California Schools
2024
COVID-19 Campaign
We Can Do This: An Assessment of the Department of Health and Human Services COVID-19 Public Health Campaign October 2024
Litigation COVID-19 LAUSD
"At this stage, we must accept Plaintiffs’ allegations that the vaccine does not prevent the spread of COVID-19 as true. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556. And, because of this, Jacobson does not apply. LAUSD cannot get around this standard by stating that Plaintiffs’ allegations are wrong. Nor can LAUSD do so by providing facts that do not contradict Plaintiffs’ allegations. It is true that we “need not [] accept as true allegations that contradict matters properly subject to judicial notice. ” Sprewell v. Golden State Warriors, 266 F.3d 979, 988 (9th Cir. 2001). But even if the materials offered by LAUSD are subject to judicial notice, they do not support rejecting Plaintiffs’ allegations. LAUSD only provides a CDC publication that says “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.” But “safe and effective” for what? LAUSD implies that it is for preventing transmission of COVID-19 but does not adduce judicially noticeable facts that prove this." (page 19)
CDC Guidance in Schools
CDC Releases Guidance for Preventing Spread of Infections in Schools to Keep Children Healthy and Learning May 17, 2024
Budget California Schools
Local Fiscal Health Dashboard California Policy Center
Municipal Finance Triage Guide California Local Elected Officials (CLEO)
California taxpayers spent $4 billion on 401,000 students no longer in the state’s public schools July 14, 2024
"Most of California’s school districts received funding for ghost students, with over 300 districts getting at least $1,000 per student. Top recipients of taxpayer money for students no longer in their schools included San Diego Unified ($90.9 million), Long Beach Unified ($73.8 million), and Santa Ana Unified ($59.3 million), which each had thousands of ghost students.
The biggest winner was the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), which collected $508 million for 50,400 ghost students in the 2022-23 school year, Reason Foundation finds.....
"For California lawmakers, the solution is straightforward. Education funding should be tied directly to students actually in schools, which is what LCFF is intended to do. California should allocate K-12 education funding based on current year enrollment and eliminate Minimum State Aid giveaways undermining the state’s funding formula. Doing so would be fiscally prudent and start to put the right incentives in place for public schools."
Legislative Analysts Office The 2024-25 Budget Multiyear Budget Outlook May 23, 2024
Joint Legislative Budget Plan 2024-25
Gov. Newsom, school groups settle funding fight, with some more money coming as IOUs EdSource May 29, 2024
"The settlement calls for three years of deferrals, ranging from $1.3 billion to $2.6 billion, from 2023-24 through 2025-26. The last deferral, for $2.4 billion, would make up about 2% of funding to community colleges and school districts. Together, the three deferrals should have no appreciable impact on school and community college budgets but will require $2.4 billion in future school funding to pay off. They will involve an accounting shift from June, the last month of one fiscal year, to July, the first month of the next."
May Revise webinar breaks down budget proposals and their implications for LEAs May 16, 2024
"Robert Manwaring, senior policy and fiscal advisor for Children Now and former K–12 education director of the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, said to think of the maneuver like a school bond where the state has already spent the money and is going to then pay for it in future years out of the non-Prop 98 side of the budget.
“That may sound to some like a pretty good deal, because schools get to keep the $8.8 billion and the expense of it is on future non-Prop 98 side of the budget,” Manwaring said. “The problem is that $8.8 billion creates the basis for the calculation for the 2023–24 minimum guarantee, the 2024–25 guarantee and beyond.” "
Rainy day fund would bail out schools, community colleges in Newsom’s 2024-25 state budget January 10, 2024
"Gov. Gavin Newsom would protect schools and community colleges from the brunt of an $11.3 billion projected drop in state revenue for education, under a proposed 2024-25 state budget he released on Wednesday. The budget calls for covering all current levels of funding and existing commitments for new and expanded programs, plus a less than 1% cost-of-living increase for next year.
The three-year decline in revenue, both for schools and the overall $38.7 billion in the state general fund, is $30 billion less than the Legislative Analyst’s Office had projected a month ago, easing the burden of balancing the budget and avoiding the possibility of drastic budget cuts or late payments — at least for community colleges and TK-12."
Articles
Maybe we should get rid of the U.S. Department of Education EdSource November 20, 2024
"But here’s the paradox: Without a Department of Education and federal resources, there’s less leverage to enforce his ideological agenda. As a result, we may be in a bizarre quandary of having to choose between these two opposite visions. Given the choice between a Department of Education that no longer champions equity and no department at all, perhaps it’s time to consider the latter."
‘Dangerous people ... have taken control.’ LAUSD declares itself an immigrant, LGBTQ+ sanctuary LA Times November 28, 2024
"The Los Angeles school board united in defense of immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community Tuesday, affirming the school system as a sanctuary for these students and employees and calling for a new focus on politically informed civics education.
In all, four resolutions were brought forward by L.A. Board of Education President Jackie Goldberg — and all passed without opposition."
California schools chief pledges to resist cuts in funding if Trump axes U.S. Dept. of Education EdSource November 8, 2024
"But Thurmond said that the California Department of Education is also preparing for a worst-case scenario: large-scale cuts to federal funding. In that case, he said, he is working with the California Legislature on a backup plan.
“If it comes to it, as a contingency, we are prepared to introduce legislation that would backfill funding for special education programs, Title I programs and programs that are similar in its scope,” Thurmond said. Title I money supplements state and local education funding for low-income students."
Cellphone bans don’t solve the real problem — addictive social media October 14, 2024
"Cellphones themselves aren’t the problem. Notice that we don’t need to ban the Calculator, Camera app, Google search, or many other tools, because those tools don’t have the intentional captivating pull of direct messaging, new posts or endless scrolling.
It seems to me that social media apps and games that are optimized for long-term addiction should be banned or significantly altered before banning cellphones, which are ultimately a great learning and communication tool. Cellphones can promote the development of a student’s necessary sense of independence."
Statewide test scores improved in 2024, but achievement still not back to pre-Covid levels October 10, 2024
"After looking at the same state data, however, the nonprofit advocacy group Children Now expressed alarm. “California’s lack of progress in closing the education achievement gap over the past 10 years is completely unacceptable,” it said in a statement. “We have made almost no progress for our Black and Latino students, who make up more than 60% of California’s TK-12 student population, since the start of the Local Control Funding Formula and associated accountability system a decade ago.”
Additional protections are needed, Children Now stated, “to ensure the equity-focused funding that is the hallmark (of the funding formula) goes to the schools and students most in need to close our state’s unconscionable achievement gap.”"
School starters born during pandemic lack communication skills, Ofsted says October 8, 2024
"Primary schools are having to teach infants how to communicate, as they struggle to make friends or cope with lessons because of speech and language difficulties, according to a report by Ofsted.
The research by Ofsted inspectors, based on visits to schools in England rated as good or outstanding, found that the Covid pandemic “is still having an impact on children’s behaviour and social skills”.
Schools told inspectors that the “consequences of lockdowns” meant that “children were starting reception with delayed communication and language, poor self-help skills and emotional difficulties”."
Federal Court Rules That Water Fluoridation Poses an “Unreasonable Risk” to Children September 26, 2024
"After a precedent-setting 7-year legal battle in federal court, an historic ruling by the United States District Court of the Northern District of California has ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take regulatory action to eliminate the “unreasonable risk” to the health of children posed by the practice of water fluoridation.
The verdict is a significant loss for the EPA and the promoters of fluoridation like the American Dental Association and the US Centers For Disease Control because the court found that their claims of safety–made for over 75 years–were in fact not supported by evidence.
Senior Judge Edward Chen wrote:
“The Court finds that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter (“mg/L”) – the level presently considered “optimal” in the United States – poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children…the Court finds there is an unreasonable risk of such injury, a risk sufficient to require the EPA to engage with a regulatory response.”
“In all, there is substantial and scientifically credible evidence establishing that fluoride poses a risk to human health; it is associated with a reduction in the IQ of children and is hazardous at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water of the United States…Reduced IQ poses serious harm. Studies have linked IQ decrements of even one or two points to, e.g., reduced educational attainment, employment status, productivity, and earned wages.”"
Federal Judge Rules Fluoride is a Neurotoxin in Historic Lawsuit September 26, 2024
"On Tuesday a federal court in California found that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligram per liter "poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children".
The new ruling issued by Judge Edward Chen noted that the finding does not "conclude with certainty" that fluoridated water is "injurious to public health" but does find there is "an unreasonable risk of such injury". This risk is sufficient to require the EPA to enact a regulatory response, Chen wrote."
Fewer LAUSD students feel safe at school amid rising fights, physical aggression on campus September 14, 2024
"Newly released data show that fights and other types of physical aggression among L.A. Unified students are rising as the percentage of middle and high school students who said in a survey that they feel safe on campus continues to decline.
Reported episodes of fights and physical aggression rose by just over a third last school year when compared with the previous year, from 4,950 to 6,620."
Covid lockdowns prematurely aged girls’ brains more than boys’, study suggests September 9. 2024
"Adolescent girls who lived through Covid lockdowns experienced more rapid brain ageing than boys, according to data that suggests the social restrictions had a disproportionate impact on them.
MRI scans found evidence of premature brain ageing in both boys and girls, but girls’ brains appeared on average 4.2 years older than expected after lockdowns, compared with 1.4 years older for boys.
It is unclear whether the changes have negative consequences, but the findings have raised concerns that they might affect adolescents’ mental health and potential to learn."
California passes bill to limit student cellphone use on K-12 campuses August 29, 2024
"California state legislators passed a bill Wednesday requiring school districts to ban or restrict student smartphone use on campuses during school hours.
Assembly Bill 3216, renamed the Phone-Free School Act, requires that every school district, charter school and county office of education develop a policy limiting the use of smartphones by July 1, 2026."
Long-Delayed U.S. Government Report Finally Released, Concludes Fluoride Lowers IQ in Children August 23, 2024
"The JAMA researchers write, “the study sample resided in a predominately fluoridated region and had fluoride exposures that are typical of those living in fluoridated communities in North America”.
The JAMA study, along with the release of the NTP’s final report, may lead Judge Chen to rule in favor of the Fluoride Action Network. It may also lead nowhere as the U.S. government continues to ignore its own data which shows water fluoridation is causing harm to Americans."
The rise of microschools: A wake-up call for public education Edsource August 19, 2024
"As microschools continue to grow in popularity, public schools must either find ways to innovate and meet the demands of today’s students or risk becoming increasingly irrelevant in the rapidly evolving educational landscape."
California Legislature again rejects bill to make kindergarten mandatory LA Times August 16, 2024
"A bill that would have required all California families to enroll their children in kindergarten was rejected by the state Legislature on Thursday, the latest of several failed attempts over the years to make the grade compulsory."
California Lost 420K Public School Kids in 4 Years — & May Drop 1M More by 2031 July 31, 2024
"Within education, the declines were small at first. But then COVID-19 hit, and the state lost 420,000 public school students in four years. California’s pandemic-era enrollment declines were not just the largest numerically, the 6.7% drop was also the second-largest in percentage terms.
There’s potentially more bad news in store for California school districts. According to the latest forecast from the federal government, the state is projected to lose another 1 million public school students by 2031. "
California needs to do more to ensure teachers can teach kids to read, national study says January 16, 2024
"Despite a newfound national focus on the science of reading, states, including California, aren’t doing enough to support and train teachers to effectively teach literacy, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality. "
New LAUSD policy barring city’s charter schools from hundreds of public school buildings could lead to evictions January 31, 2024
"Charter schools will be barred from hundreds of Los Angeles Unified District school campuses under a new policy that is among the most restrictive of its kind.
The new rules, presented at a school board meeting Tuesday, prevent charters from being sited in campuses that have been identified as serving vulnerable students, accounting for roughly 350 of about 770 school buildings in the district. Charter schools would still be offered space to operate in other LAUSD district school buildings. "
Q&A: What is Proposition 98 and How Does the State Budget Shortfall Affect It? February 2024
"A significant part of the governor’s plan is an $8 billion reduction in Prop. 98 spending attributable to 2022-23, which would help reduce state General Fund spending to the lower revised Prop. 98 minimum funding level. However, the governor’s proposal would not take away the $8 billion from K-12 schools and community colleges — dollars they received for 2022-23 that have largely been spent. Instead, the governor proposes a complex accounting maneuver that would shift the $8 billion in K-14 education costs — on paper — from 2022-23 to later fiscal years."
RUHS adds Ethnic, AP African American Studies February 8, 2024
"Ethnic Studies will take the place of freshman English, also starting in 2024-25."
