Top Three
CDC Approves Pfizer Vaccine for 5-11 Yr. Olds: CDC Statement and updated guidance. More from Politico and Stat.
Statement from Director Walensky: "Together, with science leading the charge, we have taken another important step forward in our nation’s fight against the virus that causes COVID-19. We know millions of parents are eager to get their children vaccinated and with this decision, we now have recommended that about 28 million children receive a COVID-19 vaccine. As a mom, I encourage parents with questions to talk to their pediatrician, school nurse or local pharmacist to learn more about the vaccine and the importance of getting their children vaccinated.”
Related:
Test to Stay Toolkit: New Mexico is rolling out a Test to Stay program with a really thoughtful guide/toolkit.
"To participate in Test to Stay requires an individual to test negative on rapid COVID-19 tests on days one, three, and five following exposure (day zero is the day of exposure). A school may require individuals test more frequently than the required three tests."
"Individuals who opt-out of Test to Stay and have had close contact with someone with COVID-19 at school will have to quarantine at home."
New Guidebook to Help Districts Launch High-Dosage Tutoring Programs: CFC released a new guidebook (Press Release) for building a tutoring program in collaboration with a community partner.
Contains actionable step-by-step materials to establish and scale a local program, including a capacity calculator to assist systems in determining how many tutors are needed, sample criteria for identifying potential tutors, and sample tutoring schedules.
What to Expect When You’re Electing
Results:
Nifty exit poll interactive from the Washington Post.
Republican Glenn Youngkin won the closely watched Virginia gubernatorial race.
Republican Winsome Sears becomes the first woman of color elected as Virginia's lieutenant governor. Was born in Jamaica, the first Black Republican woman to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly, and former vice president of the Virginia Board of Education.
Republicans claim VA House majority after flipping 6th seat.
Gov. Phil Murphy leads Republican Jack Ciattarelli by roughly 15,000 votes out of more than 2.4 million counted.
New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney (D), “the longest-serving legislative leader in NJ history, is on the verge of losing his own State Senate seat in what could be a stunning political upset.... Edward Durr (R), a conservative truck driver who reported spending just $153 on his campaign, leads Sweeney by 2,009 votes.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey wins re-election
"Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown declared victory in his write-in campaign for a fifth term. Brown lost the Democratic primary earlier this year to Democratic Socialist India Walton. About 59% of votes had been cast for write-in candidates, and 41% had gone for Walton."
“Minneapolis voters on Tuesday soundly rejected a proposal to replace the Minneapolis Police Department, crushing the hopes of supporters that outrage over the killing of George Floyd would translate into one of the nation’s most far reaching experiments in transforming public safety."
Michelle Wu won Boston’s mayoral election.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a progressive prosecutor, won a second term.
Democrat Eric Adams won the NYC mayoral race.
Reactions:
Kristen Soltis Anderson (featuring PIE Net polling): "But they are also alarmed by the learning loss that happened during the year that children were kept out of the classroom, worried about the effect of taking school resource officers out of public schools, upset over efforts to gut Gifted & Talented education, and, as a result, want to have more say and choice in their child’s education. That’s not just “critical race theory,” and dismissing all concerns around educational quality as code for a debate over race won’t serve Democrats well."
Dan Pfeiffer: "Youngkin made the teaching of Critical Race Theory a major talking point, which is impressive because it is a complete nonissue. A fake, Trumped-up controversy promoted by the Right-Wing media. There is not a single student being taught CRT anywhere in the world, let alone Virginia. Yet, Youngkin was able to make a fake issue very real to Virginia voters."
Battle Born Collective statement: "Terry McAuliffe ran the milquetoast campaign he wanted to run—where every other word he uttered was 'Donald Trump' instead of focusing on the issues voters cared about the most. The DC establishment consolidated support behind their one-time rainmaker and in doing so sidelined two potentially history-making Black women running for the same office. There should be no questions or scapegoats about why specific demographics didn’t turn out. Terry McAuliffe offered an uninspired return to yesterday, while voters were focused on what must come next."
“Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Tuesday’s Virginia gubernatorial election was about schools. It wasn’t about Donald Trump, or inflation, or defunding the police, or Medicare for All, or President Joe Biden’s infrastructure agenda. It wasn’t really about critical race theory or transgender rights—though those issues shaded the situation a bit by highlighting anxieties surrounding the education system.”
“Fundamentally, the contest was about schools—specifically, how many parents remain frustrated by the way public schools have handled the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Covid-19 has been terrible for everyone, and it has been especially hard on parents. Unpredictable school closures didn’t just screw up parents’ work schedules; they drove millions of parents, including 3 million women, out of the workforce altogether. Remote learning doesn’t work well for most kids and has been accompanied by rising levels of depression and anxiety among students.”
“It is always the case that too much can be read into the results of these off-year elections... But Democrats would be foolhardy to underestimate what happened Tuesday. To lose a state like Virginia, which has been trending Democratic for a decade, and to struggle so much in New Jersey suggests that, unless things change, only the bluest of states or districts are likely to be safe in 2022."
"Education, normally a Democratic strength, emerged as a potent issue for Youngkin, and other Republicans are certain to try to replicate his success. In Virginia, among the roughly quarter of the electorate that cited the issue as the most important in their vote, Youngkin was winning a majority of them."
"The issue encompasses everything from curriculum issues, particularly the flash point of race and racial history and what is being taught in schools, to frustrations over school closures during the worst of the pandemic that cost many students precious months of classroom teaching. Democrats haven’t found an effective way to debate these issues."
"The problem with the McAuliffe strategy is that it fell back on technicalities — as in, yes, fourth graders in the Commonwealth of Virginia are presumably not being assigned the academic works of Derrick Bell — while evading the context that has made this issue part of a polarizing national debate."
"That context, obvious to any sentient person who lived through the past few years, is an ideological revolution in elite spaces in American culture, in which concepts heretofore associated with academic progressivism have permeated the language of many important institutions, from professional guilds and major foundations to elite private schools and corporate H.R. departments."
Brad Wilcox and Max Eden in WSJ, "Traditionally Democrats have held the edge over Republicans when it comes to education because they promise to shower schools with money. But Democrats now embrace the subversion of parental authority to further a radical educational agenda. This gives Republicans an opportunity. By helping the GOP to become the parents’ party, Mr. Youngkin’s campaign provides national Republicans a policy playbook that appeals to parents like Marie Mierzejewski."
Rotherham Reacts: "Either Biden or Secretary of Education Cardona are well situated to give a speech or two seizing the 70 percent position in this “debate.” Most parents are fine with a honest accounting of American history but not with a version of history that says America is nothing more than a litany of sins or implying that children somehow bear responsibility for any of this. Most people want their kids to learn about race and racism but don’t want their second graders getting warmed over Kendiism or being told that aspiring to colorblindness makes them complicit in structural racism. Those are the parents to speak to, which marginalizes the more extreme voices on the right and the left." More here in The 74.
Sen. Mark Warner (also a former Virginia governor), told CNN, “Only in Washington, do people think that it is a smart strategy to take a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure and prevent your President from signing that bill into law. And that's somehow a good strategy."
This nugget from Politico on the NJ gubernatorial race: "But, privately, the party was riven with shock, confusion and behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Democrats hadn’t detected a red undercurrent that propelled little-known legislative candidates to victory over previously well-entrenched Democrats and put Ciattarelli within striking distance of the governor. Their internal polling was dead wrong."
Based on last night’s election results, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifts the ratings of four 2022 Senate races towards the Republicans. Arizona, Georgia and Nevada move from Lean Democratic to Toss Up. Colorado moves from Safe Democratic top Likely Democratic.
Federal
Reconciliation:
Speaker Pelosi is looking to pass both the Build Back Better Act and the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill this week.
Section by section from the House Committee on Rules for the Build Back Better Act
Speaker Pelosi is adding four weeks of paid family and medical leave into the reconciliation package.
Sen. Manchin was “bombarded with text messages” from House progressives over the weekend and that led to the moderate senator pushing back in a public statement on Monday, Politico reports.
