Top Three
White House Signals Annual Covid Booster Strategy:
Stat: "As part of its push to encourage vaccine-weary Americans to get the updated Covid shot, the White House put forth a new selling point Tuesday: to view it as a first annual shot, akin to the annual flu shot."
“It is becoming increasingly clear, that looking forward with the Covid-19 pandemic, in the absence of a dramatically different variant, we likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual updated Covid-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population,” Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease official, said at the briefing."
"Some experts have argued the country was defaulting to an annual Covid booster program, without building the evidence that yearly shots will be needed going forward. On the other hand, the immunity provided by existing Covid vaccines does wane over time, and experts are still sussing out how long the protection against severe disease lasts generally. But federal health officials have also said that they needed to move past the point where people were recommended to get shots more than once a year."
WSJ: “Barring any new variant curveball,” said White House coronavirus coordinator Ashish Jha, “for a large majority of Americans, we are moving to a point where a single annual Covid shot should provide a high degree of protection all year."
WH COS: "The message is simple: If you are vaccinated, and over 12, get the new annual COVID shot this fall."
School Budgets Soar 16% Over 2 Years, But Experts Warn of ‘Bloodletting’ to Come: Via The 74.
"As federal COVID relief dollars flow to schools across the country, budgets have swollen more than 16% over the last two years, a recent analysis of more than 100 districts reveals."
"The average increase was 10.8% from 2020-21 to 2021-22 and 16.5% from 2020-21 to 2022-23, according to a late August audit of 118 large school system budgets published by Burbio, which has tracked K-12 policy through the pandemic."
"Nearly 1 in 5 district budgets within that group had grown by more than 25% since 2021."
"But with American Rescue Plan money set to expire in 2024, and with U.S. student enrollment projected to drop by more than 5% by 2030 due to slowed birth rates nationwide, the Georgetown K-12 finance expert warns that schools must brace for a period of “bloodletting” by 2024-25 when budgets must adjust back down."
School Mask, Vaccine Mandates Are Mostly Gone. But What if the Virus Comes Back?: CRPE's Bree Dusseault in The 74.
"Schools have been opening up across the country with relatively low fanfare in the first three weeks of August. Our regular review of 100 large and urban districts finds that all those that have started classes are in-person. None have reported closures due to COVID outbreaks. It appears that perhaps students are settling into something like the old sense of normal."
"Our review finds that just 55 have shared updated handbooks or websites that outline health and safety policies for the 2022-23 school year. Of those that have published information, it’s clear that districts are jettisoning many of the protective measures that they endorsed just months ago."
"Fewer districts are also requiring vaccinations this school year, with 10 maintaining strict policies for their staff — just a third of the number that mandated staff vaccinations just six months ago."
"That does not mean districts can afford simply to return to pre-pandemic ways of doing business. Families, staff, and students need continued clear communication about what to expect as schools return to traditional schedules and expectations, and they deserve to know what to expect if rising viral caseloads or other unanticipated events threaten the stability of yet another school year."
Federal
Commerce: Released strategy for CHIPS implementation.
HHS: Announced "$40.22 Million in Youth Mental Health Grants Awarded in August Plus $47.6 Million in New Grant Funding Opportunities for School-Based Mental Health Program."
Covid-19 Research
Effectiveness of the COVID-19 Vaccines Against Severe Disease with Omicron Sub-lineages BA.4 and BA.5 in England: Study, "VE against hospitalisation with BA.4/5 or BA.2 was slightly higher for the mRNA-1273 booster than the BNT162b2 booster at all time-points investigated, but confidence intervals overlapped. These data provide reassuring evidence of the protection conferred by the current vaccines against severe disease with BA.4 and BA.5."
Bharat Biotech's COVID-19 Nasal Vaccine Approved for Restricted Use in India: Via Reuters. "The new vaccine has the double benefit of enabling faster development of variant specific vaccines and easy nasal delivery that enables mass immunization to protect from emerging variants of concern. Also it is stable at 2-8 degrees Celsius for easy storage."
Long-term Cardiac Pathology in Individuals with Mild Initial COVID-19 Illness: Via Nature.
"Symptomatic individuals had higher heart rates and higher imaging values or contrast agent accumulation, denoting inflammatory cardiac involvement, compared to asymptomatic individuals. Structural heart disease or high levels of biomarkers of cardiac injury or dysfunction were rare in symptomatic individuals."
"At follow-up (329 days after infection), 57% of participants had persistent cardiac symptoms."
"Diffuse myocardial edema was more pronounced in participants who remained symptomatic at follow-up as compared to those who improved. "
Covid Forecast: Major Fall Surge Unlikely, but Variants Are a Wild Card: Via the Washington Post.
“There’s sort of even odds that we would have some sort of moderate resurgence in the fall. But nothing appears to be projecting anything like an omicron wave,” said Justin Lessler, a University of North Carolina epidemiologist who helps lead the collection of covid-19 planning scenarios from a group of research organizations."
COVID-19 May Have Orphaned 7.5 Million Kids Worldwide: According to a new study.
CIDRAP: "An estimated 10.5 million children lost parents or caregivers to COVID-19, and 7.5 million were orphaned, with the greatest numbers in the Africa (24.3%) and Southeast Asia (40.6%) WHO regions and the least in the Americas (14.0%), Eastern Mediterranean (14.6%), European (4.7%), and Western Pacific (1.8%) regions."
State
California: Via Burbio, "Los Angeles Unified School District's budget documents show enrollment declines for the past in the chart below, inclusive of charter schools. The district is forecasting a 3% enrollment decline for 2022/23, which would be a 10.5% decline from the 2019-20 (pre-Covid) school year."