Legislative analyst projects bigger funding drop for schools, community colleges February 26, 2024
"Because school districts have already spent that money, Newsom is proposing to hold them and community colleges harmless without counting the overfunding as part of the Proposition 98 minimum guarantee. In a trailer bill that his administration released, he calls for a one-time $9 billion supplemental payment that, due to the unique, delayed tax deadline, would be paid from the general fund, not out of current or future funding for Proposition 98. It would be repaid over five years, starting in 2025-26.
The LAO is skeptical of the legality and wisdom of pushing off the solution for the 2022-23 deficit into the future; it’s recommending the Legislature reject the ideas and instead use the $9 billion cushion in the Proposition 98 reserve account to cover the shortfall.
“The Governor’s proposed funding maneuver is bad fiscal policy, sets a problematic precedent, and creates a binding obligation on the state that will worsen future deficits and require more difficult decisions,” it said in a report issued last week."
Schools stare down deadline as COVID-19 relief funds set to expire March 12, 2024
"In 2023, House Republicans sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona that alleged the funds were getting spent on initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion in schools.
“Rather than use ESSER funds to help students recover from learning losses, some states and school districts that kept schools closed appear to have spent ESSER funds to push favored social agendas,” the lawmakers said."...
"It has been a “huge, huge order” for schools to manage the pandemic and subsequent consequences while parsing through data to determine the best way to spend the COVID-19 relief money, Dworkin said.
District leaders will have to decide how to spend the rest of their ESSER funds by Sept. 30. From there, they will have four months to actually spend the money, unless they get a waiver from the Department of Education."
Segregation Forever? What Supreme Court Failed to Do in ‘Brown v. Board’ Ruling May 16, 2024
"In effect, the court boxed itself into a corner that keeps getting smaller. Even as districts have stricken any mention of race from their school assignment policies, racial divisions have persisted or even worsened. Why? Because children are primarily assigned to schools based on their address, and American cities are largely divided along lines of race and income level, even within the same neighborhood. So schools come to mirror those imbalances. What’s more, the bundling of housing and education has driven up the cost of homes near elite, coveted public schools, further exacerbating these longstanding inequalities.
Today, Linda Brown, the little girl who gave her name to the landmark 1954 case, wouldn’t be turned away from a public school because of her race. Instead, she’d likely be rejected because of her address. I fear that’s no great improvement."
What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later The New York Times March 18, 2024
"A variety of data — about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of Covid-19 — has accumulated in the time since. Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting."....
"Though the next health crisis may have different particulars, with different risk calculations, the consequences of closing schools are now well established, experts say.
In the future, infectious disease experts said, they hoped decisions would be guided more by epidemiological data as it emerged, taking into account the trade-offs.
“Could we have used data to better guide our decision making? Yes,” said Dr. Uzma N. Hasan, division chief of pediatric infectious diseases at RWJBarnabas Health in Livingston, N.J. “Fear should not guide our decision making.”
Bill to mandate ‘science of reading’ in California schools faces teachers union opposition EdSource April 5, 2024
"California’s largest teachers union has moved to put the brakes on legislation that mandates instruction, known as the “science of reading,” that spotlights phonics to teach children to read.
The move by the politically powerful California Teachers Association (CTA) puts the fate of Assembly Bill 2222 in question as supporters insist that there is room to negotiate changes that will bring opponents together.
CTA’s complaints include some recently voiced by some advocacy organizations for English learners and bilingual education that oppose the bill and have refused to negotiate any changes to make the bill more acceptable."
Bill to mandate ‘science of reading’ in California classrooms dies EdSource April 12, 2024
"A bill that would have required California teachers to use the “science of reading,” which spotlights phonics, to teach children to read has died without a hearing.
Assembly Bill 2222, authored by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, will not advance in the Legislature this year, according to Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who described the state’s student reading and literacy rates as “a serious problem,” adding that the bill should receive a “methodical” review by all key groups before there is a “costly overhaul” of how reading is taught in California.
“I want the Legislature to study this problem closely, so we can be sure stakeholders are engaged and, most importantly, that all students benefit, especially our diverse learners,” Rivas said in a statement to EdSource, referring to English learners."
LITIGATION
It is hereby agreed among the Plaintiffs (Cayla J., Kai J., and Ellori J., through their guardian ad litem Angela J., Megan O. and Matilda O., through their guardian ad litem Maria O., Alex R. and Bella R., through their guardian ad litem Kelly R., Isaac I., and Joshua I., through their guardian ad litem Susan I.) and the Defendants (the State of California, the State Board of Education (SBE), the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI), and the California Department of Education (CDE)) (collectively, the “Settling Parties”) in Cayla J. et al. v. State of California, Case Number RG20084386 in the Superior Court for the County of Alameda (“the Action”)
LEGAL UPDATE ON CAYLA J. V. STATE OF CALIFORNIA February 6, 2024
"California’s pandemic policies harmed children, especially minority students in low-income areas. The settlement includes a promise by State government defendants to propose legislation reallocating resources toward helping students most negatively impacted by pandemic learning loss and $2.5 million in attorney’s fees to Morrison Foerster and Public Counsel."
To Settle a Lawsuit, California Will Shift $2 Billion to Students Hurt by Pandemic Shutdowns February 1, 2024
"Cayla is the first statewide settlement of its kind on educational inequities during the pandemic and may prompt similar suits in other states. However, the settlement highlights both the deep investments needed to help students recover academically from pandemic disruptions, and also how challenging it will be to secure such money from states’ tightening budgets.
California’s students remain on average more than a full school year behind their pre-pandemic academic performance. Nearly 8 in 10 California public school students of color, and more than 6 in 10 who come from low-income families, are more than a full school year behind where they should be, showing how those groups have been disproportionately hard hit academically and developmentally by learning disruptions during the pandemic."
AI in Education
Cell Phones in Schools School Board Policy and Legislation
Avoiding the Discriminatory Use of Artificial Intelligence United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights
Whistleblower: L.A. Schools’ Chatbot Misused Student Data as Tech Co. Crumbled July 1, 2024
"Meanwhile, Chris Whiteley, a former senior director of software engineering at AllHere who was laid off in April, had become a whistleblower. He told district officials, its independent inspector general’s office and state education officials that the tool processed student records in ways that likely ran afoul of L.A. Unified’s own data privacy rules and put sensitive information at risk of getting hacked. None of the agencies ever responded, Whiteley told The 74."
Los Angeles school board votes to ban smartphones June 18, 2024
"The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education on Tuesday voted to ban smartphones for its 429,000 students in an attempt to insulate kids from distractions and social media that undermine learning and hurt mental health.
The board of the second-largest U.S. school district voted 5-2, approving a resolution to develop within 120 days a policy prohibiting student use of cellphones and social media platforms. The policy would be in place by January 2025."
AB 3216 Pupils: use of smartphones. Assembly member Hoover
"SEC. 2. Section 48901.7 of the Education Code is amended to read:
a. The governing body of a school district, a county office of education, or a charter school shall, no later than July 1, 2026, develop and adopt, and shall update every five years, a policy to limit or prohibit the use by its pupils of smartphones while the pupils are at a schoolsite or while the pupils are under the supervision and control of an employee or employees of that school district, county office of education, or charter school. The goal of the policy shall be to promote evidence-based use of smartphone practices to support pupil learning and well-being. The development of the policy shall involve significant stakeholder participation in order to ensure that the policies are responsive to the unique needs and desires of pupils, parents, and educators in each community.
(b) Notwithstanding subdivision (a), a pupil shall not be prohibited from possessing or using a smartphone under any of the following circumstances:
(1) In the case of an emergency, or in response to a perceived threat of danger.
(2) When a teacher or administrator of the school district, county office of education, or charter school grants permission to a pupil to possess or use a smartphone, subject to any reasonable limitation imposed by that teacher or administrator.
(3) When a licensed physician and surgeon determines that the possession or use of a smartphone is necessary for the health or well-being of the pupil.
(4) When the possession or use of a smartphone is required in a pupil’s individualized education program."
SB 1283 Pupils: use of smartphones and social media. Senator Stern
"SECTION 1. Section 48901.7 of the Education Code is amended to read:
(2) (A) A request by a school district, county office of education, or charter school for a pupil’s voluntary disclosure of or access to electronic information shall be accompanied by a written disclosure of the pupil’s rights pursuant to the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Chapter 3.6 (commencing with Section 1546) of Title 12 of Part 2 of the Penal Code) in clear and conspicuous language that indicates all of the following:
(i) The school district, county office of education, or charter school is not entitled to the disclosure of or access to electronic information without complying with the requirements of Section 1546.1 of the Penal Code.
(ii) The pupil has the right to refuse to grant voluntary disclosure of or access to electronic information.
(iii) The pupil has the right to consult with a parent or guardian, or attorney, or both, before voluntarily disclosing or giving access to electronic information.
(B) The following model language may be used to satisfy the requirements of subparagraph (A):
“You have been asked by a government entity to voluntarily disclose information about electronic communications or an electronic device.
You can say no. You can consult a parent or guardian, or attorney, or both, before you decide. If you do say yes, you give the government the right to look through your phone and possibly use what they find as evidence against you or others, consistent with state law.”
Suppressing and Violating Free Speech
Recognizing fake news now a required subject in California schools CalMatters November 10, 2023
"Pushing back against the surge of misinformation online, California will now require all K-12 students to learn media literacy skills — such as recognizing fake news and thinking critically about what they encounter on the internet.
Gov. Gavin Newsom last month signed Assembly Bill 873, which requires the state to add media literacy to curriculum frameworks for English language arts, science, math and history-social studies, rolling out gradually beginning next year. Instead of a stand-alone class, the topic will be woven into existing classes and lessons throughout the school year."
Lefty censors stifle free speech in high school debate, classrooms: critics September 30, 2023
"High school debate teams are being policed by lefty censors who penalize students who dare to use a word or phrase that challenges a woke world view, critics told The Post.
The censorship, which has been ramping up for years, is accelerating as competitors are penalized, and students in classrooms are reprimanded for saying anything deemed politically incorrect."
ACLU Letter to Irvine School Board May 24, 2022
ACLU Calls Out Irvine School Board For Suppressing Public Comments Voice of OC May 31, 2022
"The American Civil Liberties Union is questioning the Irvine Unified School District board’s policy of stopping any public commenters from criticizing their staff’s work in a new letter to the panel last Tuesday.
The letter came after Irvine resident Debra Kamm repeatedly questioned the work of staff members at the district, saying they’d started pushing back against her after she submitted a complaint alleging that district staff were discriminating against children with disabilities.
When she attempted to reach out to the board to speak about the issue via email, her email address was blocked.
When she spoke at the board’s April 19 meeting, she questioned the performance of the district’s special education director and was chastised by board president Ira Glasky, who said under the board’s policies she could not talk about “initiating or making any allegations against individual employees,” from the podium. "
Irvine Unified school board changes policy after ACLU accuses agency of violating free speech LA Times June 9, 2022
"The Irvine Unified School District board modified portions of its policy this week after the American Civil Liberties Union accused the board of violating free speech principles.
The board voted in favor of the changes on Tuesday night about two weeks after it received a letter from the ACLU of Southern California contending that the Irvine school board violated 1st Amendment rights by enforcing Board Policy 9323, which is a set of rules for public meetings. In the May 24 letter, the civil rights group called for the board to repeal or alter the policy."
Public Records Requests
A Court Says Agencies Can Delay Records Responses Indefinitely and We Must Fight It April 24, 2024
"In short, a court has now found that San Diego Unified did nothing wrong by delaying the production of responsive records to the public and all their myriad reasons for the delay were valid despite the Public Records Act’s requirement that they be distributed promptly.
“The danger becomes that the word ‘prompt’ becomes meaningless and agencies can delay distribution of records indefinitely until a person goes away or the issue doesn’t have the same relevance it does when the documents were requested,” said Felix Tinkov, our public records attorney who has litigated the case.
That’s alarming but it’s not established precedent. That’s why we must appeal and ask a higher court to clarify that this is not true – an agency cannot indefinitely delay distribution of records or fail to distribute at all for any reason they can come up with. We believe “prompt” has a meaning that is fewer than 399 days. "
Open Government School Board meetings
Each member of a legislative body who attends a meeting of that legislative body where action is taken in violation of any provision of this chapter, and where the member intends to deprive the public of information to which the member knows or has reason to know the public is entitled under this chapter, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
California Code, Education Code - EDC § 35145.5
It is the intent of the Legislature that members of the public be able to place matters directly related to school district business on the agenda of school district governing board meetings.