Also from Politico: “If you’ve been paying attention this year, progressives yelling at Manchin has only further entrenched him in most cases.”
Vaccine Mandate: Forty Senate Republicans say they will use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to challenge President Biden’s new order requiring large employers to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations.
COVID-19 Research
Vaccine Resistant Variants: Pfizer CEO says a vaccine-resistant coronavirus variant is 'likely' to emerge. He said it would take Pfizer 95 days of a variant's discovery to customize a vaccine to address it.
Vaccine Mandates for School Staff Stall Out: Via Chalkbeat.
Boosters: CDC is out with data on boosters. Most who got mRNA vaccines appear to be sticking with same brand; among those who got J&J first, Moderna seems to be the most popular.
Widespread Coronavirus Infection Found in Iowa Deer: New study (and NYT article). "Scientists said the findings pose worrisome implications for the spread of the coronavirus, although they were not able to identify how the deer might have contracted the virus from humans. There is no evidence that deer have passed the virus back to humans."
NIH to Study Long-term Effects of COVID-19 in Pregnancy: Effortwill follow up to 1,500 pregnant patients with COVID-19 and their offspring for four years.
Study on UK's Third Wave: New study:
"We show that the third wave of infections in England was driven primarily by the Delta variant in younger, unvaccinated people."
"The highest prevalence of infection was among 13 to 24 year olds."
"Unvaccinated people were three times more likely than double-vaccinated people to test positive."
State
Arizona: The Arizona Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court judgment that found the Republican-controlled Legislature violated the state constitution by including new laws banning school mask mandates and a series of other measures in unrelated budget bills.
California: LAUSD to offer voluntary coronavirus vaccines to kids 5 to 11.
Maryland: More than 10% of Baltimore City Schools workers who refused to get vaccinated by deadline now face termination.
Michigan: Several Detroit schools move to virtual learning after COVID cases.
Montana: The Governor nixed a kids’ vaccine campaign, so health officials plan their own.
Ohio: Geneva Area City Schools teachers to strike because they don’t want to continue teaching in-person and online classes at the same time.
Rhode Island: Gov. McKee, Department of Education announce $20 million to help hard-hit districts counter pandemic learning loss.
Tennessee: Series of stories examine impact of COVID-19 on K-12 education in Black Tennessee communities.
International
South Korea: Teens drive up COVID-19 cases ahead of full school reopening.
UK: The Department for Education estimates that 3.2% of all pupils – around 248,000 children – were not in class for reasons connected to COVID.
Economic Recovery
Aspen Institute Names 150 Community Colleges Eligible for Its $1M Award: Details here.
The COVID Motherhood Penalty: NBER paper.
"Conducting decompositions, we find women had a greater likelihood to telework, higher education levels and a less-impacted occupational distribution, which all contributed to lessening negative impacts relative to men."
"The largest relative reductions in employment and hours of work were among women with only school-age children."
"The closure of schools and day care centers due to COVID-19 and the relatively large reductions in employment of women associated with caring for children who returned home could potentially have similar long-term impacts. Lost opportunities for advancement due to absence from work and depreciation of human capital related to the pandemic could lead to long-lasting negative impacts on relative labor market outcomes of women"
Families With Children at Increased Risk of Eviction, With Renters of Color Facing Greatest Hardship: Via CBPP
Resources
Not Just Recovery, But Reinvention — 3 Lessons from Schools Where COVID Innovations Offer New Solutions: Great piece by Jenny Curtin is senior program officer in Education at the Barr Foundation, Melanie Dukes a senior program officer at the Overdeck Family Foundation, and Saskia Levy Thompson a program director for new designs to advance student learning at Carnegie Corporation.
Public, Parents, and Education: New EdChoice/Morning Consult Polling
One out of four school parents have had to quarantine their child in the past month due to COVID-19.
Seven out of 10 school parents still believe that schools should provide multiple learning options for students
Roughly one out of five school parents have switched the type of school their child is attending this year when compared to last year.
With the CDC Approving Shots for 5-11 Yr Olds: They also approve of this approach in administering them.