Top Three
President Biden Tests Positive for Covid: We all wish him a speedy recovery.
"Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that Mr. Biden had “tested positive for Covid-19. He is fully vaccinated and twice boosted and experiencing very mild symptoms.”
President Biden’s coronavirus symptoms “have improved” after completing first full day taking Pfizer’s antiviral pill, Paxlovid, his physician said in a letter, Axios reports.
Asked where the President was infected, Karine Jean-Pierre said, "I don't think that matters," the AP reports.
Enrollment Drops, Staff Shortages Cause Budget Whiplash for Top School Districts: CRPE in The 74.
"Nearly 40% of the nation’s largest school districts are facing staff reductions and school closures due to lost enrollment, according to a review of 100 large and urban districts."
"More districts are spending their one-time funds on teacher recruitment and retention – which means staffing cuts may loom on the horizon when stimulus funds dry up."
"For example, more than three-quarters of the districts offering bonuses didn’t report gaining new students between fall 2020 and fall 2021. With flat or declining enrollment, those districts may not be able to sustain the pay boosts over time."
"Of the 100 large and urban districts in our database, 38 referenced declining enrollment between the 2020-21 and the 2021-22 school years on their websites."
"Nearly one in five large districts reference staffing cuts for the 2022-23 school year, and the vast majority cite declining enrollment as the primary driver of those decisions."
Children and COVID-19 Vaccination Trends: Via AAP.
600,000 children ages 6 months-4 years have received at least one dose. Represents 3% of all 6 months-4 year-olds.
10.3 million children ages 5-11 have received at least one dose vaccine (36%). 8.4 million US children ages 5-11 completed the 2-dose vaccination series (30%).
17.4 million children and adolescents ages 12- 17 have received at least one dose (69%). 14.9 million of children and adolescents ages 12- 17 completed the 2-dose vaccination series (59%).
Federal
White House: Vice President announces that since GetInternet.gov launch in May, the Administration has signed up 1 million new households.
Covid-19 Research
Post–COVID-19 Conditions Among Children 90 Days After SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Study
"9.8% of hospitalized children with SARS-CoV-2 infections and 4.6% of nonhospitalized children with SARS-CoV-2 infections reported post-Covid conditions at 90 days."
"The most common PCC symptoms among SARS-CoV-2–infected children were respiratory (eg, cough, difficulty breathing, or shortness of breath; 2.0%) and systemic (eg, fatigue or weakness; 1.8%)."
Risk of Reinfection, Vaccine Protection, and Severity of Infection with the BA.5 Omicron Subvariant: Study
"We found a high protection against BA.5 from prior omicron infection in triple-vaccinated individuals, and similar vaccine effectiveness for BA.5 infection as currently for BA.2."
"In an analysis adjusted for covariates, BA.5 infection was associated with an increased risk of hospitalisation which needs confirmation and continued surveillance as hospitalisations were low and stable during the study period."
COVID-19-Linked School Closures Impacted Mental Health: Study using the Pediatric Health Information System database to assess percent changes in ED discharges and hospitalizations among children aged 3-17 in 2020 (after statewide COVID-19-related school closure orders) compared with 2019. They found "suicide or self-injury and depressive disorders drove acute MH care encounters in 44 U.S. children’s hospitals after COVID-19–related school closures."
Vaccine Lotteries for Children: Considering the ethics of financial incentives for children.
Endemic Covid-19 Looks Pretty Brutal: David Wallace-Wells in the NYT.
"It may surprise you to learn, given the pandemic mood of the country and indeed the world, that probably half of all Covid infections have happened this calendar year — and it’s only July."
"In late April and early May, when nearly as many New Yorkers got sick as had during the initial Omicron surge that peaked in January — perhaps 1.5 million in the spring surge, compared with 1.8 million in the earlier wave, according to a pair of CUNY preprints using the same methodology — hardly anyone noticed."