School Boards for Academic Excellence
Ethnic Studies
School Based Health Clinics
School Based Health Centers (VIDEO)
Notice of Non-Consent to Healthcare at School Template
Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative Local Educational Agencies Cohorts (California) December 1, 2023
"On December 1, 2023, the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) announced the first cohort of forty-seven (47) Local Education Agencies (LEAs) approved to participate in the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative (CYBHI) statewide multi-payer school-linked fee schedule (Fee Schedule) and statewide provider network. The Welfare and Institutions Code § 5961.4(b) authorizes DHCS to “develop and maintain a school-linked statewide provider network of school-site behavioral health counselors." To develop the CYBHI Fee Schedule provider network, DHCS implemented an operational readiness review process for all interested County Offices of Education (COE) and LEAs. In determining LEA readiness for this cohort, DHCS considered a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: Medi-Cal enrollment, service delivery infrastructure and capacity building, data collection and documentation, and billing infrastructure.
These 47 LEAs were determined by DHCS to meet the readiness review requirements and will comprise the first cohort of the CYBHI fee schedule, which will launch in January 2024. The first cohort will participate in a learning collaborative to inform state level policy and operational guidance for the CYBHI fee schedule program."
Medical freedom group warns school-based health centers are threatening parental rights August 14, 2023
"“The scope of services is well beyond what you would find with school nurse services. It goes into reproductive counseling, dental care, mental health counseling, behavioral services. And this replaces what your child would typically receive from a primary care provider with parental engagement.”
Wilson said that the centers use “pre-consent” to operate without parental involvement, “which is simply a one-page consent form being sent home at the beginning of the year. And there’s language such as this that gives consent for your child to see any and all health care providers in this health center.” The pre-consent opens the door for “very dynamic encounters” that may take place “without further parental knowledge or notification being required.”"
SBHCs and the anti-parent agenda (School-based Health Centers (SBHCs) July 2023
"Don’t let the name fool you (or your lawmakers). They sound old hat, but School-based Health Centers are not your typical school-nurse model of care where minor illnesses and injuries are treated. SBHCs are intended by the Biden-Harris administration to be the “medical home” for your child, including primary health care services, reproductive counseling, dental care, and mental health counseling, replacing what the child would typically receive from providers outside of the school....."
"What’s worse, we’re seeing a wave of states across the country filing bills to lower the age of consent to medical care from age 18 to as low as age 11. This means schools do not have to get parental consent to treat the child and, even worse, parental objection to treatment is meaningless. When you combine the push for health care expansion within schools (a place where children are away from their parents) with the push for minor consent laws (nullifying the need for parents), the anti-parent agenda becomes clear.
One example of this playing out in real time can be seen in California. In 2011, California passed a minor consent law allowing children to consent to their own medical care beginning at age 12. In July 2022, Harvard’s Center for Policy Law and Innovation and University of California, Davis jointly published their research showing that School-based Health Centers are even more effective at increasing HPV vaccination rates than state mandates. Pairing SBHCs with minor consent laws almost entirely eliminates the biggest obstacle to HPV vaccines: parental objection."
Religious Exemptions Litigation
December 22, 2023
A Voice for Choice Advocacy’s lawyers filed a lawsuit on behalf of three plaintiffs claiming the unconstitutionality of California's School Vaccine Exemption laws. While California currently allows medical exemptions, as well as exemptions for students on Individualized Education Programs (IEP), in 2015 SB 277 (Pan) removed the ability for parents to exempt their children from vaccines required for public or private school education, due to personal beliefs, including sincere religious beliefs. This lawsuit argues SB 277 goes against the US Constitution's First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause and California law must include a Religious Exemption in the statute requiring children to get vaccines to be enrolled in public or private school. If this lawsuit succeeds it will mean parents of all children in California will be able to exempt their children from school required vaccines if they have sincere religious beliefs. The brief that was filed can be read here: https://avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/SB-277-Religious-Exemption-Lawsuit-Complaint-122223.pdf
The COVID pandemic brought religious rights to the forefront of litigation and made religious exemptions to vaccines more prevalent, given corporate vaccine mandates. The recent ruling in Mississippi requiring the state to have religious exemptions for school required vaccines shows winning such a case is possible. The judges currently on the Supreme Court are also more conservative and therefore more likely to rule in favor or religious rights (if they take on this case). So AVFCA feels now is the ideal time to bring forward this lawsuit arguing that California must have a religious exemption for school required vaccines. California is much different to Mississippi in its liberal mindset, so AVFCA's legal team is prepared to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court. This may take 2-3 years before there is a final ruling, but AVFCA is hopeful there will be wins along the way!
What makes this lawsuit different from others? Three things - The plaintiffs, AVFCA's history with SB 277 and AVFCA's legal team.
The fact that the plaintiffs in this lawsuit have sincere religious beliefs against vaccinating their children is clearly evident. Their situations also make it obvious that SB 277 is unconstitutional and has no rational basis:
- The Doeschers have a child who is allowed to go to school two days a week as part of an independent study program, but is not allowed to be enrolled in full-time school due to lack of vaccination. Mr Doescher is the leader of a church youth group and also has a religious exemption to the COVID vaccine at the school he teaches at, which is the same school his child is barred from attending due to their religious beliefs.
- The Jones' have four children who are all currently homeschooled due to lack of vaccination. Both parents have been the lead pastors of their church for the past 10 years, but their children cannot attend school due to their religious beliefs.
- The Pattersons have three children who are homeschooled due to lack of vaccination. Both parents have sincere religious beliefs against vaccinating their children after God told Dr Patterson that this was his fight in 2004.
A Voice for Choice Advocacy is the only organization that has been fighting SB 277 and school required vaccine mandates since 2015, both legislatively and legally. AVFCA is the only organization that has been active in the legislature educating and advocating for health rights on your behalf, year in and year out. In 2016, A Voice for Choice Advocacy was the only organization that brought forward a lawsuit against SB 277, based on parental rights, bodily autonomy and the fundamental right to education. While this lawsuit was extremely well written and argued, it was ultimately dismissed by the CA courts, due to a fear that if the judges ruled in our favor, polio would return to California! AVFCA chose not to take that case to the Supreme Court, as the judges at the time would likely not have ruled in our favor, and thereby would have set bad precedence. With the filing of this lawsuit, AVFCA is the only organization now sponsoring two active lawsuits that chip away at SB 277, as well as continuing our work in the CA Capitol to make changes legislatively.
AVFCA's legal team on this case, led by Jonathan Nicol, is well versed in Constitutional law and SB 277. They have a history of significant wins both in lower courts and Appeals courts for individuals and corporate clients. Jonathan Nicol is also the lead attorney on the SB 277 Titer Testing lawsuit, which AVFCA is sponsoring.
What can you do to support this lawsuit? While AVFCA's legal team generously charges us a discounted hourly rate, this lawsuit will require hundreds of hours of their time and will likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. AVFCA has taken on paying for this lawsuit because of our passion for Health Rights and Medical Freedom, as well as our desire to ensure Religious Rights when it comes to vaccine mandates. Having said that, our funding comes from our generous donors and supporters - YOU! So as AVFCA gives you this gift of a lawsuit and our expertise, with the goal of bringing Religious Exemptions to School Vaccine Mandates, we ask you to dig deeply and donate all you can to support AVFCA's lawsuits and our efforts in 2024. Thank you in advance for your dedication and support!
If you don't want to use PayPal, you can send a check, use Venmo or use Zelle:
Send Check to: A Voice for Choice Advocacy, 530 Showers Drive #7404, Mountain View CA 94040
Send Venmo to: @avoiceforchoice (Note: you have to search under "Business" to find us)
Send Zelle to: info@avoiceforchoiceadvocacy
Thank you for your generosity. Together we can make change happen!
C
Christina Hildebrand
President/Founder
A Voice for Choice Advocacy, Inc.
christina@avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org
www.AVoiceForChoiceAdvocacy.org
‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates New York Times December 3, 2023
"Buoyed by their success at overturning coronavirus mandates, medical and religious freedom groups are taking aim at a new target: childhood school vaccine mandates, long considered the foundation of the nation’s defense against infectious disease.
Until the Mississippi ruling, the state was one of only six that refused to excuse students from vaccination for religious or philosophical reasons. Similar legal challenges have been filed in the five remaining states: California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia. The ultimate goal, according to advocates behind the lawsuits, is to undo vaccine mandates entirely, by getting the issue before a Supreme Court that is increasingly sympathetic to religious freedom arguments."
School Vaccine Religious Exemption Lawsuits...
Other Health Rights Lawsuits...
What is AVFCA's involvement?
The airwaves have been abuzz with talk of winning (and losing lawsuits), as well as new lawsuits being filed in California, and other states, to allow a Religious Exemptions for school vaccination requirements. While A Voice for Choice Advocacy shares in this excitement and also has a lawsuit forthcoming on this issue, our organization wants to share some background, as there seems to be quite a bit of confusion and lots of questions!
An Abridged History of School Vaccine Requirements and Recent Lawsuits/Ballot measures:
- 1950s and 60s: Individual states put laws in place to require schools to require vaccination for enrollment. All but two states (Mississippi and West Virginia) allow religious and/or personal belief exemptions.
- 2015: With the passing of SB 277, California removes the personal belief exemption to school required vaccines. To note: California never had a specific religious exemption; all religious objections to receiving vaccines could be claimed under the personal beliefs exemption.
- 2016-2021: Maine, New York and Connecticut follow suit, removing their personal belief and/or religious belief exemptions to school required vaccines.
- 2016: Four lawsuits are filed in California to return the personal belief exemption to school required vaccines, including A Voice for Choice Advocacy's Love vs. California lawsuit. All are dismissed.
- 2019: Lawsuits are filed in New York to return the religious belief exemption and expand the medical exemption to school required vaccines. The lawsuits are dismissed in the lower courts.
- 2020: Maine puts an initiative on the ballot to reinstate the personal and religious belief exemptions to school required vaccines. The measure fails 73% to 27%.
- 2021: A lawsuit is filed in Connecticut to return the religious belief exemption to school required vaccines. The lawsuit is dismissed in the lower courts.
- 2022: A lawsuit is filed in Mississippi to require a religious belief exemption to school required vaccines.
The dismissal of the New York lawsuit is upheld in the Appeals and NY supreme courts.
- 2023: The Mississippi case wins, with the judge requiring a religious belief exemption be allowed for school required vaccines. The dismissal of the Connecticut lawsuit is upheld in the appeals court and the removal of the religious belief exemption remains in place.
While A Voice for Choice Advocacy is thankful to ICAN for bringing forward the Mississippi case and excited about the win, this condensed summary hopefully makes it clear that the likelihood of a lawsuit succeeding to require a state to have a non medical vaccine exemption is low.
New Lawsuits in CA?
To clarify NO new lawsuits have been filed in California (yet) related to religious belief exemptions to required school vaccines. However, if you have been following A Voice for Choice Advocacy, you will know we have been looking for plaintiffs to join our lawsuit. AVFCA has been in touch with two other groups, ICAN and Advocates for Faith and Freedom, who shared this week that they will likely be bringing lawsuits on this issue in CA in the next few months. AVFCA's perspective is the more high quality lawsuits, the better! To reiterate from previous emails, please reply to this email if you would be interested in being a plaintiff in AVFCA's lawsuit, and meet the following criteria:
- Plan to live in California for the next 2-3 years
- Have a child that is unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated and you do not plan to vaccinate them further
- Wish your child to attend in person public or private school (K-10th grade)
- Have sincere religious beliefs which can be validated by one of the parents having a religious exemption accepted for work or a some other experience such as being a religious leader
- Both parents are in agreement with not further vaccinating
Note: Any lawsuit is brought forward is likely to take 1-4 years to come to resolution.
A Voice for Choice Advocacy is currently paying for and supporting two other lawsuits in California, one of which was filed a few weeks ago and the other will be filed next week. If they win, both of these lawsuits will have a significant impact on the vaccine issues in CA. However, in the best interests of the cases and the plaintiffs, AVFCA is not sharing specific information on these lawsuits or publicizing them.
AVFCA does a lot of work behind the scenes, from these lawsuits to lobbying to education and much more. AVFCA has a small, extremely dedicated, hard-working team, that makes change happen without fanfare and publicity! While we probably should do more, AVFCA has limited resources and so relies on you to share our work and accomplishments. While our amazing team of lawyers subsidize their rates for AVFCA, lawsuits are extremely expensive (hundreds of thousands of dollars). While we have a paid team, AVFCA does not have any large scale donors and looks to your smaller donations to keep our organization doing the work we do!
