https://youtu.be/0XI2ptBDBxQ
States are resisting a return to remote learning even as the delta variant leads to higher numbers of Covid-19 cases among children and teachers.
U.S. schools were counting on widespread vaccinations to help get all students back to in-person classes for the first time since early 2020. Mere weeks into the effort, signs of another taxing year are emerging amid scattershot safety rules and rising Covid-19 among children. Over the past month, with kindergarten through 12th grade in session, the country has reported almost 1 million cases among those under 18. Though kids typically are less likely than adults to become severely ill with Covid, they increasingly are contracting the highly contagious delta variant. As of Sunday, 2,000 schools nationwide had closed — 18% more than a week earlier, according to the Burbio tracker.
The solution is vaccines. Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE on Monday reported strong outcomes in trials for 5-to-11-year-olds. But federal approval for the shots isn’t expected until late October at the earliest. Until then, some of the biggest districts are pledging to avoid a return to the online lessons that jammed parents who couldn’t work remotely, stressed tech-poor areas and worsened the nation’s academic inequality.
“Kids need to be in school — that sort of emerges as the consensus,” Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said in an interview. “You have to have layers of safety. What we’re seeing is a really uneven picture.” Preventing spread is not so simple in parts of the country where rules are relaxed or non-existent, as Republican governors and lawmakers invoke personal freedom or discount Covid’s health effects. In Utah, where school mask mandates are banned, aerospace executive Brad Plothow and his wife, Stefanie, are home-teaching their two younger children who are at risk for respiratory illness. Two older girls are attending classes in person: One is vaccinated, and the other, just shy of the age 12 minimum, is in a classroom running a pair of high-efficiency air purifiers bought by the Plothows. “When they come home, we’re nervous,” said Brad Plothow, 39, of Lehi, 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Salt Lake City. “They gargle, shower and spray down their backpacks. The thinking is: What are the vectors that could create a problem for our younger kids?” Three times over the past four weeks, the family received word of possible school exposure, but the girls tested negative. When federal approval comes through on shots for those under 12, Plothow said, all his kids will be protected. In South Carolina, where several school districts have gone virtual, state lawmakers from both parties are calling for a special legislative session to overturn a rule that forbids districts from requiring masks. But in a state that’s given enough vaccinations for just 52% of the population, Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, says parents should make the decision. “This school district, this county has done a grand job of using all the tools, all the information, and assimilating the data necessary to understand what we’re dealing with,” McMaster said on Sept. 15 during a tour of Camden Elementary School — 35 miles northeast of Columbia — which sanitizes surfaces and isolates students with high temperatures. Even multiple protection layers are no guarantee. New Jersey, with 130,000 teachers and 1.3 million kids in public and charter schools, requires masks and staff vaccinations, among other precautions. Of the seven schools forced to shut since in-person classes started, four have reopened and three remain virtual, state Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan said Wednesday at a Trenton virus briefing.
A Sept. 3 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on a Marin County, California, school traced at least two dozen cases to an unvaccinated teacher who had read aloud maskless. The outbreak occurred even though most staff had had shots and the school had followed CDC recommendations on masking, routine testing, building ventilating and staying home when symptomatic “to ensure safe in-person learning in schools.” In recent days, a growing number of cases are driving some states to renew safety calls. In New York, where 54% of 12-to-17-year-olds are vaccinated, Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday called remote learning “an interesting experiment” that was “a disaster.” She urged parents in areas dense with schools to send vaccine-eligible youngsters to mobile sites set up near basketball courts and parks. “Keeping them unvaccinated during a global pandemic — which is not over yet, my friends — is something I can’t comprehend as a parent,” she said. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont is seeking to extend the statewide school mask mandate beyond Sept. 30. “A lot of families started moving to Connecticut because they wanted their kids in schools and we’re able to do that safely,” Lamont, a Democrat, said Tuesday on Bloomberg Television.
Nationally, at least 361 teachers have died of Covid-19 since the pandemic began in March 2020, according to a compilation by Education Week. New York City as of Wednesday has logged 91 deaths of teachers, food-service workers, secretaries and other school employees, according to its education department. In Manhattan, Public School 79 on Monday became the city’s first school this term to go remote after 19 staff members tested positive. “We still need everybody to wear masks — we need all of those layers there,” said Anna Bershteyn, an assistant professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine’s population health department, who advised the city on its return to classrooms.
For the week ended Sept. 16, there were 226,000 child Covid cases, accounting for more than one-quarter of all U.S. positives, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Some districts say for the most part, lessons are going as planned. In Philadelphia, James Garrow, a spokesman for the city’s health department, said four schools closing among hundreds was “definitely not the worst-case scenario.” “Anybody would be silly to believe there would be no cases in schools,” Garrow said. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday doubled testing to weekly, but at the same time loosened quarantine rules to boost attendance. He has said students need to be in class, and remote learning should not be an option. “There’s a number of kids out of school right now,” he said. “Our goal is to avoid that whenever possible so as long as we can do it safely.” In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday said she was disappointed in the city’s slow rollout of teacher and student testing. Among 22,000 teachers and 341,000 students, just 5,451 samples had been collected as of Tuesday, according to the district’s Covid page. Officials report 329 student and 142 adult cases since school started. “There should have been a much more robust plan and infrastructure in place,” Lightfoot told WTTW public television. In Georgia, where Republican Governor Brian Kemp maintains that masking and vaccinating should be personal choices, almost 60% of statewide cases as of Sept. 14 were in schools. And in Colorado, where school masking is optional, statewide transmission is highest among those ages 6 to 17.
Last week, Colorado school cases almost doubled over seven days, to 1,583. Denver, the state’s largest public district, on Wednesday reported 35 staffers and 170 students tested positive, and 220 kids “The risk to children right now is higher than it’s ever been during the pandemic because of the delta variant being more transmissible,” state epidemiologist Rachel Herlihy said. NN: As we predicted sending the children back to school vaccinated is a BIG mistake. The hell of it is the Pfizer vaccines has finished its Phase III trials and its safe and it works. But it will be delayed until after the holidays and for many it will come to late. We are prototyping our kiddie fun masks,…… Maybe then can help:
