workers serving the city. Children attended at a small cost, $2 per day, for the first semester, and entirely for free for the second semester. To attend SNUMA, all children were registered as homeschoolers."
Tennessee: Via the Tennessean: "Tennessee abandons vaccine outreach to minors — not just for COVID-19"
West Virginia: Cabell Virtual Learning Academy opens enrollment for 2021-22
INTERNATIONAL
UAE: Kids believe superhero Covid vaccines can defeat 'virus villains'
"According to one, the vaccine is Iron Man, who would “punch the virus away”.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Inflation: June's 5.4% increase in consumer prices was the biggest year-over-year increase since 2008.
Used cars and trucks were responsible for one-third of the surge.
Heather Long breaks out some of the biggest increases:
Car rental 87.7% (y/y change)
Used cars 45.2%
Gas 45.1%
Laundry machines 29.4%
Airfare 24.6%
Moving 17.3%
Hotels 16.9%
Furniture 8.6%
Bacon 8.4%
TVs 7.6%
Fruit 7.3%
Shoes 6.5%
Fresh fish 6.4%
New cars 5.3%
Milk 5.6%
Productivity Boost: The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted businesses to rapidly digitize their operations, leading to a surge in productivity, Goldman Sachs analysts said.
Fired Up: Two of the leading grill companies are set to file IPOs.
Traeger and Webber (who reported a 62% growth in revenue over six months).
Teddy is conducting his own due diligence.
RESOURCES
Partisanship Alone Didn’t Determine School Reopenings: New study reported via The 74
"Confirms that politics helped determine how local authorities responded to the coronavirus threat in schools."
"But reopening approaches were also closely correlated with community demographics, and health conditions played a role as well. What’s more, given the interdependent relationships between all of those variables, it’s extremely challenging to isolate just one as being the most influential on policy makers’ decisions last fall."
"An increase in Clinton’s 2016 vote by 14 percent was associated with a 10.5 percentage point increase in the chance that local schools stayed remote."
"Black, Hispanic, and low-income people living in a district were all associated with higher likelihoods that virtual learning continued last fall"
Some Families Want to Stay Online: Via Erin Richards at USA Today
"The racial divides between where and how children were learning this spring were stark: Just over half of Black and Latino eighth graders nationwide were enrolled in fully remote programs in March, compared with 24% of white eighth graders, the most recent government data shows"
"I’m concerned about pushing kids back into schools when their parents don’t want them to go, without a real plan about how we’re going to do business better for them in-person," said Lakisha Young, co-founder and CEO of The Oakland REACH, a nonprofit that works with Black families on education issues in Oakland, California."
“On average, students at schools that were mostly remote were more likely to have been disadvantaged in the past,“ Kaufman said. “It makes it hard to interpret the poor results of remote learning, or to say remote learning, on its own, is bad.”
AASA Launches American Rescue Plan Committee: Includes more than 30 superintendents, as well as representatives from several national organizations including the Association of Education Services Agencies, the Association of School Business Officials International and the Council of Chief State School Officers.
Who Needs: A Koala hug?