Over the last 8 years A Voice for Choice Advocacy, and our sister organization, A Voice for Choice, have been sustained only by grassroots donations, as well as my own significant donations. We are so thankful to everyone who has generously donated. However, AVFCA always needs your help to make our efforts sustainable. If you appreciate the work we do, AVFCA asks you to donate as generously as you can - no amount is too little or too great! If you are not already, please consider becoming a monthly donor: www.avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org/donate
For those not wanting to give through PayPal (we are looking to use another vendor in the near future), you can send a check, use Venmo or use Zelle:
Send Check to: A Voice for Choice Advocacy, 530 Showers Drive #7404, Mountain View CA 94040
Send Venmo to: @avoiceforchoice (Note: you have to search under "Business" to find us)
Send Zelle to: info@avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org
For other ways to donate and support A Voice for Choice, please go to our website: https://avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org/donate Thank you in advance for your generosity.
Together we can make change happen!
C
Christina Hildebrand
President/Founder
A Voice for Choice Advocacy, Inc.
christina@avoiceforchoiceadvocacy.org
www.AVoiceForChoiceAdvocacy.org
New York $300K Fine for Midwife Who Gave Kids Homeopathic Pellets Instead of Vaccines January 18, 2024
"A New York midwife who gave nearly 1,500 children homeopathic pellets instead of required vaccinations has been fined $300,000, the state's health department announced this week."
Court: CT can keep law that ends religious exemptions for vaccines August 7, 2023
"A federal appeals court has upheld a Connecticut law that eliminates religious exemptions for school vaccines.
Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, signed legislation in 2021 that barred people from seeking a religious exemption from immunization requirements at public and private schools, colleges and day cares.
The legislation was quickly challenged, with religious and medical freedom advocates arguing Connecticut’s new law was a violation of constitutional and parental rights.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument in a decision issued Friday — upholding Connecticut’s law.
The majority argued Connecticut’s law contains “no trace of hostility toward religion” and that there is generally not a right for parents to “direct how a public school teaches their child.”
Religious Exemption Victory in Mississippi
ICAN ATTORNEYS SECURE RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION TO VACCINATION IN MISSISSIPPI April 17, 2023
"Today, ICAN’s attorneys secured a historic and critical win with a ruling from the bench following an evidentiary hearing, where a federal court has ruled that the First Amendment requires that, by July 15, 2023, the State of Mississippi afford its residents a religious exemption for their children to attend school without one or more state mandated vaccines!"
Articles of Significance Fall of 2021-2023
2023
Sins against children January 4, 2023
"Nelson Mandela observed “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” America failed the test. From school closures to the reprehensible injection of experimental drugs into our own children as shields for adults, the heinous legacy of all who recommended and implemented those policies is serious physical and psychological damage to our children, especially the poor, the totality of which will not be known for decades. We urgently need to restore moral leadership of our nation’s institutions across the board, or the free and ethical society ideal of the United States has lost its legitimacy."
The COVID-19 Crisis: Consequences on Children January 6, 2023
"Lockdowns and other restrictions brought on by the pandemic have really taken a toll on teenagers, causing disruptions to education and socialization that have led to increased anxiety and worsening mental health. "
Students Lost One-Third of a School Year to Pandemic, Study Finds New York Times January 30, 2023
"Children who were in school during the pandemic could lose about $70,000 in earnings over their lifetimes if the deficits aren’t recovered, according to Eric Hanushek, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. In some states, pandemic-era students could ultimately earn almost 10 percent less than those who were educated just before the pandemic.
The societal losses, he said, could amount to $28 trillion over the rest of the century."
It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID and It Cost Lives | Opinion Newsweek January 30, 2023
"I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.
I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day."
Feeding the School to Prison Pipeline February 7, 2023
"Our students need consistent access to the prosocial adults in their life – all of them. This includes their teachers. They also need access to an education, an education that serves as a protective factor against criminal offending. Our students deserve every chance they have to succeed. Education offers them that chance.
The denial of their right to in-person education with teachers in every classroom, only served to exacerbate the educational gap and foster the school to prison pipeline.”"
Thousands of kids are missing from school. Where did they go? AP February 9, 2023
"An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for. These students didn’t move out of state, and they didn’t sign up for private school or home-school, according to publicly available data.
In short, they’re missing."
Your Kids Aren't Learning. At all. February 20, 2023
"Teachers are supposed to stick to prescribed standards, even though in California (as in many other states with strong teachers’ unions), tenure grants pedagogical freedom that makes it near impossible to fire a teacher for going off-piste which is why the most politically vocal teachers have so much leeway."
The other long Covid Vox February 21, 2023
"Over the long term, all that loss — lost school, lost development, lost support networks — adds up. A 2021 report from the World Bank, UNESCO, and Unicef estimated that the global generation of students who have lived through Covid could lose the equivalent of $17 trillion in lifetime earnings, equivalent to 14 percent of the current global GDP."
Audits of Covid-19 Aid for Schools Find Millions of Dollars Misspent The Wall Street Journal March 3, 2023
"Millions of dollars in Covid-relief funds sent to school districts, colleges and state governments for education have been spent on questionable or potentially fraudulent expenses since 2020, federal and state auditors have found."
35 Articles: Children Suffered Under Covid Regulations Rational Ground Justin Hart March 12, 2023
School Shutdowns 2.0: LAUSD school strike harms children (again) Los Angeles Daily News March 21, 2023
"As parents who fought to reopen NYC and Los Angeles schools and restore normalcy, the past few months have made it painfully clear the schools we fought for never really went back to normal. 2020’s COVID-related, union-imposed closures successfully locked children out of classrooms. When schools reopened they were virtually unrecognizable, first with masking, distancing and silent lunches, to post-COVID alterations including secret curriculums being implemented across districts to myriad excuses for keeping parents out of school buildings. And per a union-negotiated contract all parent-teacher conferences remain virtual through the 2022/2023 school year, effectively shutting parents out of schools yet again."
COVID's education crisis: A lost generation? March 26, 2023
"But the bigger picture here, according to educators like Geoffrey Canada, is that this will be a kind of lost generation: under-educated to the point where it drags down their future, and ours.
"There's a whole cohort of young people who are not going to get the kind of education that's going to allow them to get the best jobs," Canada said. "It's going to cost lots of kids tens of thousands of dollars over their earnings, or some hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Children Are Not Property The idea that underlies the right-wing campaign for “parents’ rights.” April 8, 2023
"Like any piece of property, a child has value to conservative activists. They are key to a future the conservative wants to win. Parental rights are merely one path to the total capture of state power and the imposition of an authoritarian hierarchy on us all. So it’s no surprise that children have long been a fixation to the right wing."
Attacks on Brazil's schools — often by former students — spur a search for solutions April 11, 2023
"She has also identified additional factors that are possibly influencing the number of school attacks in the country – including the impact of the pandemic. In the wake of the school closures and increased isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a study conducted in 2022 showed 70% of teachers said violence in the classroom increased when schools reopened. "
The School That Couldn't Quit COVID April 12, 2023
"As of today, children at EACMSI are still required to mask indoors and outdoors. They are still prohibited from speaking during lunch. Second-graders who began school there as kindergarteners in fall 2020 have never experienced a normal day of school in their lives. "
Why California schools shouldn’t keep secrets from parents EdSource April 12, 2023
"California has been on a dangerous crusade to erode parental rights. By misinterpreting state law, teachers are being induced to withhold information from parents about their child. A portion of the state’s education code (sometimes referred as AB 1266) is being incorrectly used to bar parents from learning that their child has adopted a new gender identity."
My son is autistic – I can’t forgive what lockdown did to him United Kingdom April 13, 2023
"Who knows what the future might have held for my son had Covid not upended his fragile world? It wasn’t what the virus did to him (if he ever had it, it was gone in a sniffle) but what it did to others. The nation lost its senses, and my wife and I very nearly lost our little boy."
In-person schooling is essential even during periods of high transmission of COVID-19 April 17, 2023
"School closures have limited benefits on COVID-19 transmission. A systematic review including 40 studies with lowest risk of bias from 140 countries found little to no impact of school closures on COVID-19 burden."
U.S. Needs to Learn Lesson of School Lockdown Mistake April 19, 2023
"Over the past 50 years, our nation’s congressional representation has grown increasingly polarized– bipartisanship and reaching across the aisle seem to be attitudes of the past. There is “us,” and there is “the other.” Without any supporting data and with only fear of a virus as a north star, Democrats largely have made it their platform to support “COVID Forever” policies for three years now."
Teachers Edmonds & Steele on The Case of America's Missing Students April 19, 2023
"For over two years, kids were effectively told that school wasn’t important and that a screen was an acceptable replacement; that sports were luxuries reserved for kids whose parents could afford private leagues and out-of-state travel; that socializing with peers was dangerous and it was safer to communicate via social media."
Sorry, Randi: No one resents teachers or schools — just your leadership April 21, 2023
"But remote failed to prove safer for teachers or students.
A recent study reveals that teachers who worked remotely were more likely to experience depression and isolation than those teaching in person.
Minority children suffered disproportionate learning loss and mental health issues as a result of the disruption to their academics, sports, and social activities — policies pushed by Randi as “equitable.”
And Randi continues to gaslight by pretending to be a savior to students damaged by the very policies she pushed."
COVID-sniffing dogs can help detect infections in K-12 schools, new California study suggests April 25, 2023
"“We collected some socks from people willing to donate socks, and we taught the dogs, by smelling the socks, which ones were the COVID socks and they picked it up very quickly,” Edwards said. “Then we moved into the schools and started sniffing the kids at the ankles.”
Last year, from April to May, the dogs visited 27 schools across California to screen for COVID-19 in the real world. They completed more than 3,500 screenings."
Randi Weingarten ruined kids’ lives — but she refuses to apologize for not following the science April 26, 2023
"Yes, Weingarten technically said we should open schools “safely” throughout the pandemic. She then always followed that call with demands for standards she knew well would prevent opening, ignoring safe openings elsewhere.
A good example of this was in March 2021 — a full year after some schoolchildren had set foot in a classroom, after teachers had been bumped to the front of the line in many cities to get back to school and after Congress had allocated billions for them. She said all they needed to go back was a testing regimen like the NFL’s.
“We wanted to be in school; I’ve said that over and over again today.”
And yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance she and her organization helped shape in early 2021 would have had many schools that were already open for full-time in-person instruction close due to community transmission if they had taken the CDC at its word.
As one member of the oversight committee put it, it could more properly have been called a guide to closing schools than opening them."
The Covid Select Committee Missed the Mark April 27, 2023
"The AFT's trigger for closing schools wasn't the part they put in the CDC guidance about new variants. It was the part they put in to force schools to give teachers at "higher risk" virtual teaching as an ADA accommodation."
Good morning. Long school closures have put public education — and Randi Weingarten, the leader of a major teachers’ union — on the defensive. New York Times April 28, 2023
"In 2020, the pandemic’s first full year, Weingarten came down strongly on the side of keeping schools closed. Safety measures were not enough to reopen them, she argued. Instead, Covid became an opportunity for her union, the American Federation of Teachers, to push for broader policy changes that it had long favored."
Revisionist history: Fauci and Weingarten distance themselves from the School Closure policy they enacted & encouraged April 29, 2023
"Randi claims she just wanted to open schools safety, but the problem is you didn’t need 750 billion dollars and hepa filtration to open safely. Even masks were unnecessary. Ultimately, schools reopened and ~100% of kids got COVID anyway, the vast majority did fine, most did not have the vaccine beforehand, and there is no reliable evidence the vax lowered the risk of severe disease for kids. All you needed to reopen were teachers with courage, sadly Randi and Tony sapped that away from them with constant inaccurate rhetoric.
The truth is Randi asked for things she knew she would not get, so she could justify her position that teachers be paid, get first dips on vaccine (over the elderly), and continue to not work in person.
School closure has already destroyed a generation of kids. The full damage is not yet appreciated, but the first signs are showing."
Anthony Fauci sabotaged school reopening in 2020 - Let's read his own words May 11, 2023
"Rand Paul was right. Fauci inappropriately cast aspersions on reopening.
So, forgive me, if you are the NIAID director and you continuously fear-monger about schools, and tell teachers that reopening isn an ‘experiment’— even though Sweden never closed and was doing fine— you can’t say you had nothing to do with school closure. You leveraged your massive media reach to poison public opinion. You were the architect of closure.
That action did more harm to American children than anything else this century.
Fauci owns school closure. He needs to move out of the denial phase and either defend his conduct or apologize. Personally, I see no defense. The closest modern analogy was Colin Powell’s UN speech. Well, if the speech was non-stop speeches for months, paired with private advising, all working to promote a faulty narrative."
Experts See Lessons for Next Pandemic as Covid Emergency Comes to an End New York Times (way back machine) May 11, 2023
"School closures have been a particularly contentious topic, but many experts now agree that some schools were closed for too long and that abruptly removing millions of children from American classrooms has had harmful effects on their emotional and intellectual health.
