Schools Confront Wave of Student Misbehavior, Driven by Months of Remote Learning

It was practically guaranteed to happen.

At WSJ, "Districts respond with more counseling, increased patrols and fewer suspensions":

School districts across the U.S. say they are seeing a surge of student misbehavior in the return to in-person learning, after months of closures and disruptions due to the pandemic.

In the hallway between classes one afternoon this fall at Southwood High School in Shreveport, La., two boys exchanged words. All at once, they jumped at each other, witnesses said. Dozens of other students joined and they all fell into a heap, kicking and punching, until teachers pulled them apart.

The fight was one in a series of brawls in Southwood’s courtyards and hallways on three subsequent days that led to 23 students being arrested and expelled. School officials say they had never seen anything like it before at Southwood, known for its Cowboys football team, its biotechnology program and its scenic location on a former cattle ranch. The academically strong school has a 99% graduation rate for its student body of more than 1,600.

“We knew it was going to be a problem with kids transitioning back from virtual, because they haven’t been in school for a couple of years,” said Southwood’s principal, Kim Pendleton. “You have eighth-graders that are now 10th-graders or seventh-graders that are now ninth-graders, and no time to really acclimate.”

Schools have seen an increase in both minor incidents, like students talking in class, and more serious issues, such as fights and gun possession. In Dallas, disruptive classroom incidents have tripled this year compared with pre-pandemic levels, school officials said. The Albuquerque, N.M., superintendent sent a letter to parents warning of a “rise in violence and unacceptable behaviors posted to social media” that have disrupted classes. The National Association of School Resource Officers said it has seen a rise in gun-related incidents in schools.

Some schools are responding to the disciplinary problems by dispatching more staffers to patrol school grounds or by hiring more counselors. Others are reducing student suspensions, or in Dallas, eliminating them altogether in favor of counseling. Some districts have enacted what they call mental-health days, closing schools around holidays to give students and administrators a break. Peoria, Ill., is planning a special school that would be dedicated to students with issues caused by the pandemic. Educators at disadvantaged schools, often in low-income neighborhoods, said they had anticipated students would return to in-person learning with mental-health scars from Covid-19. The issues are also coming up at schools that previously had few serious incidents, such as Southwood. Schools have seen an increase in both minor incidents, like students talking in class, and more serious issues, such as fights and gun possession. In Dallas, disruptive classroom incidents have tripled this year compared with pre-pandemic levels, school officials said. The Albuquerque, N.M., superintendent sent a letter to parents warning of a “rise in violence and unacceptable behaviors posted to social media” that have disrupted classes. The National Association of School Resource Officers said it has seen a rise in gun-related incidents in schools.

Some schools are responding to the disciplinary problems by dispatching more staffers to patrol school grounds or by hiring more counselors. Others are reducing student suspensions, or in Dallas, eliminating them altogether in favor of counseling. Some districts have enacted what they call mental-health days, closing schools around holidays to give students and administrators a break. Peoria, Ill., is planning a special school that would be dedicated to students with issues caused by the pandemic.

Educators at disadvantaged schools, often in low-income neighborhoods, said they had anticipated students would return to in-person learning with mental-health scars from Covid-19. The issues are also coming up at schools that previously had few serious incidents, such as Southwood...

So they expel students down in Louisiana? I guess all that leftists "restorative justice" hasn't oozed all the down south. 

New York City to Impose Vaccination Mandates for Private Employers (VIDEO)

New York is literally the fucking worst. DeBlasio's insane. 

At the New York Times, "Covid Live Updates: New York City Announces Vaccine Mandate for Private Employers":

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a sweeping coronavirus vaccine mandate for all private employers in New York City on Monday morning to combat the spread of the Omicron variant.

Mr. de Blasio said the aggressive measure, which takes effect Dec. 27 and which he described as the first of its kind in the nation, was needed as a “pre-emptive strike” to stall another wave of coronavirus cases and help reduce transmission during the winter months and holiday gatherings.

“Omicron is here, and it looks like it’s very transmissible,” he said in an interview on MSNBC. “The timing is horrible with the winter months.”

New York City has already put vaccine mandates in place for city workers and for employees and customers at indoor dining, entertainment and gyms. Nearly 90 percent of adult New York City residents now have at least one dose of the vaccine.

But Mr. de Blasio said the city must go further to combat another wave of the virus in New York City, once the center of the pandemic. Some private employers have required employees to get vaccinated, but many others have not.

Mr. de Blasio said the new measure would apply to about 184,000 businesses. Employees who work in-person at private companies must have one dose of the vaccine by Dec. 27; remote workers will not be required to get the vaccine. There is no testing option as an alternative.

The city plans to offer exemptions for valid medical or religious reasons, Mr. de Blasio said. City officials will release detailed guidelines about issues like enforcement by Dec. 15 after consulting with business leaders. The mayor also announced that the rules for dining and entertainment would apply to children ages 5 to 11, who must have one dose to enter restaurants and theaters starting on Dec. 14, and that the requirement for adults would increase from one dose of a vaccine to two starting on Dec. 27, except for those who initially received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Kathy Hochul held a news conference last Thursday to announce New York State’s first five cases of the Omicron variant, and several more have been announced in New York City since then. The number of coronavirus cases in the city has increased rapidly in recent weeks; daily case counts have increased more than 75 percent since Nov. 1.

Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat with less than a month left in office, said he was confident the new mandate would survive any legal challenges and he noted that past city mandates had been upheld.

“They have won in court — state court, federal court — every single time,” the mayor said on MSNBC. “And it’s because they’re universal and consistent.”

Eric Adams, the mayor-elect who takes office on Jan. 1, is on vacation in Ghana this week. His spokesman, Evan Thies, said in a statement that Mr. Adams would evaluate the measure once he is mayor...

 

Boris Johnson Announces New Travel Restrictions (VIDEO)

Following-up, "New South Africa Covid Strain Omicron Sends Shockwaves Across the Globe."

And at the BBC, "LIVE: Travel and face mask rules tightened over new variant."

New South Africa Covid Strain Omicron Sends Shockwaves Across the Globe

There's a lot of hype, but Dr. Peter Hotez, at the video, says he's not panicked, as he's not seen anything as infectious as the Delta variant so far. Still, the U.S. has imposed travel bans on eight African nations, and the U.K. announced travel curbs on six nations as well.

At the BBC, "Coronavirus variant fear sparks Africa travel curbs," and the Telegraph U.K. "Coronavirus latest news: EU suspends all flights to southern Africa over omicron Covid variant fears."

More at NYT, "Variant Detected in South Africa Prompts Travel Restrictions":

The World Health Organization said a newly identified coronavirus variant in southern Africa was “of concern” on Friday, as countries around the world moved to restrict travelers arriving from that region to keep it from crossing their borders.

So far, only a few dozen cases of the new variant have been identified in South Africa, Botswana, Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel. There is no proof yet that the variant is more contagious or lethal, or could diminish the protective power of vaccines, but uncertainty on those questions was one factor in the speed of countries’ move toward restrictions.

On Friday evening, the World Health Organization gave the new version of the virus the name Omicron and called it a “variant of concern,” its most serious category. “This variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning,” the W.H.O. said in its official description. “Preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant.”

Earlier on Friday, the European Commission proposed that its member countries activate the “emergency brake” on travel from countries in southern Africa and other affected countries to limit the spread of the variant.

“All air travel to these countries should be suspended until we have a clear understanding about the danger posed by this new variant,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, said in a statement. “And travelers returning from this region should respect strict quarantine rules.”

In the past, governments have taken days, weeks or months to issue travel restrictions in response to new variants. This time, however, restrictions came within hours of South Africa’s announcement. At least 10 countries around the world had announced measures before South African scientists finished a meeting with World Health Organization experts about the variant on Friday.

