Here were our ten most read and shared articles this month on the nation鈥檚 students and schools:

Skyrocketing School Board Recalls Offer Window into Year of Bitter Education Politics

EDlection: Public dissatisfaction with school boards has been building throughout 2021 as American politics careens from one K-12 controversy to the next: the pace of reopening schools, proposals to bar trans athletes from youth sports, 鈥渃ritical race theory鈥� and mask mandates. Throughout, Americans have become increasingly willing to resort to the seldom-used practice of recalling school board members as a way of forcing change. According to the nonpartisan elections site Ballotpedia, 84 recall attempts targeting over 200 board members have been initiated so far in 2021, a huge upsurge over the typical year. And while the efforts have typically fallen short, they gained momentum in two large and nationally prominent districts. One is Loudoun County, Virginia, where parents began to revolt last year against COVID mitigation measures and perceived excesses in the school board鈥檚 equity initiatives. The other is San Francisco, where anger grew as pandemic-related school closures dominated national headlines. 鈥淭he school board is maybe the most obvious candidate for a recall in this situation because their impact is very clear: The schools are shut down, or there are masking requirements, so the [effect] is right there,鈥� said political analyst Joshua Spivak. Read Kevin Mahnken鈥檚 full report. 

鈥擭ovember Recalls: The two latest school board recall efforts fell short on Election Night (Read more)

Lone Star Parent Power: How One of the Nation鈥檚 Toughest Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws Emboldened Angry Texas Parents Demanding Book Banning, Educator Firings

Parent Activism: Laws forbidding the teaching of critical race theory in Texas have emboldened parents like Mary Lowe and members of her local Fort Worth chapter of Moms for Liberty, a right-leaning national organization. The pandemic gave Lowe and her members a window into what their kids were learning about racism and sexuality 鈥� and they didn’t like it. 鈥淗onestly, it鈥檚 disgusting,鈥� said Lowe, whose members show up at school board meetings to make their concerns heard. The new laws have gotten parents attention and results 鈥� sometimes through intimidation and threats. A few quick examples: A suburban Dallas principal accused of promoting critical race theory was put on leave with an eye toward not bringing him back. At least one North Austin teacher packed away her classroom library to avoid controversy. For school board members, the meetings have become 鈥渢errifying,鈥� said Leander school board member Gloria Gonzales-Dholakia. 鈥淭here are people there with utility knives on their belts, they鈥檒l shout at me, scream at me that I鈥檓 a racist. They鈥檒l call me a communist, I鈥檓 a 鈥楳arxist,鈥� I鈥檓 a 鈥榯raitor to the country,鈥� I鈥檓 an 鈥榚nemy of the state.鈥�” Andrea Zelinski has the story.

Fueled by Grants, States Bet Innovative Career Training Programs Will Lure Disengaged Youth Back to School After COVID 鈥� Starting in Middle School

Career Readiness: Even as it threw the economy into shambles, costing millions of mostly low-skilled, low-wage workers their jobs, the pandemic also rendered high school an abstraction to countless teens who, faced with unprecedented stresses, disappeared from classes. As vaccines arrived and schools and workplaces are reopening for in-person activity, civic and educational leaders are left with twin conundra: How to re-engage displaced workers and students at a moment when both groups are more disaffected than ever? A group of philanthropic leaders, state and school system officials and workforce policy gurus believe they have at least a partial answer: Bet big on the expansion of the most promising career technical education programs in communities that were poised, pre-COVID, to try new ways of using cutting-edge job-based learning to make the rest of school more relevant and, by extension, students more likely to buckle down. Beth Hawkins talked to backers to find out why this might be job-based learning鈥檚 golden moment. Read our full report.