Both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the pandemic had shown that officials should think carefully about school closures and keep them as limited as possible. Both said better indoor air circulation might be one way to safely keep schools open.
“One of the things we’ve learned is that we closed schools much longer than other countries, and we’ve had this terrible impact on educational attainment and we have seen the test scores go down,” said Dr. Emanuel, who also advised Mr. Biden’s transition team."
How the Teachers Union Broke Public Education May 30, 2023
"Although union bosses like Randi Weingarten continue to obfuscate their role in school closures, the historical record is clear: The union repeatedly pushed to keep schools closed, and areas with greater union influence kept schools closed longer. Politicians, public health officials, and the media certainly had a hand in this fiasco, but the union egged on dramatic news stories, framed school reopening as a partisan issue, and directly interfered in CDC recommendations. Teachers saw firsthand that virtual learning was a farce and that children were suffering. While there may be plenty of blame to go around, teachers’ abandonment of their own students was a special kind of betrayal."....
"What happened in 2020 was the result of a long process in which the union replaced labor-related goals, which are finite and measurable, with activism, which is infinite and abstract."
Media literacy would be required for California K-12 students under new bill EdSource June 5, 2023
"Berman said he was inspired to write the bill when he learned that social media is the primary source of news for many people, including teenagers.
“Misinformation and disinformation is rampant on social media, and can lead to real-world terrifying events like Jan. 6 and the large percentage of people who believe the election was stolen,” he said.
A 2019 Stanford study found that two-thirds of students surveyed couldn’t differentiate between editorial content and advertising, and 96% didn’t understand why a climate-change website funded by a fossil fuel company might be suspect."
Report: Nearly 10,000 preschoolers with disabilities did not get services last year (New York) June 6, 2023
"Nearly ten thousand preschoolers with disabilities went without the services they were legally entitled to last school year, according to a new report from the organization Advocates for Children.
The report, based on data the education department is required to release annually, found that 37% of all preschoolers with disabilities, or 9,800 went the entire 2021-2022 school year without having a single session of a service the education department is legally required to provide them — like speech, occupational or physical therapy, or visits from a special education teacher.
“The failure to provide these mandated services to these children is really a systemic violation of their legal rights. And unfortunately, we just know that the problem persists this year,” Betty Baez-Melo director of the early childhood education project at Advocates for Children, said."
New NAEP Scores Reveal the Failure of Pandemic Academic Recovery Efforts June 26, 2023
"The new figures contain three terrifying findings — about the magnitude of the achievement declines, the abysmal failure of ongoing recovery efforts and the likely persistence of these impacts on future cohorts of students."
The Human Costs of Campus Closures June 26, 2023
"So when we notice a sharp decline in students’ mental health beginning in 2020, we have to ask ourselves what new thing was happening at the time. The answer to that is obvious. What else was going on that hadn’t been prior to 2020? Not much. Is it possible that closing classroom buildings or entire campuses, forcing students to go home or stay in their dorm rooms and take their courses online while foregoing virtually all socialization in the interests of “social distancing”—could that cause young people to become depressed or even suicidal?
Well, yes. Of course. It would certainly make me depressed.
For me, then, the evidence is overwhelming: By closing our campuses for extended periods of time, we did great mental and physical harm to the young people in our care, probably leading many to commit suicide who otherwise would not have done so. Note that according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, what we might call “accidental suicides”—specifically, deaths from opioid overdoses—have also risen sharply in this same age group. The pain experienced by those young people’s families is beyond imagining."
An evidence double standard for pharmacological versus non-pharmacological interventions: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic Science Direct June 2023
"School closures, for example, were a massive societal intervention with numerous harms undertaken with a lack of evidence of effectiveness. Researchers from Norway famously called [29] for randomized studies of the intervention, which were not done, and their country's school closures were brief. For mask mandates in children, social and educational harms have been suspected and are now beginning to be documented [30].
It is not that randomized studies of non-pharmacological interventions cannot be done; they can, but are simply not expected or required by the medical and public health communities. We contend this is a dangerous and expensive double standard; we should require the same level of evidence for non-pharmacological interventions as pharmacological. High quality studies should be undertaken within weeks of a new pandemic to avoid unnecessary harms from ineffective interventions. Although non-pharmacological interventions have side effects that are more difficult to quantify and study, they should not be assumed to be of less importance and, in most cases, have wider societal consequences."
Doctors reflect on race, schools three years into Covid-19 June 30, 2023
"Dr. Carlos del Rio, interim dean at Emory University School of Medicine, said public health experts didn’t foresee the effect of learning loss and isolationism on students. That impact could be the most long-lasting, UCSF professor of medicine Dr. Mark Smith said.
“We made a mistake with schools,” del Rio said. “I hope we don’t make it again.”"
Lengthy pandemic closures weakened already low-achieving California schools CalMatters July 5, 2023
"Newsom advocated reopening schools and his own kids quickly resumed classes at their private school, but he refused to intervene in districts that were lagging behind in returning kids to the classroom, apparently unwilling to confront the unions.
Variations in reopening meant that “districts with more Black, Latino, low-income, and English Learner students tended to reopen later than other districts,” and “learning gaps widened the longer students remained remote and may have worsened longstanding achievement gaps between low-income marginalized students and their peers.”
The statistical picture painted in the PPIC research confirms what was obvious to many at the time, that closing schools and forcing at-risk children into haphazard online classes while lacking internet access, tutoring and other resources would make the achievement gap even wider.
California’s economic and social future depends on having a well-educated workforce and citizenry. We were falling behind before COVID-19 struck, and we are even further behind now."
Recent school year saw little academic recovery, new study finds July 10, 2023
"There’s been little, if any, progress making up large learning gaps that have emerged since the onset of the pandemic, according to a new analysis of data from the testing group NWEA.
In the 2022-23 school year, students learned at a similar or slower rate compared to a typical pre-pandemic school year, the analysis found. This left intact the substantial learning losses, which have barely budged since the spring of 2021."
California wants to make math more diverse. Its plans are going to backfire July 19, 2023
"In addition to generally de-emphasizing calculus, it also suggests that girls and students of color specifically might find more success in alternative math courses such as data science. Both principles are misguided practically and philosophically.
Practically speaking, taking calculus in high school is a key — and often necessary — step for students to enter competitive colleges and to earn a four-year degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). Those degrees also often translate to higher-paying jobs and improved social and economic mobility. "
A Little-Discussed Consequence of the Pandemic for Children July 21, 2023
"It is well-accepted now that school closures—and interrupted learning from hybrid schedules, distancing, forced masking, and the cancellation of athletics and other extracurricular activities—had a profound effect on millions of American kids. Test scores have fallen over all, but there are multiple studies that show the longer a school was closed the worse the students did. Hispanic, and especially Black kids fared the worst of all from being out of school. Current evidence suggests these deficits have still not been made up, and will permanently alter the trajectory of many children’s lives. Mental health deterioration, weight gain, and an accelerated dependence on screens have all been documented as well as from kids’ increased isolation, sedentariness, and remote learning.
These effects did not happen “because of Covid.” They happened because of the reaction to Covid. The “pandemic” did not shut down schools, as some journalists continue to falsely report. Policy decisions shut down schools. More broadly, at a societal level, restrictions on movement, gatherings, business operations and so on—and the climate of fear those policies and media coverage engendered—also had deleterious effects on people’s income, health, and over all well-being.......
"It’s clear that indications that children were not getting the basic care they needed were evident from the beginning of the pandemic. Knowing this, the health authorities could have made messaging about the importance of pediatric care a priority, but instead they chose to emphasize fear and danger. The media, naturally, went along with that narrative.
The result of this messaging from public health authorities and the media was a profound distortion in risk assessment. A Gallup survey in 2020 found that Democrats overestimated the share of Covid deaths of those under age 25 by 8,700 percent. (It was 0.1%, and they thought it was 8.7%.) In fact, both Republicans and Democrats overestimated deaths among all Americans in every single age bracket up to age 64. And the estimates were not just off but wildly off for everyone under age 55.
And so, the reaction to a virus that posed a minimal risk to nearly all children, and was of limited risk for most adults, nevertheless, led to millions of children put at greater risk of harm from delayed and missed care."
Democrats defend pandemic school closures: 3 takeaways from a heated House hearing July 26, 2023
"Democrats defended remote learning as a necessary response to a novel pathogen. But in some cases, they also exaggerated the risk of the coronavirus to children, or the extent to which COVID-19 spread in schools.
“If we would’ve kept schools open, more people would have died due to COVID,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, who was once a school principal in the Bronx, said in his fiery remarks. There is no evidence, however, that in states like Florida, where schools reopened early, the coronavirus spread more rapidly as a result.
Bowman also said that it was incorrect to refer to “learning loss,” an echo of arguments made by teachers’ unions that educational setbacks are being exaggerated.
“If kids are dead, they don’t learn,” said Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, a former national teacher of the year. Very few children across the nation died from or were seriously sickened by the coronavirus, and those who did often had other conditions, like asthma."
California moves to silence Stanford researchers who got state data to study education issues EdSource July 28, 2023
"The California Department of Education has threatened to sue two prominent Stanford University education professors to prevent them from testifying in a lawsuit against the department — actions the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California calls an attempt to muzzle them.
The ACLU, in turn, is threatening a lawsuit of its own — against CDE for infringing their and other researchers’ First Amendment rights.
Observers say the dispute has the potential to limit who conducts education research in California and what they are able to study because CDE controls the sharing of data that is not available to the public.
At issue is a restriction that CDE requires researchers to sign as a condition for their gaining access to nonpublic K-12 data. The clause, which CDE is interpreting broadly, prohibits the researcher from participating in any litigation against the department, even in cases unrelated to the research they were doing through CDE.
“It keeps education researchers from weighing in on the side of parties who are adverse to the California Department of Education. So it’s really skewing the information and expertise that can come into courts,” said Alyssa Morones, an ACLU attorney involved with the case. “Individuals and students seeking to vindicate their rights no longer will have access to these education experts, and the court can no longer hear what they have to say.”
Schools lost track of homeless kids during the pandemic. Many face a steep path to recovery July 28, 2023
"Homeless students often fell through the cracks during the tumult of the pandemic, when many schools struggled to keep track of families with unstable housing. Not being identified as homeless meant students lost out on eligibility for crucial support such as transportation, free uniforms, laundry services and other help.
Years later, the effects have cascaded. As students nationwide have struggled to make up for missed learning, educators have lost critical time identifying who needs the most help. Schools are offering tutoring and counseling but now have limited time to spend federal pandemic relief money for homeless students, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a national homelessness organization."
Lockdown was our generation’s greatest error August 1, 2023
"A generation of children has been failed by a philosophy that enabled and even encouraged an industrial level of suffering. For what? A virus that posed them almost no threat, certainly no more danger than they faced on a day-to-day basis in normal pre-Covid life."
California Set To Criminalize Passionate Parents At School Board Meetings August 1, 2023
"In California-speak, that means school boards get to decide what is substantial and what is not; what is harassment and what is not. In Totalitarian-speak that means don’t dare even think about going to a school board meeting and question their narrative or policies. Totalitarians prefer community partners that are subdued, compliant, and simply too terrified to question their betters. Totalitarians criminalize passionate passionate parents and community partners that upset the status quo."
‘They said our children would bounce back from lockdown’ August 2, 2023
"In news that will come as little surprise to parents, a new study has found that lockdown has worsened children’s social and emotional skills."
Pandemic Emergency May Be Officially Over, but Education’s Long COVID Continues August 2, 2023
"NWEA researchers now estimate that on average, students will require interventions and support equivalent to 4.1 months of additional schooling to catch up to pre-COVID levels in reading and 4.5 months in math. Middle schoolers are particularly far behind relative to where their older peers were performing just a few years ago — needing the equivalent of an extra 9.1 months of learning in math and 7.4 months in reading.
Progress for students of all races and ethnicities grew at paces that fell short of pre-COVID averages in 2022-23, but the problem is pronounced for historically underserved students. Given the disparate amounts of unfinished learning that remain as of spring 2023, NWEA researchers estimate that Hispanic and Black students still need an additional 6.4 and 6.2 months of math instruction, respectively, to get back on track."
Prevalence and Risk Factors for School-Associated Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 August 4, 2023
"The findings of this longitudinal cohort study of K-12 schools in Massachusetts, based on detailed school-based contact tracing during the 2020-2021 school year and fall semester of 2021, indicate that the SAR of SARS-CoV-2 among school-based contacts was low."
Kids almost NEVER transmitted Covid in schools, a major new study shows August 6, 2023
"Yet the new paper is also vital.
Why? Because it covers American schools and was published in an American journal. And the American Covid-political-medical complex has had the habit for three-plus years of simply ignoring any research from outside the United States, especially if it includes inconvenient data and facts.
And so having concrete American evidence that schools were not in any way meaningful vectors for Covid transmission can only help to make sure the colossal mistake of mass school closures never happens again.
Too bad it comes far too late to matter to the kids in blue states who in some cases were denied over a year of in-person education."
Gavin Newsom quickly intervened on banned textbooks. Why not school closures? August 6, 2023
"Even though Newsom offered school districts billions of dollars to reopen, schools remained largely shuttered because of continued union opposition. Newsom, who had been so quick to take unilateral actions on other pandemic-related issues and who later cracked down on Temecula, refused to forcefully intervene, apparently unwilling to confront the politically powerful unions.
Eventually schools did reopen, but by then the damage was done. Follow-up studies revealed that closures had seriously damaged educational achievement in a state whose children were already trailing those in other states.
When state academic testing resumed in 2022 after being suspended during the pandemic, it showed “significant declines in proficiency rates,” a study by the Public Policy Institute of California declared.
Prior to the pandemic, 51% of students met standards in English language arts (ELA) and it had dropped to 47%. In mathematics, proficiency declined from 40% to 33%.
“Only 35% of low-income students met state standards in ELA and 21% were proficient in math,” PPIC reported, “compared to 65% of higher-income students in ELA and 51% in math.”
While schools were closed in 2020, a civil rights lawsuit was filed against the state, alleging that closures had an inordinate effect on low-income children of color – something that PPIC and other independent researchers later confirmed.
The state is trying to get the suit tossed, contending that closures did not have the harmful effects it alleges. The suit’s advocates, however, have countered with statements from a variety of educational authorities buttressing its case.
The state Department of Education has a response to that as well. EdSource, a website devoted to California educational issues, reported recently that the department has warned educational researchers who access its data that they cannot help plaintiffs because a clause in research agreements forbids participation in any suit against the state.
In other words, the state is muzzling those who could provide expert testimony that the state’s failure to reopen schools was an educational disaster. That’s authoritarian arrogance to the 10th power."
Students harmed by remote learning inequities can take California to trial, judge rules August 10, 2023
"Studies that the state does not dispute show that “educational inequality increased from 2019 to 2022 and achievement gaps widened” between public school students of different races and income levels in California, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman said Tuesday.
And during the pandemic, he said, the evidence shows that the state “implemented a remote learning policy that failed to provide all students with computers and internet access,” and that state officials knew that non-white and low-income students were being harmed worse than others. Seligman said a trial would determine whether the state had violated discrimination laws and a state constitutional guarantee of educational equality.
The suit does not seek damages, but instead court-ordered measures to close the statewide learning gap, such as tutoring, literacy coaches and accountability requirements for the state.
California has about 6 million students in public schools. In the eight months after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered schools closed, Seligman said, the state distributed more than 45,000 laptops and more than 73,000 computing devices to students, but between 800,000 and 1 million students still lacked adequate access, or any access at all, to online classes. "
Millions of kids are missing weeks of school as attendance tanks across the US August 11, 2023
"For people who've long studied chronic absenteeism, the post-COVID era feels different. Some of the things that prevent students from getting to school are consistent — illness, economic distress — but “something has changed,” said Todd Langager, who helps San Diego County schools address absenteeism. He sees students who already felt unseen, or without a caring adult at school, feel further disconnected."
California Ed Department backs down on punishing education researchers who testify against it EdSource August 18, 2023
"Lawyers for CDE notified Dee on Wednesday that it won’t carry out a threat to retaliate against him for providing testimony in litigation against the department. Responding to widespread condemnation that the department was violating Dee’s First Amendment rights, the state said it had dropped a controversial clause that banned him from participating in any lawsuit “adverse” to the department, as a condition for access to non-public education data. The ban would have continued as long as the contract was in effect."
Runge ISD Announces Campus Closures Due to Staff COVID-19 Cases TEXAS August 25, 2023
"A school district southeast of San Antonio has temporarily closed its campuses due to staff being diagnosed with COVID-19.
Runge ISD Superintendent Hector Dominguez Jr. sent a letter to parents to notify them of the closures.
The announcement stated that schools will be closed from Tuesday, August 22 through Friday, August 25. He also said extracurricular activities and team practices would be put on hold."
Chronic Absenteeism Worse in States That Closed Schools Longer August 31, 2023
"However, as you can see, many states that have the longest closures also had the largest increase in absenteeism. DC, Oregon, Maryland, Washington, California, New Mexico, and Arizona all closed schools for more than half of the 2020/21 school year. States like Arkansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, South Dakota, Nebraska, and North Dakota all remained open the majority of 2020/21 and saw far smaller absenteeism rate increases. "
570 California schools targeted for low vaccination rates September 7, 2023
"More than 500 California public schools are being audited by the state because they reported that more than 10% of their kindergarten or seventh-grade students were not fully vaccinated last school year. Schools that allow students to attend school without all their vaccinations are in jeopardy of losing funding.
The audit list, released by the California Department of Public Health, includes 450 schools serving kindergarten students and 176 schools serving seventh graders with low vaccination rates. Fifty-six of the schools serve both grade levels. Another 39 schools failed to file a vaccination report with the state.
“Schools found to have improperly admitted students who have (not) met immunization requirements may be subject to loss of average daily attendance payments for those children,” the California Department of Public Health said in an email."
‘We would’ve done everything differently’: Newsom reflects on Covid approach September 10, 2023
"Despite considerable prodding from Todd on specifics where Newsom would have made different decisions in his hard-hit state, including the protracted closure of in-person learning at schools, the governor largely kept to generalities."
Flat test scores leave California far behind pre-Covid levels of achievement October 18, 2023
"In the second year fully back in school after remote learning, California school districts made negligible progress overall in reversing the steep declines in test scores that have lingered since Covid struck in 2020.
There was a slight improvement in math while English language arts declined a smidgeon, and the wide proficiency gap between Black and Latino students and whites and Asians showed little change."
Litigation
"Bishop, California – May 11, 2023. With the help of retired U.S. Federal Judge Stephen G. Larson, Bishop Unified School District (BUSD) and a group of Parents who filed claims for damages for violation of their children’s civil rights finalized a settlement on April 27, 2023. Not only is the school district required to pay $400,000 because of the harm suffered by the children, BUSD must also provide counseling and tutoring for the students, and training for all BUSD faculty and staff on “public health, response to public health emergencies, informed consent, and bullying/harassment/retaliation issues.”"
REPORTS
Amounts California districts were allotted and spent in federal Covid aid June 14, 2023
Exploring the Spike in Chronic Absenteeism among K–12 Students Public Policy Institute of California March 29, 2023
"Thirty percent of California public school students were chronically absent from school in 2021–22—a near tripling of the percentage in 2018–19. Although we do not know if this stark increase in chronic absenteeism, defined as missing at least 10% of the school year or at least 18 days, will continue, the data from last year raises concerns about the pace of students’ learning recovery after the educational setbacks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Absenteeism rose substantially for nearly all student groups. However, we do see variation across demographic dimensions. Among racial/ethnic groups, Black, Native American, and Pacific Islander students experienced the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, exceeding 40% in 2021–22. Latino students also saw a significant increase, with absenteeism rates more than doubling from around 13% in 2018–19 to approximately 35% three years later."
2022
Bill seeks to remove average daily attendance from K-12 funding formula January 3, 2022
"A bill introduced Monday by state senator Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, would base K-12 district’s funding on enrollment, removing average daily attendance from the formula starting in 2023-24."
Coalition of Parent Advocate Groups Issue Urgent Call to Keep Schools Open January 3, 2022
"Between a crushing epidemic of learning loss and deteriorating mental health, kids are suffering even more today than in 2020. We cannot move backwards: we must move forward and restore normalcy, which centers on in-person school for all kids across the country, in educational environments devoid of unnecessary restrictions on children.
We call on governors, mayors, superintendents, school boards, school administrators, teachers and parents to recognize the importance of in-person education for America’s children and keep our nation’s schools open."
"After hearing from various MUSD representatives, MUSD’s Board of Education decided to make a shift to virtual learning starting next Monday, January 10. In-person learning will resume on January 18, after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Due to omicron surge, Milpitas Unified schools will go virtual next week January 7, 2022
Since January 15 is a professional development day and January 18 is a holiday, children will only be engaging in virtual learning for four school days. "
Teacher ‘Sickout' Over COVID Safety Concerns Force School Closures in Oakland January 7, 2022
"At least a dozen schools in Oakland were forced to close Friday after more than 500 teachers called out sick as part of a protest over COVID safety concerns.
The Oakland Unified School District said over 8,000 students were impacted by the closures."
First comprehensive data in two years show big academic setbacks for California students January 7, 2022
"The results show that about half of all California students tested did not meet state standards in English language arts and about two-thirds did not meet standards in math. The scores of Black, Latino and economically disadvantaged students were significantly lower, with more than 60% not meeting English standards and about 80% not meeting math standards.
In English language arts, the rate of students not meeting expectations was significantly higher in earlier grades compared with later grades, indicating that younger students may be uniquely struggling with literacy skills. For example, about 60% of third- and fourth-graders were not meeting standards in English compared to about 40% of 11th-graders."
I'm a Public School Teacher. The Kids Aren't Alright. January 20, 2022
"When we look at the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of history, I believe it will be clear that we betrayed our children. The risks of this pandemic were never to them, but they were forced to carry the burden of it. It’s enough. It’s time for a return to normal life and put an end to the bureaucratic policies that aren't making society safer, but are sacrificing our children's mental, emotional, and physical health. "
California Assessment Results January 2022
Evidence-Informed Milestones for Developmental Surveillance Tools February 8, 2022
Learn the Signs. Act Early. CDC
No SLPs were in the room where it happened February 10, 2022
American Speech and Language Hearing Association February 21, 2022
Association of COVID-19 Incidence and Mortality Rates With School Reopening in Brazil During the COVID-19 Pandemic February 11, 2022
"The findings from this study suggest that keeping schools open during the COVID-19 pandemic did not contribute to the aggregate disease activity."
California lawmakers want to crack down on public meeting disruptions February 18, 2022
"The bill would clarify “willfully interrupting” to mean “intentionally engaging in behavior during a meeting of a legislative body that substantially impairs or renders infeasible the orderly conduct of the meeting.” The bill would also require officials to issue a warning to participants to “curtail their disruptive behavior” before removing them or clearing a room.
Judge Orders Schools To Offer Better Virtual Classes For Students With Disabilities March 2, 2022
"U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston’s decision on Monday means California schools will have to be far more flexible in serving students with intellectual or developmental disabilities when their parents opt them out of in-person instruction.
If independent study isn’t the right fit for a student with disabilities, the judge said schools must “consider different modalities of virtual instruction” for that student. Those alternatives include “participating via video conference in the class that the student would otherwise attend”; or providing an aide for the student, either at their home or virtually."
Layoff notices are back in some California school districts in a year of plenty: How come? March 9, 2022
"The combination of lower enrollment and attendance would have walloped most districts’ budgets already, but for the current year and previous two years, the Legislature allowed districts to claim their pre-pandemic average daily attendance for the Local Control Funding Formula. With this assurance, districts could postpone the need to reduce staff through attrition. But that hold-harmless provision is due to expire with the 2022-23 budget. Since districts will base next year’s budget on this year’s real attendance numbers, they could feel repercussions all at once."
Banning children from school in pandemic was a mistake, says Zahawi March 18, 2022
"In the first full admission from a minister that the life chances of a generation were torpedoed by two years of absenteeism, Nadhim Zahawi said pupils needed desperately to be, and stay, in school. Speaking to the Daily Express after his predecessor and architect of the fiasco was knighted, he added: "I suspect one thing we won't need an inquiry to tell us is it was a mistake to go to home learning. "Keeping kids in education must always be a priority and going forward it is absolutely a priority both from the Prime Minister and me.""
‘A cry for help’: CDC warns of a steep decline in teen mental health Washington Post March 31, 2022
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning of an accelerating mental health crisis among adolescents, with more than 4 in 10 teens reporting that they feel “persistently sad or hopeless,” and 1 in 5 saying they have contemplated suicide, according to the results of a survey published Thursday."
California K-12 enrollment plunges again, falls below 6 million EdSource April 11, 2022
"Dashing hopes for a rebound, K-12 enrollment has fallen sharply again this year, by an additional 110,300 students, pushing total public school enrollment in California below 6 million for the first time since 1999-2000.
The 1.8% enrollment decline, on top of the 2.6% record drop in 2020-21, is a combined loss of 271,000 students since Covid struck in spring 2020. Enrollment as of Census Day, always the first Wednesday of October, was 5.89 million students this year; five years ago, it was 6.23 million."