The United States and Canada announced restrictions on travelers arriving from countries in southern Africa. Other governments that halted or restricted flights from South Africa included Bahrain, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore.

The new variant, initially called B.1.1.529, has a “very unusual constellation of mutations,” according to Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform. On the protein that helps to create an entry point for the coronavirus to infect human cells, the variant has 10 mutations, many more than the highly contagious Delta variant, Professor de Oliveira said.

Still, even epidemiologists who have been the most outspoken in supporting precautions against the virus urged calm on Friday, noting that little is known about the variant and that several seemingly threatening variants have come and gone in recent months.

“Substantively NOTHING is known about the new variant,” Roberto Burioni, a leading Italian virologist, wrote on Twitter, adding that people should not panic...

 

Dow-Jones Industrial Average Suffers Worst Trading Day of 2021

My retirement funds are getting bashed.

At WSJ, "Stocks, Oil Drop Sharply on Concerns Over New Covid-19 Variant":

Stocks, oil prices and government-bond yields slumped after South Africa raised the alarm over a fast-spreading strain of the coronavirus, triggering concern that travel restrictions and other curbs will spoil the global economy’s recovery.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 905.04 points, or 2.5%, to 34899.34. It was the Dow’s biggest one-day percentage drop since October 2020.

The S&P 500 lost 106.84 points, or 2.3%, to 4594.62 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 353.57 points, or 2.2%, to 15491.66. It was the worst Black Friday session on record for all three indexes. Markets closed early because of the holiday.

U.S. crude oil tumbled 13% to $68.15. Traders fretted that lockdowns could reduce demand for transportation fuels. Bitcoin, following the path of other risk assets, skidded lower.

“It’s not a great day to wake up on Black Friday and see news about a concerning variant,” said Jessica Bemer, a portfolio manager at Easterly Investment Partners.

Investors reached for safe havens. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note tumbled to 1.484% from 1.644% before the Thanksgiving break, its biggest drop since March 2020. Gold, another perceived store of value when riskier assets retreat, rose 0.1% to $1,785.30 a troy ounce.

The pullback created whiplash for markets that had, to a great extent, parked worries about coronavirus.

Scientists say the new coronavirus variant, dubbed B.1.1.529, has a high number of mutations that may make it more transmissible and allow it to evade some of the immune responses triggered by previous infection or vaccination. Dozens of countries have already imposed travel restrictions to and from southern Africa.

Investors feared the strain could set back months of efforts to revive the world economy and save lives.

“For now, Covid is back on the table,” said Takeo Kamai, head of execution services at CLSA in Tokyo.

Investors seemed to be following the playbook they pulled out early in the pandemic: sell travel stocks, buy work-from-home stocks. “This is a market that is well practiced in terms of reacting to Covid,” Ms. Bemer said.

Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines Group all dropped 8% or more, after the U.K., Israel and Singapore restricted travel from southern Africa. The European Union said it would propose stopping air travel from the region. Cruise stocks including Royal Caribbean Group were hammered, while Exxon Mobil fell 3.5%, or $2.23, to $61.25. Chevron fell 2.3%, or $2.68, to $114.51.

Moderna rose 21%, or $56.24, to $329.63. Pfizer gained 6.1%, or $3.11. to $54. Netflix and DoorDash, which previously benefited from stay-at-home orders, rose 1.1% and 1.6%, respectively.

The World Health Organization on Friday said the new strain was a “variant of concern.” Rising caseloads of other variants have already led some European countries to tighten rules for transportation, shopping and workplaces.

Many U.S. investors had taken the day off, extending their Thanksgiving holiday. Ms. Bemer said she’d planned on working Friday, though she was staying with relatives for the holiday. “It’s a busier day than we expected,” she said.

The combined trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq was about 6.9 billion shares. The average Black Friday volume since 2007 has been 2.9 billion shares, according to FactSet.

Oil prices experienced some of the biggest declines. Traders said money managers were rushing to unwind wagers that a mismatch between tight supplies and rising demand would push crude prices toward $100 a barrel. The swoon might encourage the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and a group of Russia-led allies to pause steps to pump more oil when they meet next week.

“If the announcement is, the vaccine works on this, back up we go,” said Adam Webb, chief investment officer of Blue Creek Capital Management. “If the vaccines don’t work against it, then good night Vienna.”

Money managers said that even if the variant proves more resistant to vaccines than earlier strains, there were reasons to think the economic damage could be contained. MRNA vaccines, such as those manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, can be quickly updated, and businesses have adapted to containment measures, ensuring that the blow from each lockdown has lessened.

However, elevated inflation could prevent central banks and governments from spraying economies with stimulus in the event of renewed widespread lockdowns...

 

Ship Captain's Dead Body Kept in Freezer for Six Months

Not just bizarre but the ultimate cruelty.

At WSJ, "The Ship’s Captain Died at Sea. Six Months Later, His Body Was Still in the Freezer":

BUCHAREST—After 40 years at sea, on his last voyage before retirement, Captain Dan Sandu slipped into his cabin on the MV Vantage Wave, a cargo ship sailing away from India, feeling unwell. “Don’t worry,” he typed in what would be a final email to his wife in April. “Everything will be fine.”

Last month, the ship, by then floating off the United Arab Emirates, sent what had become a familiar plea. Captain Sandu was dead and his body was in the ship’s walk-in freezer. For six months, it had traveled thousands of miles lying near the crew’s meat and vegetables. They needed to get him back to Romania.

It was the 13th country the Vantage Wave petitioned. All had refused to receive the body.

The plight of Capt. Sandu, a 68-year-old born near the Black Sea, who decorated his home with mementos from a life on the ocean, had become a diplomatic incident. “All we wanted was to get our father home,” said his son, Andrei Sandu, also a ship captain. “How can this happen in 2021?”

Strict and uneven rules governing the world’s ports prevent the unloading of bodies suspected of being infected with the coronavirus. Though the pandemic has eased somewhat, the restrictions remain, leaving ships like the Vantage Wave to cross oceans in search of a port to offload a fallen crew member. That leaves corpses stuck for months on the world’s cargo ships, stored in freezers meant for food.

In September, a 23-year-old seaman from Ukraine died aboard a Swiss-flagged bulk carrier anchored at China’s southeastern port of Rizhao, an apparent suicide. After Chinese authorities refused to take his body, the ship traveled for nearly two months and more than 5,000 miles, to Vancouver, where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police agreed to help repatriate his body. It’s still not home.

The corpse of a Syrian cook who died off the coast of Venezuela was trapped aboard for four months. And when an Italian cargo-ship captain died off Indonesia, his body stayed in a storeroom for six weeks, for lack of cold-storage large enough, decaying in the tropical air. There currently are four seafarers’ bodies stuck aboard cargo ships, the International Maritime Organization says—as well as 36 urgent cases involving medical or humanitarian emergencies.

An Indian sailor sick with severe Covid-19 was denied entry to Singapore, Malaysia and several other Asian ports before being ferried back to India and put on a ventilator. When a Chinese officer aboard the Newmax bulk carrier collapsed, vomiting blood, Chinese port officials allowed him ashore briefly in an ambulance before returning him to the ship with some pills.

“We are spending our lives here on board to bring the goods to your house,” said the Newmax’s captain, Tymur Rudov, in a YouTube video. “What do we get in return?” he shouted into the camera. “We are not allowed to even be ill! We just have to die.”

International maritime law says shipowners must see that crews get home after assignments, but the obligation vanishes the instant a sailor dies, said Jason Chuah, a professor of maritime law at London’s City University.

And while insurance companies are meant to contribute to the cost of burying or cremating a dead seafarer, under a pact called the Maritime Labor Convention, the treaty doesn’t require them to get a body home. For the owners of ships full of cargo to be delivered on deadlines, returning to port to deposit a corpse can be onerously expensive.

That leaves shipmates, lawyers, diplomats and above all families to navigate the ever-shifting pandemic-era regulations of the international seafaring bureaucracy. The crew of one vessel declared force majeure, the “act of God” clause, which allowed them to sail more than 6,000 miles from Indonesia to Italy to return a dead captain.

“The depressing thing about this is that deceased or dead people have no rights whatsoever,” said Mr. Chuah. “It is a huge problem and reflects so poorly on our common humanity.”

The body backlog is part of a broader problem of seafarer abandonment in the era of Covid-19. More than 1,000 people were left stranded on container ships and bulk carriers this year without pay, according to estimates by the International Transport Workers’ Federation. It’s a record stemming both from pandemic-induced trade disruptions and the competitive nature of the lightly regulated global shipping industry...

 Still more.

Democrats Should Go Into Shock.

I'd be shocked if Republicans don't take at least 50 seats next November. I expect this year will match or even exceed the victory totals from 2014, when the G.O.P. picked up 63 seats in the House.

Here's Thomas Edsall, at the New York Times, "Democrats Shouldn’t Panic. They Should Go Into Shock":

The rise of inflation, supply chain shortages, a surge in illegal border crossings, the persistence of Covid, mayhem in Afghanistan and the uproar over “critical race theory” — all of these developments, individually and collectively, have taken their toll on President Biden and Democratic candidates, so much so that Democrats are now the underdogs going into 2022 and possibly 2024.

Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News, put it this way in an essay published on the network’s website:

As things stand, if the midterm elections were today, 51 percent of registered voters say they’d support the Republican candidate in their congressional district, 41 percent say the Democrat. That’s the biggest lead for Republicans in the 110 ABC/Post polls that have asked this question since November 1981.

These and other trends have provoked a deepening pessimism about Democratic prospects in 2022 and anxiety about the 2024 presidential election.

Robert Y. Shapiro, a political scientist at Columbia, holds similar views, but suggests that the flood tide of political trouble may be beyond Democratic control:

Biden and the Democrats have had almost all bad news: the pandemic is still going; the economy has not picked up in terms of perceptions of the expected increases in employment and economic growth not on fire; perceptions of what happened in Afghanistan; what has happened on the southern border; high crime rates, all amplified in news reports. It is all perception, and the latest is the increase in inflation and gas prices that people see/feel. The critical race theory controversy and perceptions of Democrats being too woke and extreme. The bad news is overwhelming.

Bill McInturff, a founding partner of Public Opinion Strategies, provided me with data from the October WSJ/NBC poll asking voters which party can better manage a wide range of issues. On three key issues — controlling inflation (45R-21D), dealing with crime (43R-21D) and dealing with the economy (45R-27D) — the Republican advantage was the highest in surveys dating back to the 1990s.

“Washington Democrats are spending months fighting over legislation,” McInturff wrote by email,

but, during this time, voters tell us prices are soaring, the cost of living is tied for the top issue in the country, and there is a sharp increase in economic pessimism. It is these economic factors that are driving negative impressions about the direction of the country to unusually high levels, and this is hurting Democrats everywhere. No administration is going to thrive in that economic environment.

In his analysis of the Nov. 6-10 Washington Post/ABC News Poll, Langer made the case that

While a year is a lifetime in politics, the Democratic Party’s difficulties are deep; they include soaring economic discontent, a president who’s fallen 12 percentage points underwater in job approval and a broad sense that the party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans — 62 percent say so.

The numbers are even worse for Democrats in the eight states expected to have the closest Senate elections, according to Langer — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Not only is Biden’s overall job approval rating in those states 33 percent, 10 points lower than it is in the rest of the country, but registered voters in those eight states say they are more likely to vote for Republican House candidates than for Democrats by 23 points (at 58 percent to 35 percent).

On Nov. 3, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball updated the ratings for three incumbent Democratic senators — Mark Kelly of Arizona, Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada — from “lean Democratic” to “tossup.”

An examination of Gallup survey results on the question “As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?” reflects the damage suffered by the Democrats. From January through August, Democrats held a substantial 7.9 point advantage (48.2 percent to 41.3 percent). In September, however, Gallup reported a 2-point (47-45) Republican edge that grew to a 5-point (47-42) edge by October.

In terms of election outcomes, Republican are once again capitalizing on their domination of the congressional redistricting process to disenfranchise Democratic voters despite strong public support for reforms designed to eliminate or constrain partisan gerrymandering. On Monday, The Times reported that the Republican Party “has added enough safe House districts to capture control of the chamber based on its redistricting edge alone.” The current partisan split in the House is 221 Democratic seats and 213 Republican seats, with one vacancy.

There is perhaps one potential political opportunity for Democrats — should the Supreme Court overturn or undermine Roe v. Wade, mobilizing supporters of reproductive rights across the country.

In the meantime, uneasiness prevails. Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard, noted in an email that

Biden had two drops in approval ratings, one from June to August of about 6 points, and another from September to October of another 6 points. The first was a response to Afghanistan. The second was a response to Covid and weak employment growth over the summer.

Passing the infrastructure bill should help “with the sense that the administration wasn’t doing enough for the economy,” Ansolabehere continued, but “the hit from Afghanistan is going to be harder to reverse, as it was a judgment about the administration’s handling of foreign affairs.”

Micah English, a graduate student in political science at Yale who studies race, class and gender dynamics, argued in an email that Democratic leaders have, at least until now, mismanaged the task of effectively communicating their agenda and goals.

“The Democratic Party has a messaging problem that they don’t seem to have any plans to rectify,” she wrote:

The Republicans message right now is essentially “Democrats and Biden are only concerned about teaching your children critical race theory instead of focusing on the economy!” The Democrats have no unified countermessage, and until they do, they are likely to continue to suffer major losses in the midterms and beyond.

This failure, English continued, has resulted in an inability to capitalize on what should have been good news:

The Democrats have proposed legislation that contains incredibly popular policies, but if they continue to fail to communicate the benefits of this legislation to the wider public, it won’t do them any good in the midterms. Additionally, as the 2020 election demonstrated, the Democrats cannot continue to rely on the prospect of changing demographics to deliver them electoral victories.

One theme that appeared repeatedly in the comments I received in response to my questions is that even as Biden has succeeded in winning passage of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, he has struggled to maintain an aura of mastery.

Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts, argued in an email that

what a lot of swing voters expected from Biden was competent leadership during a time of crisis. And many perhaps expected that a return to normal leadership would immediately solve the unprecedented problems facing the country. Of course, that was never a realistic expectation.

The crucial factors underlying Biden’s declining favorability rating, Schaffner continued, are “several things calling into question Biden’s effectiveness — the Afghanistan withdrawal, the continued impact of Covid, the struggling economy and the difficult time Democrats have had in passing their major legislative initiatives.”

I asked a range of political scientists for their projections on how the 2022 elections for control of the House are likely to turn out. Their views were preponderantly negative for Democratic prospects.

Matt Grossmann of Michigan State wrote: “Based on simple midterm loss averages, the Democrats are expected to lose 4 points of vote share and be down to ~45 percent of seats on ~48 percent of votes in 2022.” Those numbers translate into roughly a 24-seat loss, reducing Democrats to 197 seats. “There is not much under Democrats’ control that is likely to make a big difference in the extent of their losses,” Grossmann added. “They can try to avoid retirements and primary challenges in swing districts and avoid salient unpopular policies.”

Robert M. Stein of Rice University is even less optimistic:

In South Texas, Florida and parts of Arizona immigration policy is hurting Democrats with traditional-base voters. This is especially true with Hispanics in Texas border counties, where Trump did well in 2020 and Abbott (incumbent Republican governor) is making significant gains by appealing to the concerns of Hispanics over jobs and immigration.

Stein adds:

My guess is that Republicans are poised to take the House back in 2022 with gains above the average for midterm elections. Since 1946, the average seat gain for the party not in the White House is 27 seats. The best the Democrats can do is hold at the average, but given the Republican’s advantage with redistricting, my guess is that the Republicans gain 40+ seats.

Martin Wattenberg of the University of California-Irvine wrote that “it would take a major event like 9/11 to keep the Democrats from losing the House.” He was more cautious about control of the Senate, which “really depends on the quality of the candidates. Republicans have had the misfortune of nominating candidates like Christine (“I am not a witch”) O’Donnell who have lost eminently winnable races due to their own foibles. It remains to be seen if they will nominate such candidates in 2022.”

Wattenberg cited data from the General Social Survey showing a sharp rise in the percentage of Democrats describing themselves as liberal or slightly liberal, up from 47 percent in 2016 to 62 percent this year: “The left-wing movement of the Democrats is probably going to hurt with the 2022 electorate that will likely be skewed toward older, more conservative voters.”

Still more.

On Joe Rogin vs. Sanjay Jupta: 'However much contempt you harbor for these media corporations — and I know it’s a lot — it’s still not enough. They deserve more. No institution does more damage to political and cultural life than employees of media corporations...'

 At Instapundit below.

And watch, at Fox News, "Joe Rogan 'absolutely eviscerated' CNN's Sanjay Gupta..." (VIDEO).

When Fourth-Graders Can’t Read: One Phoenix School Has a New Way to Fight Pandemic Learning Loss

At WSJ, "Students return to school two grade levels behind; adding literacy lessons to PE":

PHOENIX—On a recent morning, 10 fourth-graders huddled in a circle on the floor over magnetic boards, moving lettered tiles to spell out the one-syllable words their teacher, Katerah Layne, called out.

“Rub” said Ms. Layne. As the students shuffled their tiles, a couple confused the letters “b” and “d.”

“It’s OK to get confused,” Ms. Layne reassured the students.

Next, she called out the word “fish.” All of the students spelled it correctly. “We all got the ‘i’ sound. I’m so proud of you,” said Ms. Layne.

Each fall, about five students show up to Ms. Layne’s class at Sevilla Elementary School East in Phoenix lagging far behind fourth grade-level reading skills. This year, she was stunned to find nearly half of her 25 students tested at kindergarten to first-grade reading levels.

When the pandemic disrupted schools in spring 2020, educators predicted remote learning would set up many children for failure, especially students of color and those from poor families. Test scores from the first months of remote learning showed students falling months behind in reading and math. This fall, as many students returned to classrooms for the first time after 18 months of disruptions, some teachers have found the learning loss is worse than projected.

The situation is dire in classrooms like Ms. Layne’s, located in the Alhambra Elementary School District where many parents work hourly jobs in construction, cleaning and fast-food restaurants. The district has faced a growing literacy problem over the past 15 years. But the pandemic has turned it into a crisis: A test administered this month to gauge how many students met state grade-level standards revealed that of the 422 second- through fourth-graders at Sevilla East, 58% were determined to be minimally proficient in their grade-level standards for English Language Arts—the lowest rank.

During the 2020-21 school year, the rate at which students learned nationwide was slower across all student groups, regardless of race, ethnicity or income level, compared with historical averages before the pandemic, according to a July report by NWEA, an Oregon-based nonprofit education-services firm. Math achievement was as much as 12 percentile points lower in the spring of 2021 compared with a typical year. Reading achievement declined by as much as 6 percentile points compared with before the pandemic, among all students. The results come from about 5.5 million third- through eighth-grade students in 12,500 public schools who took the assessments in 2018-2019 and in the 2020-2021 school year. But the drop in reading scores among Black and Latino fourth-grade students was, on average, double that of white and Asian-American students. At the same time, among fourth-graders—a critical juncture in education—students from high-poverty schools experienced three times as much learning loss in reading compared with those enrolled in low-poverty schools.

At Sevilla East, a majority of students come from poor households without a strong English-language background, which limited their natural exposure to the kind of oral language development and vocabulary that schools provide and children from wealthier and higher-educated families still had access to at home during the pandemic, said Cecilia Maes, the district superintendent.

Despite years of battling low reading scores, the educators at Sevilla East were surprised at what they saw when classrooms reopened for in-person learning this fall.

Many fourth-graders returned to school reading on the same level as they had in the second grade when the pandemic started—leaving them more than two grade levels behind now. A few have regressed, tests show. The school’s recent diagnostic test results showed there were more fourth-graders behind grade-level reading expectations than students in any other grade.

To address the pandemic-related learning loss, Erika Twohy, Sevilla East’s new principal, used federal stimulus funds to hire an academic recovery teacher for the fourth-graders and another staffer to focus on reading intervention targeting fourth- and second-graders. She is also requiring all classroom teachers and 14 instructional assistants get trained in the Wilson Reading System, a program that has a heavy emphasis on phonics.

All classes now include a literacy component, including physical education and music. The gym teacher has started injecting oral language development into class by breaking down the meaning of words like “defense.” This approach is meant to maximize every moment of in-person learning and immerse students in literacy to make up for the lost time, Ms. Twohy said.

Dr. Maes, the superintendent, said the district is focused on targeted training so that teachers like Ms. Layne will know how to teach first-grade level reading skills to remediate fourth-graders.

But districtwide staffing shortages make it difficult to fully address the problem. There are currently more than 100 vacancies and it is extremely difficult to find substitutes. When scores of Sevilla East teachers had to take a day off to get trained in the new reading program, the district had to send academic coaches, executive directors and data specialists to supervise classrooms...

L.A. Unified Sees Sharp Decline in Attendance

Wow, this is some serious number of absentees!

At LAT, "L.A. Unified enrollment drops by more than 27,000 students, steepest decline in years":

Enrollment in the Los Angeles Unified School District has dropped by more than 27,000 students since last year, a decline of close to 6% — a much steeper slide than in any recent year.

The comparison is based on an annual count referred to as “norm day,” the fifth Friday of every new school year, Sept. 17 this year. Last year’s enrollment total for pre-school through 12th grade was 466,229. This year’s figure for that same date is 439,013, according to data provided by L.A. Unified that will be presented to the school board Tuesday.

Other data released by L.A. Unified indicates other potential concerns. The district estimates that between 70% and 80% of the school staff are on target to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by the district’s deadline of Oct. 15, indicating that thousands of employees face termination, which would exacerbate another problem: more than 2,000 unfilled jobs.

“We’re still seeing the impact of COVID,” said Veronica Arreguin, the district’s chief strategy officer, about the enrollment decline. Arreguin also noted that much of the decline was expected, in line with many years of dropping enrollment related to lower birth rates, families moving to more affordable areas and other factors.

Even so, the shortfall is three times what planners in the nation’s second-largest school district predicted. The district plans to act aggressively to understand what is happening and what to do about it.

“If it’s something we can change,” Arreguin said, “we need to change.”

The decline is not unique to L.A. Unified.

Enrollment dropped across the nation last year as families and school systems grappled with a pandemic that shut down in-person instruction for much of the year in most places and also prompted worried families to keep children at home when they had a choice to go back.

Statewide, enrollment in K-12 public schools fell by almost 3%, or 160,000, students last year, according to data from the California Department of Education. That was the largest drop of the last 20 years, surpassing a 1% drop between October 2008 and October 2009. More than a third of that decline was due to a lower enrollment in kindergarten.

The causes are varied, with economic factors at play — the high cost of living, including gentrification, has pushed families farther from the once-affordable urban core and also from adjacent suburbs served by L.A. Unified. Another factor has been limits on immigration, which used to funnel a steady supply of families with young children into L.A. Unified. The pandemic’s influence is difficult to pinpoint and measure.

For the 2020-21 school year, with campuses closed because of the pandemic, kindergarten enrollment declined by almost 6,000 students from the previous year, with many families dissatisfied with kindergartners having to attend class online. In a more typical year, the number of kindergarten students would have declined by about 2,000.

Unexpectedly large declines in the younger grades continued this year and, to a lesser degree, affected middle schools as well, said Tony Atienza, the district’s director of budget services and financial planning...

Unexpectedly!

That's what they always say. *Eye-roll.*

Still more.

 

Nicki Minaj Causes the Establishment to Go DEFCON One

This story's a laugh riot.

From Jim Geraghty, at National Review.

In Return to Classroom, Universities and Professors Struggle with Covid

My division dean just sent out an announcement on this yesterday. How to handle? 

1. Notify sick student to stay the hell off campus. 

2. Reassure the lamebrains that you're not going to drop them from class.  

3. Make sure students are screened and cleared for classes at the check-in tables on-site.

4. Contact college administration to inform them of a cases. 

5. Maintain strict confidentiality. (Or else?) 

At the New York Times, "The Masked Professor vs. the Unmasked Student":

Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition, sent out a raw emotional appeal to his students at the University of North Georgia just before classes began: The Covid-19 Delta variant was rampaging through the state, filling up hospital beds. He would teach class in the equivalent of full body armor — vaccinated and masked.

So he was stunned in late August when more than two-thirds of the first-year students in his writing class did not take the hint and showed up unmasked.

It was impossible to tell who was vaccinated and who was not. “It isn’t a visual hellscape, like hospitals, it’s more of an emotional hellscape,” Dr. Boedy said.

North Georgia is not requiring its students to be vaccinated or masked this fall. And as in-person classes return at almost every university in the country, after almost a year and a half of emergency pivoting to online learning, many professors are finding teaching a nerve-racking experience.

The American College Health Association recommends vaccination requirements for all on-campus higher education students for the fall semester. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends face coverings, regardless of vaccine status, for indoor public spaces in areas where the rate of infection is high.

But this is not how it has worked out on more than a few campuses.

More than 1,000 colleges and universities have adopted vaccination requirements for at least some students and staff, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. In an indication of how political vaccination has become, the schools tend to be clustered in states that voted for President Biden in the last election.

But at some campuses, particularly in Republican-led states with high rates of contagion — like the state systems in Georgia, Texas and Florida — vaccination is optional and mask wearing, while recommended, cannot be enforced. Professors are told they can tell students that they are “strongly encouraged” or “expected” to put on masks, but cannot force students to do so. And teachers cannot ask students who have Covid-like symptoms to leave the classroom.

At least nine states — Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Tennessee — have banned or restricted school mask mandates. It is unclear, education officials say, whether all of these prohibitions apply to universities, but public universities depend on state funding.

Certainly, some professors are happy to go maskless. A smattering have resigned in protest over optional mask policies. Most, like Dr. Boedy, are soldiering on. But the level of fear is so high that even at universities that do require vaccination and masks, like Cornell and the University of Michigan, professors have signed petitions asking for the choice to return to online teaching.

“Morale is at an all-time low,” warns a petition at the University of Iowa.

Universities are caught between the demands of their faculty for greater safety precautions, and the fear of losing students, and the revenue they bring, if schools return to another year of online education.

“I think everybody agrees that the idea is to have people physically back in the classroom,” said Peter McDonough, general counsel for the American Council on Education, an organization of colleges and universities. “The turning on a dime to provide online education last year and the previous spring semester was only seen as temporary.”

For some faculty, the new year brings not a return to normal but a strong sense that things could go off the rails. In the first weeks of class, case counts have risen at schools including Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Arizona State, Liberty University, the University of Arkansas, the University of North Florida and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“It seems like a repeat,” said Michael Atzmon, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan. “On the one hand, we have the vaccine. On the other hand, we have Delta.”

Dr. Atzmon helped organize a petition asking the university to be more open to online teaching. It was signed by more than 700 faculty members and instructors.

In a response to the petition, Michigan’s president, Mark Schlissel, said on Thursday that, given the “stellar” rate of vaccination at the Ann Arbor campus (92 percent for students, 90 percent for faculty), the classroom was “perhaps the safest place to be” on campus.

Dr. Schlissel suggested that faculty would just have to get used to the idea that there would be Covid cases on campus. “A pandemic is unsettling, it’s unpredictable, and yes, it involves an unavoidable level of risk,” he said.

There are signs of defiance against state policies. The three big public universities in Arizona — University of Arizona, Arizona State and Northern Arizona University — are tiptoeing around the ban on masks and requiring them in class. If all students have to wear masks, university officials believe that they are obeying Gov. Doug Ducey’s order not to discriminate against students who choose not to be vaccinated.

“It’s kind of a cat-and-mouse game,” said Peter Lake, an education law professor at Stetson University...

For real, man.

Keep reading. 

 

You Will Wear Masks Forever

Well, at least in California. And nationwide, well, frankly, I thought I saw a headline somewhere this last week saying the Biden administration is considering one.

Masking and vaccinations by force. Surely, not America?

Well, at least in California.

At LAT, "Delta variant likely to bring a fall and winter of masks, vaccine mandates, anxiety":

The rise of the Delta variant has upended previous optimistic projections of herd immunity and a return to normal life, with many health experts believing mask mandates and tougher vaccine requirements will be needed in the coming months to avoid more serious coronavirus surges.

While there are promising signs that California’s fourth COVID-19 surge may be starting to flatten, the fall and winter will bring new challenges as people stay indoors more often and vaccine immunity begins to wane.

The rapid spread of Delta among the unvaccinated — and the still relatively small number of “breakthrough” cases among the vaccinated — shows that significant increases in inoculations will help stop the spread. In fact, officials are now preparing to provide booster shots to those who already got their first series of vaccinations, saying the extra dose is needed to keep people protected.

Still, “the vaccines themselves are not going to likely be sufficient. And during times of increased transmission, we’ll need other tools available to protect all of us — and particularly those who, at this time, can’t be vaccinated, like our children,” said UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo

California is in a better position than other states because of relatively higher vaccination rates, and there is little appetite for a return to stay-at-home orders. But in settings where more people gather, strategies that can be used to keep COVID-19 controlled include ensuring people are either vaccinated, have a recent negative coronavirus test or both, Bibbins-Domingo said.

“There will be a time when we have our masks off again as transmission goes back down. But I think we’re going to have to be prepared that if we’re in an environment when there’s more virus around, that it is sensible that we have another layer of protection — and that will be masks,” Bibbins-Domingo said. “And I don’t think we’re going to be totally throwing our masks away anytime soon, frankly.”

Policies like mandatory masking and requiring vaccines or regular testing in workplaces “are going to be very important if we are ever going to get over this pandemic,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, a medical epidemiologist and infectious-diseases expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

It was once thought that as soon as 70% to 85% of a population was vaccinated, communities would reach a high enough level of herd immunity that the threat of COVID-19 would be mostly behind us. Now, “that’s out the window,” Bibbins-Domingo said, and computer models suggest the coronavirus will be with us for the foreseeable future. “Almost certainly, we’ll be dealing with it this winter.”

How long the pandemic will last depends on any new variants that emerge, the ability to adapt the vaccines to them and temporary measures that may be needed to tamp down surges, Bibbins-Domingo said.

There are several key factors that have altered what we previously understood about COVID-19 and underscore just how far off the end of the pandemic still is.

The first is the emergence of the Delta variant — at least twice as transmissible as the previous dominant variant, Alpha, and capable of producing a viral load up to 1,000 times greater in the upper throat.

“The big challenge with Delta is that it’s so much more transmissible than the original strain. ... And really, this is possibly an unprecedented change in terms of the amount of the” shift in the so-called R-naught, or the basic reproductive rate of the coronavirus, Shane Crotty, a vaccine researcher at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, recently told a forum at UC San Francisco.

Originally, a person infected with the ancestral strain of the coronavirus spread it to 2.5 other people on average. But the Delta variant is estimated to spread to five to eight other people. That means that within 10 cycles of transmission of the virus, in a population with no immunity to the virus, instead of fewer than 10,000 people being infected, more than 60 million will be infected, Dr. Carlos del Rio, an Emory University epidemiologist and infectious-diseases expert, said at the same UC San Francisco forum.

This is why vaccine mandates will become more important, especially at places of employment, del Rio said. “I think the going phrase that we’re hearing over and over is: ‘No jab, no job.’ And I think mandates are going to make a big difference,” he said.

Second, breakthrough infections — in which fully vaccinated people become infected with COVID-19 — are still uncommon but no longer rare. “I think vaccinated persons are much safer than unvaccinated persons, but they’re not completely safe. Breakthrough infections occur often enough with Delta that you will see them,” del Rio said.

While a vaccinated person with a breakthrough infection can transmit the virus to others, he or she is likely to be infectious for a significantly fewer number of days, del Rio said. “And therefore your contribution to transmission is much lower if you’re vaccinated than if you’re not.”

And that’s why wearing masks indoors remains important. Del Rio said many infectious-diseases doctors never stopped masking indoors, even after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it wasn’t necessary for fully vaccinated people.

Vaccinated people with breakthrough infections have much more mild illnesses because the body is already equipped to defend itself against the virus and likely can avoid lung illnesses or hospitalization, said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health officer for Orange County. But without prior immunity, the virus can lodge deeper into the body and cause more severe illness, eventually making it very difficult to breathe...

 

Besieged in the Culture Wars

 At NYT, "The School Culture Wars: ‘You Have Brought Division to Us’":

July and August are supposed to be the quietest months of the school year. But not this time.

In Williamson County, Tenn., protesters outside a packed, hourslong school board meeting last week shouted, “No more masks, no more masks.”

In Loudoun County, Va., a debate over transgender rights brought raucous crowds to school board meetings this summer, culminating last week with dueling parking lot rallies. The board approved a policy that allows transgender students to join sports teams that match their gender identity and requires teachers to use transgender students’ pronouns.

And, in a particular low point for school board-parental relations, a woman railed against critical race theory during a meeting in the Philadelphia area, yelling, “You have brought division to us.” After the allotted time, the school board president walked off the stage, into the audience, and took the

As summer fades into fall, nearly all of the major issues dividing the country have dropped like an anvil on U.S. schools.

“The water pressure is higher than it has ever been and there are more leaks than I have fingers,” said Kevin Boyles, a school board official in Brainerd, Minn., who said he recently received 80 emails in three days about face masks. He described being followed to his car and called “evil” after a board meeting where he supported a commitment to equity. Another time, a man speaking to the board about race quoted the Bible and said he would “dump hot coals on all your heads.”

“You are just trying to keep everything from collapsing,” Mr. Boyles said.

Schools were already facing a crisis of historic proportions. They are reopening just as a highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is tearing through communities. They need to create a safe environment for teachers and students, while helping children who have been through major trauma.

And then there are the education gaps that must be made up: For many of the country’s 56 million schoolchildren, it has been a year of lost learning and widening inequities.

But at this critical moment, many school officials find themselves engulfed in highly partisan battles, which often have distracted from the most urgent issues. The tense environment comes amid a growing movement to recall school board officials, over everything from teachings on race to school closures. Nationwide, there have been at least 58 recall efforts targeting more than 140 officials this year, more than the previous two years combined, according to Ballotpedia.

As a superintendent in Albany, Ore., Melissa Goff first noticed pushback when her district closed classrooms during the pandemic; a slate of candidates ran for school board largely on a platform to open schools.

But by the time students returned this spring, a new flash point had emerged: Should police officers welcome students back to campus? Though it was a local tradition, some parents said their children, sensitive after a year of Black Lives Matter protests, felt afraid.

Ms. Goff asked the police to pull back. Dozens of people — including a school board candidate riding on a military vehicle — protested at the district office, some calling for her resignation.

Then in May, Ms. Goff said she came under fire for a plan to hold vaccine clinics at local high schools. Though she said the clinics were intended to reach low-income families and people of color, Ms. Goff said some people saw the effort as “making kids

get vaccines.” By the summer, a new school board had taken over and Ms. Goff was fired without cause. The school board chair, in an email, said Ms. Goff was not fired for her position on equity and diversity, but pointed to “divisiveness” and “underlying problems created by the district administration.”

Ms. Goff, who has worked in education for 26 years, said she had never seen so many political issues converge on schools. There was not just one contentious issue, she said. “It was every place you turned.”

This is hardly the first time the classroom has become the center of civil strife. From the teaching of evolution in the 1920s to the push for school desegregation in the 1950s, schools have often been a nexus for major societal conflicts.

“Schools are particularly fraught spaces because they represent a potential challenge to the family and the authority of parents,” said Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, an associate professor of history at the New School in New York City.

The two biggest divides in schools today are also highly volatile because they challenge fundamental narratives of what it means to be an American. The debate over mask mandates puts two values into conflict, collective responsibility versus personal liberty. And an examination of the country’s history of racism challenges cherished ideas about America’s founding...

This is mind-boggling to me, but no surprise. The tension at my college is the highest it's ever been in over twenty years.

 Still more.

Fuggetaboutit: Democrats Need to Stop Pushing for Zero Covid

It's Kat Rosenfield, at the Spectator, "The zero COVID delusion":

During World War Two, ordinary citizens were encouraged to plant victory gardens, collect scrap metal and carpool to save fuel, always with the understanding that these measures would somehow contribute to victory. The propaganda of the time was heavy on the same ‘do your part’ messaging that we’ve seen during the COVID pandemic, giving meaning to people’s sacrifices by characterizing their efforts as a patriotic duty and a moral imperative — and by strongly implying that those who balked at those sacrifices were on the side of the bad guy. One of the most famous posters from the era shows a snappily-dressed man behind the wheel of a car, with a ghostly, familiar figure sporting a toothbrush mustache in the passenger seat. ‘When you ride ALONE,’ the poster warns, ‘you ride with Hitler!’

The moral and patriotic imperatives of our current moment are different. (A 2020 version of that same poster might read, ‘When you ride TOGETHER, you ride with Death!’) But they offer the same comforting assurance: that together, if we just try hard enough and follow the rules, we can beat this thing.

Therein lies the problem.

We cannot beat this thing.

The notion that we could literally stop the spread of COVID by locking down and vaccinating it out of existence was always a fantasy. As National Geographic recently noted, ‘only two diseases in recorded history that affect humans or other animals have ever been eradicated’. (Only one of these viruses, smallpox, was a danger to human beings; the other is a bovine disease.) Every other virus, from ebola to influenza to the bubonic plague, still exists among us; we’ve just learned to live with them, and to control them as best we can through inoculation, preventive measures, and treatment for those who get sick.