Exclusive: As Minneapolis Weighs Police Dept鈥檚 Fate, Records Show School Cops Had Lengthy History of Discipline, Civil Rights Complaints

Investigation: After a 2007 shooting outside a Minneapolis high school, a police officer with a national reputation pressured prosecutors to go easy on a school security guard who drove off with the guns and was arrested at a nearby gas station. Another was accused of pounding in a man鈥檚 face for littering. Records suggest a third officer had a tendency to respond violently when under stress. He was assigned as a school resource officer a year after a superior officer warned investigators he could 鈥渃ompletely lose control of everything and harm himself, other officers or the public.鈥� The incidents are among dozens of allegations and disciplinary findings 鈥� including police brutality, racial discrimination and domestic violence 鈥� against cops recently stationed inside Minneapolis public schools. After George Floyd was murdered in 2020, the Minneapolis school board ended its ties with the police department. Misconduct records and court files obtained by 蜜桃影视 reveal a lengthy list of allegations and disciplinary findings against officers previously stationed in district schools 鈥� many alleging violence on the part of police. The records raise new questions about how the officers, half of whom remain on the force,  wound up in schools in the first place. Minneapolis voters will decide Nov. 2 on a ballot measure that would eliminate a police department that鈥檚 long been accused of sweeping officer misconduct under the rug and replace it with a public safety division focused on a 鈥渃omprehensive public health approach.鈥� Read Mark Keierleber鈥檚 latest investigation here.

Will the Tea Party of 2022 Emerge from the Debate over Schools? Virginia Election Offers GOP Template for Midterms

Analysis: It will take weeks for number-crunchers in both parties to pull apart meaningful conclusions from this month鈥檚 gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. But the races 鈥� especially in Virginia, where a well-liked Democrat was denied a second term in a state that Joe Biden won by 10 points last year 鈥� have made a few things clear. One is that education, an issue that voters have overwhelmingly trusted Democrats to manage in years past, could be a major vulnerability for the party as the 2022 midterms approach. The other is that, with the midterms now less than a year away, both parties have significant incentives to seize the initiative on K-12 schools. The GOP, which appears to have harnessed public outrage over COVID-related closures and school equity initiatives, has already announced plans to make a national education pitch with a proposed 鈥減arents鈥� bill of rights,鈥� and polling indicates that their base hasn鈥檛 been this animated about the state of schools in recent memory. 鈥淚n many ways, the critical race theory debate of 2021 is just the latest version of the death panel conversation from Obamacare, or the Willie Horton story of 1988,鈥� political scientist Stephen Farnsworth told 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Kevin Mahnken. 鈥淭he question is whether this can be weaponized to benefit Republicans.鈥� Read our full analysis.

The COVID Crisis Cracked Our Education System. A New Reform Coalition Must Come Together to Fix It in the Interest of Children

Commentary: Anyone who cares about kids must rejoice over their being back in school with their peers. But, writes contributor Robin Lake, that should not blind us to the harsh truths we have learned about American public education. A rigid system designed for sameness cracked under the pressure of a crisis. People were rightly outraged that some students did not have access to Wi-Fi and portable devices. But where was the outrage over unequal access to technology before the pandemic struck? Why were people not furious over the decades of research that shows historically marginalized students are taught by less effective teachers? Or the large and persistent gaps in academic outcomes by race and income? It is time for a new, broader reform coalition made up of all those who saw things in the American education system during the pandemic that they cannot unsee. Education supporters from all corners must come together to align, strategize and win legislative battles in the interest of children. Time is wasting for this generation of students, and history will repeat itself for the next generation if we do not act.

鈥楴o Signs of Recovery鈥�: 5 Alarming New Undergraduate Enrollment Numbers

Higher Education: Early fall undergraduate enrollment data suggest 鈥渘o signs of recovery鈥� after the worst declines in a decade, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center 鈥� and public universities historically serving low-income students of color are hit hardest. Numbers continue to decline nationwide, now 6.5 percent below 2019 levels. First-year classes at community colleges are over 20 percent smaller than before the pandemic, while only elite, selective institutions are rebounding. Twenty-two percent fewer Black first-year undergraduates are enrolled this year, the biggest decline of any ethnic/racial group since the pandemic began. Some 8.4 million students and about half of higher education institutions are reflected in the National Student Clearinghouse鈥檚 report, which includes data through Sept. 23. Read Marianna McMurdock鈥檚 full report.

California Aims to Come From Behind in Making Sure Children Learn to Read, But Some See New Push as Political

Early Literacy: A state task force focused on getting all California third-graders to read by 2026 and new legislation aimed at strengthening teaching candidates鈥� skills in early literacy are among the myriad initiatives currently aimed at reducing racial achievement gaps in reading. Advocates say it鈥檚 about time, with 37 percent of the state鈥檚 fourth-graders below the basic level on federal reading tests and districts struggling to teach disadvantaged Latino students 鈥� a large segment of the state鈥檚 K-12 population 鈥� to read. Some, though, say the approach is too scattered in a state the size of California. 鈥淲here鈥檚 the coherence and the coordination of those efforts?鈥� asked Stephanie Gregson, a former state official who now works with the nonprofit California Collaborative for Educational Excellence. And others see the emphasis on reading as a political strategy for Superintendent Tony Thurmond, who faces re-election next year. But district leaders say the data is enough of an impetus to take action. 鈥淲e aren’t chasing a statement from Secretary Thurmond,鈥� Palo Alto schools Superintendent Don Austin told 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Linda Jacobson. 鈥淲e identified the issue, put action steps in place, and plan to see what happens if a district can attack an issue with laser focus.鈥� Read our full report.

Indianapolis鈥� Innovation Network Schools See 42 Percent Jump in Enrollment During Pandemic

Enrollment: As school systems around the country confront a second consecutive year of unprecedented student enrollment losses, leaders of Indianapolis Public Schools鈥� Innovation Network might be forgiven for taking a victory lap. Enrollment in the district鈥檚 autonomous schools is up nearly 42 percent since the start of the pandemic, reaching its highest level in a decade. Backers of the innovation experiment, which enables the traditional district to keep a number of charter school families for purposes of funding and state accountability, note that the new schools鈥� growth is larger than the drop in the number of students attending traditional, district-run schools. Beth Hawkins has a quick look at the numbers. 

New Study Shows Reading Remediation in Middle School Led More Students to Attend College and Earn Degrees

Learning Recovery: Postsecondary remediation has gotten a bad name, and for good reason. Students who begin college in catch-up classes pay billions of dollars each year to learn content they should have mastered in high school, and a huge number drop out due to their stalled progress. But new research indicates that remediation may have its place earlier in students鈥� academic careers. According to the study, struggling middle schoolers in Florida who were assigned to a double courseload in English 鈥� a remedial class and a concurrent, grade-level class 鈥� saw significant benefits on their state test scores. Those faded over time, but the same students were later more likely to enroll in college, persist past their first year and eventually earn a two- or four-year degree. Kevin Mahnken reports.

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鈥淸My daughter] needs social interaction,鈥� she said in an interview. 鈥淚 know there’s other kids out there that need social interaction. I know there’s working parents out there that could use the support of somebody like me, and then it just snowballed from there.鈥�

Running a learning pod turned out to be a transformative experience for Samantha. 鈥淭his is probably the most professionally satisfied I’ve ever been in my entire career,鈥� she said. And she felt there was no turning back: 鈥淸After] this experience, I’m not going back to formal K鈥�12 education. I can’t. You can’t. I want to be able to replicate what I had here. You can’t do that in public school.鈥� 

Samantha was not alone in her sentiment. This spring, when CRPE researchers surveyed and interviewed teachers who worked in learning pods, we were struck by how many preferred these learning environments over their prior schools.

The learning pods that proliferated during the 2020鈥�21 school year were unplanned educational experiments that often looked far different than a standard school. They took place in living rooms, community centers, and even neighborhood parks. Many were started by parents who either hired professional educators or took on the role of teacher themselves, often as a complement to their regular school鈥檚 remote instruction. 

Learning pods were generally small, with most averaging about six students, though they could still be logistically complicated to run. Along with her daughter, Samantha hosted four other elementary schoolers ranging from first to fourth grade and juggled their remote schedules, which shifted throughout the year between synchronous, asynchronous, and hybrid in-person varieties. 鈥淲e鈥檝e literally been on nine different schedules since we started,鈥� she said during our interview last March.

Despite their complexity and untested nature, instructors found a lot to like about learning pods. According to a majority of the thirty-five pod instructors we interviewed, teaching in pods was emotionally fulfilling and intellectually satisfying. Like Samantha, many explicitly said that they were not interested in returning to a traditional school setting or鈥攊f they did not have previous teaching experience鈥攑ursuing a career in formal education. 