Dubious research, vexing guidance: CDC struggles to help schools during pandemic April 18, 2022
"Many have debated the substance of the CDC’s recommendations to schools throughout the pandemic. But a Chalkbeat review suggests that over two years, the agency fell short at a more straightforward task: to communicate clearly and accurately with schools about its guidance and research. "
State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Announces Creation of Task Force to Combat Declining School Enrollment April 20, 2022
"The task force will take up the issue of declining enrollment and offer recommendations and technical assistance to districts to help offset the challenges it poses."
Pandemic babies having speech, behavioral delays April 23, 2022
"Referrals to the state program decreased during the pandemic, but they’re on the upswing again, Gray said. They’re seeing babies and toddlers being referred for more serious delays, and for delays in more than one area — particularly in speech and behavior."
What We Learned From Hating the Unvaccinated April 27, 2022
"Most of us who pilloried the noncompliant did it because it seemed like certain victory, like the unvaccinated would never make it through unbroken. Indeed, the promised new normal looked unbeatable, so we sided with it and made punching bags out of the holdouts.
But betting against them has been a scathing embarrassment for many of us who’ve now learned that the mandates only had the power we gave them. It was not through quiet compliance that we avoided endless domination by pharmaceutical companies and medical checkpoints at every doorway. It was thanks to the people we tried to tear down."
LAUSD failed students with disabilities during pandemic, federal investigation finds LA Times April 28, 2022
"The investigation found that the district failed to provide services identified in students’ legally required education plans, failed to accurately or sufficiently track services, and informed staff that the district was not responsible for providing so-called “compensatory services” aimed at helping students make up for what they lost, because the district was not at fault for the campus closures.
The agreement calls for the district to offer make-up services “to remedy any educational or other deficits that result from a student with a disability not receiving the evaluations or services to which they were entitled.”"
Feds fault LAUSD services for disabled students during COVID shutdowns April 28, 2022
"The Los Angeles Unified School District failed to provide adequate educational services to students with disabilities during the COVID-19 campus shutdown, and will take steps to ensure affected students receive compensatory services, the U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday."
"For example, OCR found that during remote learning, the district:
Limited the services provided to students with disabilities based on considerations other than the students’ individual educational needs.
Failed to accurately or sufficiently track services provided to students with disabilities.
Directed district service providers to include attempts to communicate with students and parents—including emails and phone calls—as the provision of services, documenting such on students’ service records.
Informed staff that the district was not responsible for providing compensatory education to students with disabilities who did not receive FAPE during the COVID-19 school closure period because the district was not at fault for the closure. And,
Failed to develop and implement a plan adequate to remedy the instances in which students with disabilities were not provided a FAPE during remote learning."
California Democrat says parents at school board meetings need 'a lesson' April 28, 2022
"Jonathan Zachreson, founder of Reopen CA Schools, told Fox News Digital that Leyva could have been taking a few extreme examples from school board meetings across the country to justify her opposition to this bill. He said that the school board meetings he attends on a day-to-day basis are not as Leyva describes them.
"The vast majority of board meetings I see and attend to on a day-to-day basis are just fine. And yeah, parents can sometimes be stern, but they're not, you know, crazy running down the aisles, you know, heckling," Zachreson said. "
Senate, Assembly agree California schools should receive billions more in unrestricted funding EdSource April 29, 2022
"Legislative leaders agreed this week that giving schools billions of dollars more in unrestricted funding would be their top priority in negotiations with Gov. Gavin Newsom over next year’s bountiful state budget."
Headcounts are down at public schools. Now budgets are too. AP April 30, 2022
"In California, which announced this month that enrollment had fallen by an additional 110,283 students, Oakland’s planned school closures are leading to protests. The ACLU filed a complaint this month alleging that they disproportionately affect Black students and families.
Further complicating the situation is a tight labor market and demands for teacher and staff raises."
OPINION: Education Lawmaking in California is Overshadowed by Teachers Unions May 5, 2022
"This establishment-public divide is particularly pronounced through heightened tensions between ranking members of the education committees at the State Legislature and concerned parents who demand accountability, transparency and access in public K-12 education. "
Remote learning likely widened racial, economic achievement gap The Harvard Gazette May 5, 2022
"A new report on pandemic learning loss found that high-poverty schools both spent more weeks in remote instruction during 2020-21 and suffered large losses in achievement when they did so. Districts that remained largely in-person, however, lost relatively little ground. Experts predict the results will foreshadow a widening in measures of the nation’s racial and economic achievement gap."
‘Not Good for Learning’ The New York Times May 5, 2022
"The Covid closures have reversed much of that progress, at least for now. Low-income students, as well as Black and Latino students, fell further behind over the past two years, relative to students who are high-income, white or Asian. “This will probably be the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation,” Thomas Kane, an author of the Harvard study, told me."
An Open Letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom from California Policy Center’s Parent Union May 9, 2022
"As you repeatedly remind us to “follow the science” on COVID-19, we have little doubt you’ve already seen the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) report on the devastating impact of extended school lockdowns on our nation’s teens. The bottom line: Two years of isolation, anxiety and stress have produced a severe mental health crisis among America’s teenagers. "
Covid-Era Babies Are ‘Talking’ Less, Signaling Future Reading Challenges Forbes May 10, 2022
"Now two additional studies suggest that many children born during the pandemic will also be at risk for academic failure. It seems that overburdened parents haven’t been able to engage babies and toddlers in the kind of “conversation” that is crucial for language development—and eventually, for reading."
AT LEAST 8 STUDENTS RECEIVED FENTANYL FROM RIVERSIDE SCHOOL EMPLOYEE, POLICE SAY May 20, 2022
"A Riverside school employee and her husband face criminal charges for allegedly distributing fentanyl to at least eight students at a school for students with special needs, police say."
Kids Are Far, Far Behind in School The Atlantic May 22, 2022
"One-fifth of American students, by our calculations, were enrolled in districts that remained remote for the majority of the 2020–21 school year. For these students, the effects were severe. Growth in student achievement slowed to the point that, even in low-poverty schools, students in fall 2021 had fallen well behind what pre-pandemic patterns would have predicted; in effect, students at low-poverty schools that stayed remote had lost the equivalent of 13 weeks of in-person instruction. At high-poverty schools that stayed remote, students lost the equivalent of 22 weeks. Racial gaps widened too: In the districts that stayed remote for most of last year, the outcome was as if Black and Hispanic students had lost four to five more weeks of instruction than white students had."
362 School Counselors on the Pandemic’s Effect on Children: ‘Anxiety Is Filling Our Kids’ The New York Times May 29, 2022
"American schoolchildren’s learning loss in the pandemic isn’t just in reading and math. It’s also in social and emotional skills — those needed to make and keep friends; participate in group projects; and cope with frustration and other emotions.
In a survey of 362 school counselors nationwide by The New York Times in April, the counselors — licensed educators who teach these skills — described many students as frozen, socially and emotionally, at the age they were when the pandemic started."
COVID restrictions stunted kids' immune systems, could explain surge of other illnesses: scientists June 2, 2022
"Societies that tried to avoid COVID have "far less recently acquired immunity" and now face "wonkiness" in immune responses to routinely circulating pathogens, epidemics journalist and onetime CDC embed Helen Braswell wrote in health publisher STAT last week.
The evasion strategy may help explain the untimely surges of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in kids last summer and this spring's flu hospitalizations, as well as monkeypox's spread far beyond Africa, she said. An otherwise mild adenovirus may have played a role in an unprecedented spate of "severe hepatitis in healthy young children."
Dutch scientists told STAT that children are at particular risk because so many have barely had microbial exposure beyond their households. "
Pandemic babies are behind after years of stress, isolation affected brain development June 9, 2022
"According to a handful of small studies published within the past few months, children born during the pandemic score lower on average on tests of gross motor, fine motor, social and problem-solving skills compared with those born before COVID-19. For instance, a 6-month-old pandemic baby is less likely than a previous 6-month-old to get into a crawling position or smile at herself in the mirror – both of which are milestones for that age group. "
Some primary school pupils unable to say their names, teachers report The Times June 13, 2022
"Children are arriving at school unable to say their own names or drink from cups, The Times Education Commission’s final report will reveal this week."
The Biggest Disruption in the History of American Education The Atlantic June 23, 2022
"School closures withdrew these services and supports in an era when Americans, and especially young Americans, were already losing faith in their institutions, and when community ties were already fraying. These abstractions have concrete consequences: Even as independent schools have increased enrollment, the nation’s public schools have lost more than 1 million students since 2020, and the districts that stayed remote the longest have suffered the biggest losses. In effect, millions of Americans are rejecting the central mechanism through which American society supports its children across all facets of their lives."
Swedish Public Health Agency guidance helped schools stay open. CDC guidance did the opposite. July 1, 2022
"A major difference between this CDC guidance and that issued by the Swedish Public Health Agency is that the Swedish guidance was much more explicit about the ineffectiveness of school closures, essentially ruling them out."
Behavioral issues, absenteeism at schools increase, federal data shows Washington Post July 6, 2022
"More than 80 percent of public schools reported that the pandemic has taken a toll on student behavior and social-emotional development, while nearly as many schools say they need more mental health support, according to federal data released Wednesday.
The data, collected as the 2021-2022 school year was winding down, also showed that more than 70 percent of schools saw increases in chronic student absenteeism since the onset of the pandemic and about half of schools reported increased acts of disrespect toward teachers and staff."
Covid learning loss has been a global disaster The Economist July 7, 2022
"New data suggest that the damage has been worse than almost anyone expected. Locking kids out of school has prevented many of them from learning how to read properly. Before the pandemic 57% of ten-year-olds in low and middle-income countries could not read a simple story, says the World Bank. That figure may have risen to 70%, it now estimates. "
Online Schooling Is the Bad Idea That Refuses to Die Bloomberg July 23, 2022
"School closings over the last two years have inflicted severe educational and emotional damage on American students. Schools should now be focusing on creative ways to fill classrooms, socialize kids and convey the joy of collaborative learning — not on providing opportunities to stay home."
L.A. Unified estimates tens of thousands of students are missing from back-to-school rosters LA Times July 30, 2022
"Two weeks before school starts, Los Angeles Unified Supt. Alberto M. Carvalho estimates that between 10,000 and 20,000 students are not enrolled or stopped attending last year, with the problem most pronounced in the youngest grades."
LAUSD announces COVID protocols for 22-23 school year August 2, 2022
"Students and staff will no longer need to undergo weekly COVID testing. Mask-wearing will still be only strongly recommended indoors, and the district's COVID vaccination requirement for students remains on hold until at least next year."
LAUSD announces scaled-back COVID protocols for new school year August 2, 2022
"As it enters its fourth school year with the coronavirus to contend with, the nation’s second-largest school district plans to scale back some of its pandemic-related protocols – most notably by ending mandatory weekly COVID-19 testing of all students and staff on campuses and no longer requiring individuals to check in daily using its Daily Pass system in order to enter campus."
L.A. schools drop aggressive COVID-19 rules: No more testing for all and masks stay optional LA Times August 2, 2022
"Los Angeles Unified school leaders on Tuesday officially stepped back from COVID-19 safety protocols that have been among the most far-reaching in the country, choosing instead to mirror current county requirements and join most other school systems throughout the region, marking a reordering of priorities as the pandemic seeps into a third academic year."
LAUSD students to start school year without mask mandate EdSource August 2, 2022
"“We’re very happy over the fact that after a significant increase in Covid cases in our community, there has been a plateau and now a significant decrease in the cases in our community,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said at a news conference last week. “That bodes well for a smooth reopening of schools on Aug. 15.”"
Covid-19: Unprecedented levels of chronic absence in schools BBC August 4, 2022
"The impact of the Covid pandemic has resulted in "unprecedented" numbers of children chronically absent from school, the Department of Education (DE) has said."
Here’s What School Covid Policies Should Look Like This Year New York Times August 4, 2022
"Millions of kids went “missing” from schools during the coronavirus pandemic — totally unaccounted for. Reading and math scores plummeted. There has been a youth mental health crisis. There are inequities in Covid impacts and learning loss by race, ethnicity and family income."
For California students, a normal-ish return to school this fall amid COVID case surge Mercury News August 5, 2022
"As K12 schools re-open this month, face masks will be optional for most California students, as they were last spring. Testing and quarantining are being dialed back. Schools are giving out rapid tests for students to take before returning to class from the summer break but aren’t demanding proof of a negative result.
And talk of a statewide vaccine mandate for students has been put on hold along with requirements for the shots that many school districts such as Oakland and West Contra Costa were planning last year."
