Top Three
Leaders We Need Now: NAESP conducted focus groups with principals to explore how schools changed in 2020–2021. This is their first report.
"They anticipate that they will continue to use flexible staffing practices to hire and retain staff, including school nurses and school counselors; build partnerships with community and government agencies to help schools recover and strengthen mental health supports; and scale the use of remote instructional technology to supplement and extend learning."
"But principals also point to some ongoing challenges, such as future educator shortages due to low morale and early retirements, diversifying the teacher and principal pipeline, and healing fractured communities."
School Quarantines Should End: Emily Oster says replace them with test-to-stay (or nothing). Good long piece worth your time.
Related from Stat: "As ‘test to stay’ gears up nationwide, Massachusetts’ ‘rocky’ rollout raises questions"
KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: New survey results suggests vaccine hesitancy with children has actually increased. More via NBC News.
3 in 10 parents of 5-11 year-olds (27%) are eager to get a vaccine for their younger child as soon as one is authorized, while a third say they will wait a while to see how the vaccine is working.
3 in 10 parents say they will definitely not get the vaccine for their 12-17 year-old (31%) or their 5-11 year-old (30%).
53% of parents are worried their child may be required to get vaccinated for COVID-19 even if they don’t want them to.
Federal
Build Back Better Framework:
White House Fact Sheet, Summary, and website
House Rules committee draft text
Key provisions:
Expand access to preschool for more than 6 million children (6 years of funding)
Limit child care costs for families to no more than 7% of income, for families earning up to 250% of state median income. It enables states to expand access to about 20 million children. Parents must be working, seeking work, in training or taking care of a serious health issue. (6 years of funding)
Extend the expanded Child Tax Credit for one year but make refundability of the Child Tax Credit permanent.
Increase the maximum Pell Grant by $550 and expand access to DREAMers
Invest in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and minority-serving institutions (MSIs)
Not a lot of detail but the package "will increase the Labor Department’s annual spending on workforce development by 50% for each of the next 5 years."
"Progressive lawmakers said they wanted to see the actual text and also wanted assurances it could pass the 50-50 Senate, with some even calling for a Senate vote first on the final text, which may not be ready for days."
Rep. Brendan Boyle sums things up: “We are just missing two things. What exactly is going to be in the bill and how we're going to pay for it? Other than that we are good to go.”
Covid-19 Research
UK Study Finds Vaccinated People Easily Transmit Delta Variant in Households: Study / Reuters story.
"The study, which enrolled 621 participants, found that of 205 household contacts of people with Delta COVID-19 infection, 38% of household contacts who were unvaccinated went on to test positive, compared to 25% of vaccinated contacts."
"Vaccinated contacts who tested positive for COVID-19 on average had received their shots longer ago than those who tested negative, which the authors said was evidence of waning immunity and supported the need for booster shots."
"Imperial epidemiologist Neil Ferguson said that the transmissibility of Delta meant that it was unlikely Britain would reach "herd immunity" for long."
"Fully vaccinated people cleared the infection more quickly than those who are unvaccinated, but their peak viral load – the greatest amount of SARS-CoV-2 virus found in their nose and throat – was similar to that seen in unvaccinated people, which may explain why they can still readily pass on the virus in household settings."
Fluvoxamine: Study
"Treatment with fluvoxamine (100 mg twice daily for 10 days) among high-risk outpatients with early diagnosed COVID-19 reduced the need for hospitalisation defined as retention in a COVID-19 emergency setting or transfer to a tertiary hospital."
NYT reports,"A large clinical trial has found that a common and inexpensive antidepressant lowered the odds that high-risk Covid-19 patients would be hospitalized."
"The new findings are also expected to boost the popularity of the drug in less wealthy countries: A 10-day course of the drug costs about $4.
Also - this research was funded out of Fast Grants (more here).
Weighing COVID Vaccines for Kids: Via Axios
"This benefits the individual child because they're not going to be held hostage by COVID anymore. They're not going to be quarantined because of an exposure. They're not going to be stuck on virtual learning," Adalja says."
"This is something that makes them individually more resilient to the virus, and their schools and their organizations and the activities that they're part of more resilient to the virus," he adds."
Public Health Messaging Lessons for the Next Pandemic: Good piece from Axios.