DC: Math, reading test scores fall to lowest levels in more than 5 years (Washington Post / Axios)
Delaware: DelawareCAN’s launched a new fiscal transparency tool.
Illinois: "Attendance on the first day of classes in Chicago Public Schools almost rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, according to numbers released by the district Friday."
Massachusetts:
"How bad are the staffing shortages at the Boston Public Schools?"
"It depends on who you ask. The BPS job listings website has more than 650 open positions. A BPS spokesperson said there are currently 203 teacher vacancies and a total of 4,500 teachers across the district."
"Then there’s the discouraging results of a new survey of Boston parents, released Monday, that show that their confidence in BPS has plummeted: Only 29 percent of BPS parents polled are “very satisfied” with the district, which is down from 41 percent a year ago. Only 40 percent of parents said they’d choose a BPS school for their child if given alternative options, such as a Boston charter school, a private school, or another public system outside the city."
Via Burbio, "Boston Public Schools, MA has experienced a 4% enrollment decline each of the past two years, and in a note next to the chart below observes, "We anticipate enrollment declines for FY 23."
New York: NYC school year begins with loosened COVID-19 rules and budget cuts battle.
North Carolina: "When parents refused to send kids back to school amid COVID, this Triangle school sued."
"By the fall, parents like her faced a hard choice: whether to let their kids attend reopened schools or child care centers with no vaccines available to protect them. But after Tedford and a handful of other families refused to send their children back to the Montessori School of Durham for the new academic year, leaders there did something that, by all accounts, is unusual among North Carolina private schools. They sued the parents."
"In six separate lawsuits filed as pandemic waves roared in early 2021, MSD sought to recoup tens of thousands of dollars in tuition for classes students never attended, costs stipulated in contracts signed weeks before the first COVID-19 case was ever detected in North Carolina."
"Although MSD did offer to refund after-school care fees, which could add up to thousands per child, parents were still on the hook for that spring semester’s regular tuition, which ranges from around $2,000 to $10,000. “It’s like just throwing your money into the garbage, because you need to be with your kids taking care of them – or somebody else needs to do it,” said Mauricio Hernandez, whose 2-year-old son Armel was enrolled at MSD. “And if you’re paying for a Montessori thing, you’re not paying for someone watching videos, you’re paying for a hands-on education.”
"Even before the Montessori School of Durham threatened to take Fuchs to court in early 2020, the federal government granted the nonprofit more than $300,000 in Paycheck Protection Program funds, available to small businesses under a congressional measure designed to provide relief from the impacts of the coronavirus. The school received a second round of funding almost one year later, this time for about $291,000, according to data from the federal Small Business Administration."
International
China: NYT: "Nearly every province has recorded infections in recent days, leaving some 60 million residents locked down."
"Over the weekend, Chengdu’s Covid testing system — which has been tasked with swabbing all of the city’s 21 million residents every day — collapsed, leaving residents waiting in line for hours."
"The restrictions are certain to strain Chengdu’s economy. Even before the lockdown, the city had banned large-scale gatherings, leading to the cancellation of an international auto show that last year generated nearly $1 billion in sales."
Resources
Messaging About Vaccines and Boosters: 3 Best Practices for School Districts: Via EdWeek.
Rely on school nurses as a trusted messenger
Make vaccines easily accessible
Keep it simple and avoid fear
Texas & Tennessee Get Tutoring Right — and Model How to Expand it Nationwide: Zearn's Shalinee Sharma in The 74.
"As the CEO and co-founder of Zearn, I have had the privilege of supporting state education leaders in Tennessee and Texas who are making monumental investments in high-impact, large-scale tutoring programs. Through the TN All Corps and the Vetted Texas Tutor Corps, more than 125,000 kids in 375 districts and over 2,800 schools are accelerating their math learning."
"First, while it’s important for states to set up a centralized framework for small groups to meet for tutoring three or more times per week, it is also critical to allow local education leaders — who know their communities and available resources best — to manage the programs. In Texas, where the teacher shortage is acute, districts are looking beyond teachers and recruiting individuals, like college students, in their communities to staff their programs."
"Second, to ensure the tutoring delivered is consistent and successful, states must choose providers that offer centralized, comprehensive and ongoing professional development. In Tennessee, for instance, tutors have access to a five-module training course that teaches aspiring and alternative educators everything from the basics of tutoring to academic best practices."
"Third, to support districts and schools, states should select and vet providers to determine the best options for supporting learning recovery. Research shows kids learn more and struggle less when they tackle grade-level work, getting help with lessons and skills from earlier grades only when needed, than when they receive remedial work. Rather than utilizing math apps and worksheets that are below grade level, in Tennessee and in Texas, students engaged in this sort of accelerated learning with real-time feedback, empowering them to continue to move forward with their math learning. Real-time data insights also enable states to evaluate program effectiveness.
A Human-Centered Vision for Quality Virtual Learning:New paper from Whiteboard Advisors and Edmentum.
It’s About People, Not Technology.
Good Instruction Is Good Instruction, Regardless of Modality.
A Culture Focused on the Success of All Students is Non-Negotiable.
NAEP And A Julian Robertson Obituary Both Point To The Same Question: Could This Sector Be Any More Feckless?: Rotherham Reacts.
Starlink: "Public school districts in Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia have announced pilot projects or are already using Starlink to bring broadband internet service to students’ out-of-the-way homes via a network of satellites."
Useful: Google Docs has a speech-to-text feature.
Taylor Hawkins' 16-year-old Son, Shane: Sits behind the drums for a performance of "My Hero."
Uvalde High School: Won its first home game 34-28. It happened thanks to a miraculous 51-yard run with 36 seconds to go. And then a go-ahead, one-handed TD catch with 12 seconds left.