Until very recently, we lived with them relatively easily. Take the flu: every year, it ripples through the American population. And every year, people deal with it according to their own personal set of priorities and risk tolerances. Some are content to take their chances. Some get a flu shot to protect themselves or their loved ones. Some take additional precautions because they’re immunocompromised or otherwise at above-average risk. But every year, no matter what, tens of millions of Americans catch the flu. Some get very sick. Some die.

Yet we still don’t assign a moral element to the flu season — even though every person who dies from the flu caught it from somebody else. Nobody hisses through their teeth at the selfish irresponsibility of people who don’t upend their lives to avoid getting the flu; nobody tells you that you have an individual moral duty to stop the spread of endemic viruses, generally. Co-existing with other creatures is the price of admission for planet earth, and that includes the millions of microorganisms that have evolved over the course of millennia to survive by making us sick.

But COVID — and more specifically, the messaging around it from our authority figures — changed how we conceive of our relationship with viruses. All those months of being told to mask up, stay home, and keep our distance have instilled in a fearful population the seductive illusion of control. We’ve been led to believe that if we just care enough and try really hard, we can stop getting sick and save lives. Suddenly, the only moral position is to do everything within your power to avoid illness, no matter how extreme, no matter how much it disrupts your life or hurts your livelihood, no matter the brutal costs it might exact elsewhere. And if you get sick anyway? This is somebody’s fault. Someone, somewhere, did this to you.

‘The fact is, if you get infected, even if you are without symptoms, you very well may infect another person who may be vulnerable,’ Anthony Fauci said on ABC last week. ‘So in essence, you are encroaching on their individual rights.’ This is the flip-side of the delusion that we can control our way to zero COVID: the specter of the noncompliant villain who’s keeping us from getting there. Those who dissent, who express skepticism, who want to question the rules instead of simply following them? They’re not just asking questions; they are ‘literally killing’ people...

Still more.

 

LAUSD Struggles to Fill Thousands of Positions

I hadn't thought about this. 

They're hurting for teachers, counselors, school nurses (and no doubt more).

At LAT, "Thousands of vacancies for L.A. teachers, counselors, nurses remain days before school starts":

Days before the academic year starts, a well-funded hiring spree for Los Angeles schools is falling short of its goal to provide unprecedented and critical mental health and academic support as a shortage of teachers and other professionals collides with pandemic recovery goals.

The staffing ambitions of the nation’s second-largest school district have been sweeping — targeting hires to meet academic needs, mental and physical wellness and campus sanitation. And in all areas, staffing appears to be strengthened compared to pre-pandemic levels. But it’s also not what officials had hoped for — and leaders worry that important needs will not be met effectively.

Shortfalls are particularly pronounced in positions serving students most in need of academic and mental health recovery. Many teachers and counselors promised to elevate achievement and well-being of Black students haven’t been hired. Hundreds of special education and math teacher posts — the hardest to fill in normal times — are vacant. School nurses and mental health specialists are seemingly impossible to find. Half of the openings remain for school facilities and cleaning staff.

In all, the district had hoped to hire the equivalent of 4,389 full-time positions that require a professional credential for teaching or a related field. This would include librarians, principals, other administrators and counselors. Of these open slots, 2,000 — less than half — had been filled as of July 29, the most recent date for which figures are available.

Several school board members and leaders of local advocacy groups found the number of vacancies worrisome.

“There has never been a more compelling need for support services and qualified teachers for our most vulnerable students,” said Katie Braude of Speak Up. “LAUSD must find a way to meet the immediate needs of students returning from a year and a half of limited instruction.”

“The staffing shortage should NOT be another disproportionate inequitable impact on our most vulnerable students,” said Ana Ponce, executive director of Great Public Schools Now, in an email.

Board member George McKenna wanted to see disaggregated numbers geographically pinpointing the vacancies — data that were not presented to the school board at its Tuesday meeting. In his prior service as a district administrator, he became familiar and frustrated with the high vacancy and turnover rate at schools that served large numbers of low-income and minority students.

A scramble is on to fill vital positions by the Aug. 16 start of school, but if schools were to open immediately, 479 classrooms would be staffed with substitute teachers. While the district is hiring continually, the classroom vacancy number has dropped by only seven teachers in the last 12 days. One problem is that some teachers are leaving the classroom to fill other vacancies, such as for reading specialists, administrative positions and other out-of-classroom jobs, leaving their principals with last-minute openings to backfill.

Administrators described hiring efforts that include using job boards, social media, virtual job fairs, workforce centers, referrals, radio and print advertising and outreach through parent groups and labor unions.

“During these unprecedented times, we are hiring everywhere,” Chief Human Resources Officer Ileana M. Dávalos said.

Los Angeles Unified is not alone in facing a hiring crunch. Even before the pandemic, teacher retirements were outpacing new teachers...

Keep reading.

 

Zero Covid

It's Kat Rosenfield, "The zero COVID delusion: We’ve been led to believe that if we just care enough and try really hard, we can stop getting sick and save lives":

During World War Two, ordinary citizens were encouraged to plant victory gardens, collect scrap metal and carpool to save fuel, always with the understanding that these measures would somehow contribute to victory. The propaganda of the time was heavy on the same ‘do your part’ messaging that we’ve seen during the COVID pandemic, giving meaning to people’s sacrifices by characterizing their efforts as a patriotic duty and a moral imperative — and by strongly implying that those who balked at those sacrifices were on the side of the bad guy. One of the most famous posters from the era shows a snappily-dressed man behind the wheel of a car, with a ghostly, familiar figure sporting a toothbrush mustache in the passenger seat.

‘When you ride ALONE,’ the poster warns, ‘you ride with Hitler!’

The moral and patriotic imperatives of our current moment are different. (A 2020 version of that same poster might read, ‘When you ride TOGETHER, you ride with Death!’) But they offer the same comforting assurance: that together, if we just try hard enough and follow the rules, we can beat this thing.

Therein lies the problem.

We cannot beat this thing.

The notion that we could literally stop the spread of COVID by locking down and vaccinating it out of existence was always a fantasy. As National Geographic recently noted, ‘only two diseases in recorded history that affect humans or other animals have ever been eradicated’. (Only one of these viruses, smallpox, was a danger to human beings; the other is a bovine disease.) Every other virus, from ebola to influenza to the bubonic plague, still exists among us; we’ve just learned to live with them, and to control them as best we can through inoculation, preventive measures, and treatment for those who get sick.

Until very recently, we lived with them relatively easily. Take the flu: every year, it ripples through the American population. And every year, people deal with it according to their own personal set of priorities and risk tolerances. Some are content to take their chances. Some get a flu shot to protect themselves or their loved ones. Some take additional precautions because they’re immunocompromised or otherwise at above-average risk. But every year, no matter what, tens of millions of Americans catch the flu. Some get very sick. Some die.

Yet we still don’t assign a moral element to the flu season — even though every person who dies from the flu caught it from somebody else. Nobody hisses through their teeth at the selfish irresponsibility of people who don’t upend their lives to avoid getting the flu; nobody tells you that you have an individual moral duty to stop the spread of endemic viruses, generally. Co-existing with other creatures is the price of admission for planet earth, and that includes the millions of microorganisms that have evolved over the course of millennia to survive by making us sick.

But COVID — and more specifically, the messaging around it from our authority figures — changed how we conceive of our relationship with viruses...

Still more.

 

 

Families' Anxiety Skyrocketing Amid Surge of Delta Variant

Folks are worried, although by now Delta's just hype. Yet, for some families, any risk risk is too much.

At LAT, "Delta variant is sucking the joy out of back-to-school 2021":

Back-to-school 2021, with California campuses fully open for 6 million children, was supposed to herald relief — even celebration — for a mostly normal school year ahead. But a surge in the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus has reignited parents’ anxiety — and, for many, the safety and quality of schooling once again feel uncertain and tenuous.

