Top Three
Under 5s:
Gov. Baker (MA) and Gov. Polis (CO) sent a letter urging the FDA to ‘expeditiously’ review Moderna vaccine for young children, saying nearly 20 million children younger than five-years-old remain “unnecessarily” at risk for the virus.
American Academy of Pediatrics,"Now that Moderna has submitted all pediatric data to FDA, we urge an immediate, transparent and thorough review. Families of children under 5 have waited a long time for the reassurance of a safe and effective vaccine."
Related: Switzerland authorizes Moderna's COVID vaccine for 6-11 year olds
Restoring Pandemic Losses Will Require Major Changes in Schools and Classrooms: Via CRPE and Brookings.
"Many school and district leaders had hoped to accelerate learning in 2021-22 by teaching kids at grade level and providing just-in-time help with ideas or skills lost to pandemic absences. But uneven classroom attendance—among students and teachers alike—prevented steady progress."
"One major district leader reported that half of high school students were missing too many days to pass their courses. Others said one or more schools closed every week for lack of teachers. Still others said that student and teacher absences forced constant changes in teacher-student pairings. Leaders in two districts said teachers and students learned bad habits during the pandemic. They said their teachers needed to stop using canned materials and instead take advantage of in-person settings for discussion and student problem-solving."
"In the wake of a crisis that directed attention to district-level actions and policy, leaders are trying to find the right balance between top-down priority setting and school-level discretion. Many are turning away from state or nationally normed testing and relying on school-level data and homegrown assessments. Some district leaders have stopped trying to standardize practices across their districts, and they are empowering individual schools to deal with their own combination of student needs and teaching challenges."
Internet For All: The Biden Administration officially launched the $45 billion “Internet for All Initiative" with three Notices of Funding Opportunity and a new website: https://www.internetforall.gov/
Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program ($42.5 billion)
Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program ($1 billion)
State Digital Equity Act programs ($1.5 billion)
Federal
White House: Prepares to ration vaccines according to Politico:
“Among the sacrifices being weighed are limiting access to its next generation of vaccines to only the highest-risk Americans — a rationing that would have been unthinkable just a year ago.”
"But as the government’s cash reserves dwindle, officials are increasingly concluding that these types of difficult choices will soon have to be made. And they are quietly preparing to shift responsibility for other key parts of the pandemic response to the private sector as early as 2023."
“Inaction in Congress is already forcing difficult and unnecessary compromises that have dire consequences for the American people,” a White House spokesperson said, adding that failing to authorize additional funding would force “even more difficult tradeoffs.”
"More immediately, the administration is holding off investing in the manufacturing of potential new Covid treatments, people familiar with the matter said."
USAID: Announced $5.6 million to address the impacts of COVID-19 on education and economic growth in Laos.
Covid-19 Research
Omicron Variants: Via Science. "Omicron’s knack for immune escape is dramatic. Based on its immunological profile, it “should be called SARS-3... an entirely distinct virus."
"Once again, South Africa is at the forefront of the changing COVID-19 pandemic. Epidemiologists and virologists are watching closely as cases there rise sharply again, just 5 months after the Omicron variant caused a dramatic surge. This time, the drivers are two new subvariants of Omicron named BA.4 and BA.5, which the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa first detected in January."
"Like the earlier versions of Omicron, they have a remarkable ability to evade immunity from vaccines, previous infection, or both—a disturbing portent for the future of the pandemic and a potentially serious complication for vaccine developers."
"Omicron’s rapid evolution creates difficult decisions for vaccine- and policymakers about whether to shift to a new set of vaccines or stick with the current formulations, which are based on the virus that emerged in Wuhan, China, more than 2 years ago. Moderna has tested two versions of its mRNA vaccine, containing the ancestral strain and either the Beta variant—which spread in South Africa for a while in 2021 but is now gone—or the Omicron BA.1 variant. The company has not yet reported data on how well they might protect against the new subvariants."
State
California: Set to launch hundreds of community schools with $635 million in grants.
Illinois: Chicago Public Schools CEO tests positive for COVID-19. Wishing him a speedy recovery.
Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh Public School students and teachers will have to wear masks in school again starting Friday.
South Carolina: Virtual tutoring to help students.
International
Canada: The number of New Brunswick children being home-schooled has more than doubled during the pandemic, with 2,240 applications approved by the Department of Education this year. Applications to attend private school have also increased 43% this year, compared to pre-COVID, with 1,385 approved.
China: Shanghai announced that it aims to reduce the number of new COVID-19 cases at the community level to zero by mid-May, and that it will prioritize reopening schools so that students can prepare for the upcoming national exams.
Economic Recovery
Record-Setting Quit Rates Are About More Than Just Pay: Via Morning Consult.
Jobs Numbers Hide Significant Shifts in the Economy: New Burning Glass Institute Report.
"On the surface, the comparison shows that the current recovery is unfolding far faster and more comprehensively than was true in either prior jobs crisis."
"However, seen in another light, these data are sobering. Fully one in six U.S. industries continues to struggle with a workforce that has been, in a literal sense, decimated: reduced by 10% or more in a matter of months, and failing to recover over a period of more than two years."
Resources
Baby Formula Shortage:
The baby formula shortage will last for the "balance of the year," the CEO of Perrigo — one of the four companies that control nearly 90% of the U.S. baby formula market — told Reuters.
Abbott Nutrition on Friday said that baby formula products could be available on shelves six to eight weeks after it reopens its Sturgis, Michigan, site, which was closed down after a recall from the FDA.
"Getting into the industry takes years, and it requires many approvals and upfront investment. That is why there haven’t been many challengers to Similac and Enfamil during the past 40 years, Ms. Modi said. “There was little incentive to create more manufacturing capacity in recent years because demand for infant formula hasn’t been growing much—there’s only so many mouths to feed.”
Inside a College Counseling Center Struggling With the Student Mental Health Crisis: Via Hechinger.
"On college campuses nationwide, the number of students seeking services increased by an average of 30 percent between 2009 and 2015 — more than five times the average rate of enrollment growth — and has continued to climb since then. At the University of Iowa, the number of clinical service hours provided by its counselors rose by nearly 90 percent in the 10 years preceding the pandemic."
Boys & Girls Clubs of America Partners with Saga Education on Evidence-Based Tutor Training Program: The training will be delivered to more than 400,000 volunteers and staff to assist Club members with improving their grades.
How U.S. Teachers Are Helping Ukrainian Students ‘Half a World Apart’: Via EdWeek.
"The four students are taking Gauna’s class on top of a full course load in Ukraine. These students are pursuing dual diplomas: one from ASU Prep Digital and one from their high school in Ukraine, where many schools have shut down since Russia invaded the country in February, and students have fled to new countries and enrolled in schools there."
"Following the outbreak of the war, a member of ASU Prep Digital’s counseling services held a training for its teachers on how to best respond to the experiences of students experiencing trauma, which Parker said helped her with her “feelings of shock and uncertainty.”
“They give me hope,” Parker said. “Every time I talk with my Ukrainian students, I’m hopeful for the future.”
A Teacher Tells His Class: That he put a picture of his favorite student in a box...