What made their experiences in learning pods so positive and their take on traditional education so pessimistic? The answers could point the way toward a more humane and sustainable teaching profession.

Teaching in pods 鈥� The joy of autonomy, creativity, and connection

The reasons educators we interviewed enjoyed their pod experience centered on two main factors: the development of close relationships and the professional autonomy to shape what, when, and how their students learned.

Pod instructors frequently cited their ability to get to know their students well. One pod instructor gushed about the experience: 鈥淏eing able to closely watch them grow and give them so much feedback and all my attention and so much love and just be a close mentor for them. . . .  I don’t think I would have expected to feel as just completely fulfilled from this year as I have.鈥� 

Many instructors also said that having control over their time, curriculum, and lesson design significantly contributed to their satisfaction with the work. One teacher put it succinctly, saying 鈥渢he freedom to be creative in how I present the material, even what material to present, that’s been the most fun for me,鈥� while another observed that 鈥渕uch like the kids I’m enjoying the freedom of taking things in different directions. It’s so nice as a teacher to . . . just have the gift of time.鈥�

Interestingly, a few instructors made an explicit connection between this autonomy and the strong relationships they had built with the parents who hired them. 鈥淚 wish this could be in my actual long-term job . . . I just have loved it,鈥� one instructor said. 鈥淚’ve loved the families. I’ve loved getting to know the kids. I’ve loved the freedom and flexibility and the respect that the parents have for me.鈥�

Underlying both the relationship development and instructional flexibility was one of the essential characteristics of all pods: their small size. Yet, size was only one factor which allowed for instructors to be more responsive to students鈥� needs. As Samantha put it: 鈥淚 can tell you every single one of their strengths. I can tell you their weaknesses. I can tell you what’s going to set them off. I can tell you what’s going to make them happy. I’ve never been able to do that before in my life, except with my own child, and that’s super powerful.鈥� 

Teaching in school 鈥� Constrained, overburdened, and underpaid

Whether pod instructors had firsthand experience as teachers or were outsiders to the profession, their sentiments about formal education were generally poor. In fact, much of their reflection on the positive aspects of learning pods were expressed in contrast to school. 

When parents praised Samantha鈥攖he pod instructor mentioned earlier鈥攆or giving daily feedback on each of their students, she thought it indicated a major inadequacy of the traditional school experience: 鈥淚 don’t think that that’s the treatment that they are used to getting from an educator. These are highly invested parents . . . and they still don’t feel like they’re a part of their kids’ education.鈥�

The impression these instructors had of teaching in schools was one focused on constraint, control, and monitoring鈥攁nd specifically in ways that were not central to student learning. 

One pod instructor who planned to return to the classroom lamented that even elementary school teachers will have to forgo many of the creative, exploratory activities they were able to do in pods because of perceived accountability pressures, like the rush to make sure every student was meeting state standards: 鈥淵ou literally can be an effective teacher making a real positive difference in a child’s life but ultimately there are guidelines, there are certain expectations, there’s certain things each teacher has to meet and produce.鈥� 

Along with several other pod instructors, she noted that returning to school would mean 鈥済oing from making pretty good money in the pod to making terrible money.鈥� That said, money was not always a driving factor. One instructor said, 鈥淚 would much prefer to do this and work directly with the families and forge the relationships that I have with students now in the future as well, knowing that long-term I may not make as much money. This is the ideal job for me.鈥�

Interestingly, one of the few instructors we interviewed who had a negative experience in a learning pod described it as similar to being a classroom teacher: 鈥淲hen I became the pod teacher, I basically became that system that has failed them. I became this . . . really unappreciated person working a thankless job with hours and hours of work being added on without even anyone batting an eyelid about it.鈥� This comment underscores a particularly bleak view on the way public school teachers are viewed and treated. 

What could a better teaching profession look like? 

While we spoke to a less-than-representative sample of teachers, the combination of positive experiences and an almost uniform resignation that their pod was unlikely to continue beyond the pandemic raises an intriguing question: Why not? What would it look like to normalize learning environments like the pandemic learning communities we studied, provide them with public funding, and make them accessible to all families who wanted to participate鈥攁nd not just the affluent families with household budgets lavish enough to accomodate teachers for hire?