"Trevor Bedford, a computational virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle is reluctant to dwell on semantic debates about what constitutes a “pandemic phase” rather than an “endemic phase” for Covid-19, for instance."
"But if we insist that the country is still in a pandemic phase, he says, we’re not going to be able to downshift from that anytime soon, since conditions aren’t likely to look very different for years — and the country’s accumulating immunological protection, if imperfect, is still a categorical break from those earlier phases in which we first calibrated our fears. “If we’re saying that we’re still in a pandemic right now, it’s still going to be a pandemic in year seven — we’ll still be in a pandemic then."
"Right now, Bedford says, around 5 percent of the country is getting infected with the coronavirus each month and he expects that pattern to largely continue. What would that imply death-wise, I ask? As a ballpark estimate, he says, going forward we can expect that every year, around 50 percent of Americans will be infected and more than 100,000 will die."
"Covid-19 has always been a disease of the elderly, defined almost more by its age skew of mortality than by any of its other characteristics, with risk doubling roughly every eight years and octogenarians hundreds of times more at risk of death than young adults."
“We knew from relatively early on that we would expect about two mutations a month,” said Francois Balloux, a computational biologist at the University College of London. “That means that we would have expected, after two and a half years, roughly 70 mutations. And actually that’s where we are.”
"What’s been more surprising, he says, was how significantly some of those mutations changed the course of the disease — with Delta first, and then, most strikingly, with Omicron, which he said marked such a break in the pandemic trajectory that “I’m tempted to think about it in terms of two successive pandemics.”
State
Connecticut: The School and State Finance Project, FutureEd, and ConnCAN analyzed How Connecticut School Districts Plan to Spend Covid-Relief Funds.
School districts and charter organizations have spent only 11% of that money as of July 2022.
All told, 71% of Connecticut’s local education agencies are adding teachers and interventionists, compared to 59% in the Burbio's national database. Districts with the highest rates of economically disadvantaged students are putting about half of their Covid-relief allotment toward staffing.
"Given the one-time nature of ESSER funds, Connecticut’s investments in recurring staffing costs raise questions about how these positions will be funded when federal aid is no longer available."
"Districts and charters earmarked $229 million to target learning loss, with about $61 million going toward curriculum and instructional materials, $50 million for summer learning programs, and more than $40 million each for afterschool programs and tutoring. About 59% of districts plan to use their federal aid on summer-learning programs and 54 percent on curriculum and materials."
"More than two-thirds of Connecticut districts are investing a total of $71 million in mental health support."
DC: Will require students 12 and older to be vaccinated against COVID-19 this fall.
Michigan: Flint Community Schools to temporarily require masks at start of the school year.
Virginia: Fairfax school employees accused of stealing as many as 35,000 laptops.
Economic Recovery
The State of Apprenticeship In the US: Via Apprenticeships for America. A long-run strategy for the system would embody the following 10 components:
Effective branding and broad marketing
Incentives for selling and organizing apprenticeships to private and public employers
Programs to develop credible occupational standards with continuing research
Endpoint assessments of apprentices and programs
Certification body to issue credentials
Making apprenticeships easy for employers to create and to track progress
Funding for quality instruction in off-job classes
Counseling, screening prospective apprentices to ensure they are well-prepared
Training the trainers for apprenticeship
Research, evaluation, and dissemination
Resources
Stories from the Field: Conversations on COVID-19 Prevention with 3 Exemplary Charter Schools: Via the CDC.
Research Highlights Positive Impacts of Math-Focused Summer Learning:Via K12 Dive. "Summer math learning programs can be effective in mitigating learning losses disproportionately experienced by low-income pre-K-12 students during the pandemic, according to research published Wednesday by the American Educational Research Association."
Teacher Survey: Via EdChoice and Morning Consult. Report / Crosstabs
Teachers report spending over $500 of their own money in the last school year on classroom materials, and they spent around $300 on professional development.
It's Hot Out There: So work smarter, not harder with your lawn care and child care.