"Instead of constantly trying to communicate risk in an absolute way — and risk being caught out when the disease changes — epidemiologists could take a page from engineers, who regularly update their picture as new data and tools become available."
"Most of all, public health experts need to be honest about what they don't know, straightforward about the fact that guidance in a disease emergency is always conditional, and clear about the data that drives that guidance."
Pfizer: Announced the U.S. Government was purchasing an additional 50 million pediatric doses of vaccine, to be delivered by April 2022 - "to support preparedness for pediatric vaccinations," including for kids under 5, "should they receive regulatory authorization"
"Initial data from the other two age cohorts in the ongoing Pfizer-BioNTech clinical trial in children – those 2 to <5 years of age and those 6 months to <2 years of age – are expected as soon as fourth quarter 2021 or early first quarter 2022."
By the way, hidden in the Pfizer data last week was this gem: one of the kids "ingested a penny." (page 46)
COVID Cases Drop 20%: Delta departing...
State
Arizona: Superintendent of public instruction Kathy Hoffman writes, "In Arizona, Collaboration with Our State’s Public Universities Is Helping K-12 Students Succeed."
"By leaning on ASU’s expertise and experience, and by using our federal recovery funds and funding from other state and philanthropic partners, we quickly launched the Arizona Virtual Teachers Institute."
"This online professional development program provides educators statewide with opportunities to learn the skills needed to thrive in new teaching environments and meet students’ varying needs — at no cost to them or their schools. As of last month, over 13,000 educators at more than 1,200 Arizona schools have participated in the program."
"ASU Prep Digital’s Math Momentum program, designed to boost math and digital literacy skills in middle-schoolers, serves 5,000 students at over 40 schools severely impacted by the pandemic, with plans to expand further over the next three years."
California: Plans ambitious effort to vaccinate young children.
"In California, shots won’t start going into youngsters’ arms until an additional review by the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup, a coalition of public health experts from California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. That review might take an additional day to complete."
"Los Angeles County officials estimated that shots could be available late next week."
"Based on that timeline, children could complete their two-dose vaccine regimen in time for the busy winter holiday season."
Colorado: "A federal judge has issued a restraining order against a suburban Denver county’s policy allowing parents to opt their children out of a mask mandate at school, finding that the rule violates the rights of students with disabilities who are vulnerable to COVID-19."
Florida: The state of Florida has withheld funding from two school districts over their mask mandates:
"School officials in Alachua and Broward counties on Wednesday said the state docked school board salaries and overall funding in amounts equal to federal aid packages meant to blunt the state’s sanctions on mask requirements. This month, more than $164,000 was withheld from the Alachua school district and more than $455,000 was withheld from Broward."
Kansas: Students four times as likely to get COVID-19 at schools without mask requirement.
"Marci Nielsen, chief COVID-19 coordination adviser to Gov. Laura Kelly, said schools that encourage but don’t require masks or have no mask policy have reported 218 cases per 100,000 students from outbreaks connected to those schools. For schools where a mask is required, the case rate is 47."
Louisiana: "Gov. John Bel Edwards ended a three-month-old mask-wearing rule across the state, with one exception: K-12 schools that went against guidance from the CDC and don't ask students exposed to the virus to quarantine."
"New Orleans area school systems had a mixed response Wednesday to the lifting of Louisiana's indoor mask mandate, with four suburban school systems nixing mask requirements, Jefferson Parish debating a change and Orleans Parish schools keeping its mandate in place."
Massachusetts: School mask requirement extended into 2022.
New York:
The New York State Council of School Superintendents is proposing to the state department of health to adopt a “Test to Stay ” policy.
"The state Health Department said in a Wednesday memo that county health departments may allow the so-called "test and stay" approach, on a countywide basis only, to help keep unvaccinated students from having to leave school to quarantine after close contact with someone who has or may have COVID-19."
"‘It’s really, really simple’: 110 rapid COVID testing machines delivered to Monroe County schools."
Economic Recovery
GDP: Grew at a 2.0% annualized rate in the third quarter, below the 2.8% economists were expecting. It was the slowest increase since the end of the 2020 recession.
Resources
The “Big Quit” Is an Opportunity to Fix Our Broken Education System: More from Manno
Preschool Enrollment Has Plunged: What That Means for School Readiness: Via EdWeek.
No, The Vaccine Will Not Protect You: From this bad choice.
Hungry Hippos: Eating a pumpkin.