What’s new this school year? Changing Covid protocols, universal TK, later start times and more August 10, 2022
"Covid-19 protocols have changed tremendously from the beginning of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. This year, mask mandates and social distancing are mostly a thing of the past. Regular surveillance testing has made way for at-home tests provided by schools during times of high transmission, as well as testing at school sites as needed."
Sensible Medicine August 12, 2022
"California will likely soon be passing a bill into law which will require schools to continue covid testing in children. Estimated to cost $1.5 billion for just the first year, this law will keep children unnecessarily out of school, sports and time with friends for a third year.
Children 12 and older will be required to be fully vaccinated to attend school in Washington DC. Again, with only evidence of a brief possibility of reduction in transmission potential, and such a high rate of previous infection, why the choice for children to be vaccinated will not be an individual one. Some children will needlessly harmed by myocarditis or other side effects and others kept from school for not being vaccinated.
Children will still be required to mask in some districts again despite lack of good evidence of benefit. For some kids, there is no end in sight."
The new book 'The Stolen Year' details how the pandemic disrupted children's lives August 22, 2022
"Because I think we heard a lot from President Trump about how important it was to open schools. But we didn't see responses, particularly from people who were on the other side politically. In fact, it was shown that the more likely a county or district was to go for Biden in the 2020 election, the more likely that county was to stay closed for longer and to keep up restrictions like masking. So you know, something's wrong when political affiliation, not case rates, not demographics, is the leading indicator of whether a district is opening or not."
California does little to ensure all kids read by third grade August 26, 2022
"California fourth graders trail the nation in reading, and half of its third graders, including two-thirds of Black students and 61% of Latino students, do not read at grade level.
Yet, California is not among the states — including Mississippi, North Carolina, Florida, Connecticut, Colorado, Virginia and New York City — that have adopted comprehensive literacy plans to ensure that all children can read by third grade. And California has not set a timeline or given any indication it intends to create such a plan."
7 charts highlighting the pandemic’s impact on 2022 NAEP scores September 2, 2022
"Overall, scores in math and reading for 9-year-olds told a similar story — one of declines. Nine-year-old students saw, for the first time ever, a significant decline in math scores and the most significant decline since the 1980s in reading. In reading, there was a 3-point drop from a score of 212 in 1988 to a score of 209 in 1990. The drop seen during the pandemic was steeper, with a 5-point drop from 220 in 2020 to 215 in 2022."
‘We came back in force.’ With COVID restrictions behind them, teens relish the high school experience September 5, 2022
"Before the pandemic, senior Alexander Lee said his classmates at Leland in San Jose were taking high school for granted. “I think we kind of fell into the sort of monotony of going to school, you know, just treating everything as normal,” Alexander, 17, said. “But because we were at home for so long by ourselves, I noticed that when we came back, we came back in force. We sprung to life.”"
California teachers union spied on parents fighting to reopen schools during COVID, emails show September 6, 2022
"Emails obtained through a public records request show that the California Teachers Association (CTA) – one of the most powerful teachers unions in the state – spied on parents who fought for schools to be reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic. "
'Kids haven't changed, their world has changed' A look at teaching post-COVID-19 | To The Point September 7, 2022
""Things have changed dramatically since the pandemic, honestly," said Lambert. "One of the biggest problems that I'm hearing over and over again is student behavior. Student behavior since the pandemic, probably because of problems with social-emotional issues, has really gotten bad in some classrooms and teachers have left. "
Teachers union caught trying to dig up dirt on parents VIDEO September 7, 2022
COVID-19 and the unseen pandemic of child abuse September 13, 2022
"We conclude that lockdowns have an unacceptably high risk of negative side effects for children, as evidenced by child abuse, the true extent of which appears to be masked by lockdown-related disruptions to schools and other surveillance systems. Rather than a ‘missing epidemic’, perhaps a more appropriate name for lockdown-related child abuse is an unseen pandemic—hidden in plain sight. "
COVID-19 school closures undermined learning CalMatters September 18, 2022
"The educational deprivation that California inflicted on its kids is not only shameful, but will reverberate for decades. Children who fail to master the basics of education in lower grades will be ill-prepared for high school and post-high school training and education. If they are not prepared to take their place in the work force, the state’s economy will suffer."
EdSource law firm asks CDE to reconsider denial to Public Records Request to release school data September 21, 2022
State delays public release of English, math and science test score results to later this year EdSource September 22, 2022
"“The state can’t talk out of both sides of its mouth” by giving districts data that shows their test results and then refusing to release the overall data set, said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, a San Rafael-based open government group. There are no exemptions in the law that allow the government to withhold records from the public because they are “inconvenient or embarrassing,” he said."
Opinion: Let the old normal reign in schools without the threat of COVID restrictions National Post September 23, 2022
"This school year children must be allowed to be free of COVID restrictions or the threat of their return and return fully to the old normal. Having sustained much collateral damage from COVID policies, children’s mental, physical, and academic well-being will need to be a major focus of governments moving forward."
California refusing to release school test results CalMatters September 27, 2022
"This is not only a politically tinged education issue but a major test for the state’s Public Records Act, which allows public agencies to withhold information only under extreme circumstances. If records can be withheld for obvious political purposes in this case, the Public Records Act might as well be junked entirely."
California reverses course, will release Smarter Balanced test scores next month, official says EdSource September 27, 2022
"In a change of an earlier position, the California Department of Education will release Smarter Balanced test scores next month and not wait to incorporate them into other data as planned, a department official said Tuesday."
California’s Standardized Test Results Will Come Out In October, After Concerns About Delayed Release In Scores LAist September 27, 2022
"The California Department of Education will release the results of last spring’s statewide math, reading and science tests in October, an official in the department told our newsroom Tuesday."
California backtracks on withholding testing data Fordham Institute September 29, 2022
"Weeks away from the midterms, education apparatchiks in the nation’s most populous state are ramping up the election mischief by playing politics with what are expected to be dismal results from assessments taken by students last spring. Earlier this month, as reported in EdSource, the California Department of Education (CDE) announced its intent to delay release of test score data from the 2021–22 school year until after November 8. Following media pressure, this week the agency walked back that decision. The original plan would have allowed Governor Gavin Newsom and other elected officials—notably including State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who is up for re-election and had the ultimate say on the delay—to duck scrutiny for their role in exacerbating pandemic-related setbacks. CDE’s reversal means that will no longer be the case."
Parents don't need to vote Republican to send a message to Gavin Newsom SF Gate October 20, 2022
"There has been no such mea culpa from Gavin Newsom. He cannot or will not admit wrongdoing. As a reminder, it was Newsom in March 2020 who was quick to say schools would remain closed for the remainder of that school year, even though the risks of learning loss and the necessity of things like school meal programs were already present. By July 2020, he was already prioritizing the wishes of one of his biggest donors, the California Teachers Association, over the needs of students, and announced that the vast majority of districts would not be allowed to reopen for the new school year. "
Online school put US kids behind. Some Adults have regrets AP October 21, 2022
"Yet many schools stayed closed well into the spring, including in California, where the state’s powerful teachers unions fought returning to classrooms, citing lack of safety protocols."
California test scores show deep pandemic drops; 2 in 3 students don’t meet math standards LA Times October 24, 2022
"Two out of three California students did not meet state math standards and more than half did not meet English standards on state assessments taken in the spring, reflecting sizable drops in performance compared to the year before the pandemic, when large numbers of students were already struggling to meet grade-level expectations.
The test results are even more devastating for Black, Latino, low-income and other historically underserved students — 84% of Black students and 79% of Latino and low-income students did not meet state math standards in 2022."
2022 California standardized test results wipe out years of steady progress Ed Source October 24, 2022
"Megan Bacigalupi, director of CA Parent Power, an Oakland-based nonprofit that grew out of parents’ frustration with school closures, pointed to prolonged remote learning in California as the cause of lower test scores.
“Any parent who was home with their child … saw what a failure online school was. Parents should look at these scores and know that statewide leaders failed our children,” she said. “Parents should also ask hard questions of their school districts. … We should be treating this as a statewide crisis.”"
The Kids Are NOT Alright: Taking Inventory of Young People’s Mental Health Since March 2020 October 27, 2022
"The good news is that traditional mental health care is only one of many tools in the toolbox. There are several effective alternative resources. As the source of mental illness can be different for each child, so might the solution. Knowing this can broaden the scope of possibilities and options for a child’s healing."
"“These clinical data complement the findings in Solomon et al. (1), which found that adults with more frequent exposure to children were less likely to develop severe COVID-19. The authors theorize that this association may be attributed to ongoing intermittent exposure to and infection with other coronaviruses.”"
Column: Closing schools in the pandemic was bad. Keeping them all open would have been worse LA Times November 8, 2022
"It’s possible that keeping schools closed was a big mistake. But we don’t know. What’s worse, we’re not asking the right questions. “Those who make this claim should honestly grapple with what would have happened had nothing been done,” Howard wrote, “rather than indulge an absurd, revisionist fantasy that everything would have been fine and dandy.”"
Voters reelected Tony Thurmond; now he needs to keep his promises on literacy EdSource November 16, 2022
"The response to the pandemic by California’s leaders, Tony Thurmond included, made an existing problem worse: While some progress was being made in the years before the pandemic, only about half of California students were at grade level in English language arts and only a third were at grade level in math. Results from third grade students, most of whom were forced to learn to read over Zoom, are some of the most distressing, with scores falling to 42.2%, a 6.5 point drop and the lowest of any tested grade. For parents who watched their children struggle, often with the balanced literacy curriculum that our state leaders refuse to disavow, these test results will likely come as no surprise. But instead of addressing this crisis head-on and acting quickly to address it, Superintendent Thurmond tried for weeks to delay the release of the test scores."
Strep A surge linked to lockdown, health officials admit for first time December 5, 2022
"Scientists argued over the weekend over whether a so-called immunity debt – where there are more people without immunity to various diseases – brought about by Covid lockdowns and social distancing was to blame.
But on Monday, Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical advisor at UKHSA, confirmed for the first time on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that lockdown did play a role.
“We’re back to normal social mixing and the patterns of diseases that we’re seeing in the last number of months are out of sync with the normal seasons as people mix back to normal and move around and pass infections on,” she said.
“We also need to recognise that the measures that we’ve taken for the last couple of years to reduce Covid circulating will also reduce other infections circulating.
“And so that means that, as things get back to normal, these traditional infections that we’ve seen for many years are circulating at great levels.”"
The crisis of student mental health is much vaster than we realize The Washington Post December 5, 2022
"Nationally, adolescent depression and anxiety — already at crisis levels before the pandemic — have surged amid the isolation, disruption and hardship of covid-19." (COVID POLICIES)
The Hijacking of Pediatric Medicine December 7, 2022
"It was a microcosm the AAP’s handling of the pandemic: From masking toddlers to boosters for 12-year-olds, the group’s guidelines were consistently out of sync with those of the rest of the world, but very much in line with the demands of anti-Trump partisans. "
We've Failed To Learn From Past Pandemics. Our Posterity Deserves Better | Opinion Newsweek Justin Hart December 13, 2022
"The negative impact of closing schools and quarantining healthy children was, and continues to be, undeniable. Education attainments have been set back a decade, by at least one reckoning. Another study across 16 countries concluded that the risk from COVID for young children, compared to the risk for someone at the average age of death (roughly 80 years old), was 100,000 times lower.
Another voice from the past sums up our experiences in many ways. A 1918 editorial in Iowa debated pandemic interventions and concluded: "The people are perfectly willing to do whatever needs to be done. But they dislike greatly the inconvenience themselves, only to learn later that what they did was not necessary.""
Teens in COVID distance learning were lonelier and more depressed, UC Davis study finds Sacramento Bee December 20, 2022
"In the survey of 1,177 high school freshmen, sophomores and juniors, the students who were attending online classes were more negative about school, more likely to find their assignments meaningless, lonelier and sadder compared to students who saw each other face-to-face."
Pandemic Learning Loss Could Cost Students $70,000 in Lifetime Earnings Wall Street Journal December 27, 2022
"Learning loss could shave $70,000 off the lifetime earnings of children who were in school during the pandemic, according to a new study by a Stanford economist."
The Costs of a Closed Society Wall Street Journal December 28, 2022
"Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.) will become chairman of the House Oversight Committee in the new Congress, and he’s been busy collecting information on the government’s disastrous response to Covid. Tuesday on the Fox Business Network he told your humble correspondent:
Now we’re learning that the government was very involved in suppressing speech, among other medical experts and other people who didn’t agree with [Dr. Anthony Fauci]... history is not going to be kind to the American response to COVID 19."
Fall 2021 Aftermath of School Reopening In Person School
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