“I wanted to be excited about a new school year, but now I am having to think: ‘Am I putting our health at risk by going to school in person?’” said Irma Villalpando, who has two high school daughters at the Maywood Center for Enriched Studies. “I am feeling very sad because I think that it is going to be another very difficult year.”

Some parents have frantically explored limited online options. And questions over safety protocols are taking on an urgent tone: What happens if someone at my child’s school tests positive? What happens if my child is exposed — will their class be quarantined? Will their school close? Are all teachers vaccinated? What about coronavirus testing?

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health disclosed last week that there were seven outbreaks in youth settings during the final week of July — the most since December. Most were associated with youth sports — and heavily associated with poor health safety practices, such as inconsistent mask wearing, lack of physical distancing and failing to isolate sick individuals and their close contacts.

Recorded cases and hospitalizations are up for children — although without any associated deaths, said county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer. Documented cases among children through age 11 increased from 47 to 319 when comparing the two-week period ending June 26 with the two weeks ending July 24, according to county data. For ages 12 to 17, the number of cases rose from 34 to 211. Hospitalizations remained rare, about 1 in 100 cases among those 12 to 17.

“We recognize that, given our recent increases in cases, there is anxiety around school reopening,” Ferrer said.

Even so, there’s no indication the Delta variant will stop campuses from reopening for full-time, in-person classes — albeit with safety measures, most notably an indoor mask mandate and, in some places, outdoors as well.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday uttered a refrain common to him and other political and education leaders.

“Over the course of the next few weeks, we’re getting all our kids safely back into in-person instruction,” Newsom said at an event highlighting reopened campuses in San Bernardino. “And we’re doing it in a sustainable way.”

Ferrer, L.A. County Office of Education Supt. Debra Duardo and others spoke in similar terms during an online forum for parents earlier in the week, saying that returning to campus is vital because it offers direct academic intervention, crucial social interaction and ramped-up mental health support.

“We are confident schools have done an excellent job following all the mitigation strategies to prevent the spread of COVID,” Duardo said...

Keep reading. 

Now It's Shameful to Get Vaccinated

Especially in red states.

At NYT, "Some in Missouri Seek Covid-19 Shots in Secret, Doctor Says":

Even as the more contagious Delta variant drives a surge in infections, the Covid-19 vaccination effort has become so polarized in Missouri that some people are trying to get shots in secret to avoid conflicts with friends and relatives, a doctor there said.

In a video circulated by her employer, Dr. Priscilla A. Frase, a hospitalist and the chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Mo., said this month that several people had pleaded for anonymity when they came in to be vaccinated, and that some appeared to have made an effort to disguise themselves.

“I work closely with our pharmacists who are leading our vaccine efforts through our organization,” she said, “and one of them told me the other day that they had several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, ‘Please, please please, don’t let anyone know that I got this vaccine.’”

It was not clear how many people had tried to alter their appearance to avoid recognition, or how they had done so. Dr. Frase, who wore a mask in the video, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some people, she said in the video, were “very concerned about how their people that they love, within their family and within their friendship circles and their work circles, are going to react if they found out that they got the vaccine.”

“Nobody should have to feel that kind of pressure to get something that they want, you know,” she added. “We should all be able to be free to do what we want to do, and that includes people who don’t want to get the vaccine as well as people who do want to get the vaccine. But we’ve got to stop ridiculing people that do or don’t want to get the vaccine.”

The video was circulating online as public health officials in Missouri were confronting a resurgent outbreak, driven by the Delta variant and concentrated in the state’s south and southwest.

The state’s vaccination rate lags that of most other states and the nation as a whole. According to a New York Times database, 41 percent of Missouri residents have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, compared with more than 49 percent nationwide. In Howell County, Mo., where Ozarks Healthcare and Dr. Frase are based, only 20 percent of residents are fully vaccinated.

On Thursday, Missouri had a seven-day average of nearly 2,500 new cases of Covid-19 — an increase of 39 percent over the previous two weeks. Hospitalizations were up 38 percent over the same period.

Studies suggest that the approved vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant, but public health experts say Delta poses a serious threat to unvaccinated populations.

Despite that evidence, public health measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus, including vaccinations, have been politicized across much of the country. In some places, including in parts of Missouri, being unvaccinated has become a point of pride for some people. In a Politico report this week, few people who were interviewed at Lake of the Ozarks, a popular tourist destination, acknowledged that they had been vaccinated, and some said that they had been shamed by friends or relatives.

In the video, Dr. Frase said she was particularly troubled by the increased spread of misinformation about the vaccines.

“My fear is that people are getting information from the wrong sources and therefore actually making uninformed decisions rather than informed decisions,” she said.

“I want people to ask medical people,” she added, “or ask somebody that they trust who has good knowledge — not rely on the stuff that’s out there on social media, not rely on people who have opinions not based on facts.”

It was “disheartening,” she said, “to have gotten to that place where we, as health care providers, thought that maybe things were finally back to whatever our new normal is going to be after this pandemic.”...

Still more.

'Breakthrough' Cases Show the Power of Shots

So says the Los Angeles Times.

Here, "‘Breakthrough’ COVID-19 cases rising in L.A., but the vaccinated are still protected, data show":

Los Angeles County has seen a rise in “breakthrough” coronavirus cases as of late, but data continue to show those who are vaccinated for COVID-19 enjoy vigorous protection — even from the contagious Delta variant — and are far less likely to be hospitalized should they become infected.

The latest figures underscore how the county’s recent coronavirus surge is different from the pandemic’s earlier spikes, both in terms of who is getting sick and how the virus is spreading countywide.

In June, fully vaccinated residents made up 20% of all confirmed coronavirus infections in those 16 and old

er, according to figures from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. However, that same month, they accounted for only 8% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations.

That trend has persisted into July. Over the first half of the month, roughly 26% of all diagnosed cases were in fully vaccinated residents, according to figures county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer presented this week.

This means unvaccinated residents still accounted for almost three times as many infections, even though they’ve been a minority of the population since the start of the month.

And despite the uptick in post-vaccination “breakthrough” cases, the proportion of those people becoming sick enough to require hospitalization over the early part of this month remained essentially flat from June.

“Although vaccinated people are seeing a rise in new COVID diagnosis, they are primarily experiencing their infections not as severe illnesses that bring them to the emergency room, but as bad colds,” Ferrer said this week.

Those who are unvaccinated, she continued, “simply do not have the same level of confidence if they get infected with this virus that it will lead to mild illness.”

Out of the 504 people who died of COVID-19 countywide from April 1 to June 30, 96% were either unvaccinated or had not completed their inoculation regimen, data show.

County health officials are trying to better understand the factors, such as being immunocompromised, that may put fully vaccinated people at risk of dying from COVID-19, Ferrer said.

The rise of vaccinations is also shifting the trajectory of this summer spike. In previous surges, lower-income, densely populated areas were hardest hit as essential workers got COVID-19 on the job and then spread it at home. Areas such as East Los Angeles, the northeast San Fernando Valley and South Los Angeles saw some of the worst spread.

This time is different.

As of July 17, communities that had high rates of transmission included downtown Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Venice, Hollywood Hills and Studio City, Ferrer said.

“These are different communities from those with high case rates during our previous surges,” she said. “So far, it appears transmission in these areas is being driven mostly by community spread among young adults.”

In some areas, she added, “there were several smaller outbreaks among persons experiencing homelessness that also may have contributed, just slightly, to the higher rates. And we also have noted that there have been outbreaks in some of these communities at food and bar establishments that also are contributing to the higher rates.”

More than 53% of Angelenos have now been fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by The Times...