States should explore policies that allow teachers to operate with a similar level of independence as they had in pods after the pandemic passes. could allow teachers to operate one-room schoolhouses or microschools. Education savings accounts could allow families of all incomes to pay for educational services a la carte, giving a top high school English teacher the option of operating in private practice in the same way a medical specialist could. 

But creating alternatives to the existing system won鈥檛 be enough. Policymakers and school system leaders should not accept the normalization of . 

Working in learning pods gave the teachers we interviewed a break from that norm. It showed them they could thrive professionally with greater autonomy. It showed them that they could work flexibly from living rooms or home offices, with more flexible hours鈥攁s professionals across the country, including the author of this blog post鈥攄iscovered during the pandemic. 

It鈥檚 no surprise, then, that these teachers reported greater satisfaction. How much better could we do if we designed educational institutions to treat teachers with dignity, encourage their autonomy, honor their expertise, and reward their successes?

There are pockets in public education where this happens. In certain schools and classrooms, teachers build the lessons they鈥檝e always wanted to build, form authentic relationships with students, and design learning experiences around their students鈥� needs. But tellingly, these pockets often form outside the 鈥渃ore鈥� of the traditional system鈥攊n specific schools with peculiar missions, or , in electives or extracurriculars, where teachers enjoy more freedom and students often enjoy more authentic learning experiences. Policymakers and school system leaders should look for these pockets in the school systems they govern, and they should ask what it would take to make the whole system more like that.

Samantha, the pod instructor we interviewed, exhorted school decision-makers to take note of the positive experiences taking place in pods: 鈥淚 truly hope it does change education, because this is what we need to get back to鈥攏ot kids being treated like numbers and just pushed through the system.鈥� 

The same can be said for teachers.

Note: We used pseudonyms to protect the identities of teachers we interviewed for this project.

Steven Weiner is a research analyst with the Center on Reinventing Public Education. This analysis . 

It was a busy month here at 蜜桃影视, covering schools and students amid the crisis. Here were our 11 most shared and circulated reports: 

Kids Left Schools Last Year Because of the Switch to Remote Classes; Early Numbers Suggest They May Not Be Coming Back Soon

Enrollment: With the release of new data in recent months, a much clearer picture is emerging of how K-12 enrollment responded to the pandemic. First, a working paper released in August drew a direct line between the reopening choices districts made at the beginning of the 2020-21 school year and families’ education decisions, showing that hundreds of thousands of students left schools that offered remote-only instruction. The findings echo those of other publications, which have pointed to huge enrollment drops from traditional public schools 鈥� heavily concentrated in kindergarten and the earliest grades 鈥� alongside surges in homeschooling, private schooling and charters. What鈥檚 more, the early indicators from several districts suggest that enrollment isn鈥檛 bouncing back to the pre-pandemic status quo. Read Kevin Mahnken’s new report.

Gaggle Surveils Millions of Kids in the Name of Safety. Targeted Families Argue it鈥檚 鈥楴ot That Smart鈥�

School Safety: After a bout of depression and a suicide attempt, Minneapolis student Teeth Logsdon-Wallace shared intimate details about his mental health in a class assignment last month. It was one of thousands of Minneapolis student communications that got flagged by Gaggle, a digital surveillance company hired by the district. The company contacted school officials even though Logsdon-Wallace was making the point that his mental health had improved 鈥� a detail seemingly lost in the transaction between Gaggle and the district. An earlier investigation by 蜜桃影视 exposed how Gaggle, which saw rapid growth after the pandemic forced schools into remote learning, subjects students to relentless surveillance and raises significant privacy concerns. But technology experts and families with first-hand experience with Gaggle鈥檚 surveillance dragnet have raised a separate issue: The service is not only invasive, it may also be ineffective. 鈥淚f it works, it could be extremely beneficial. But if it鈥檚 random, it鈥檚 completely useless,鈥� said a 16-year-old Connecticut student mistakenly flagged for her work as a school literary journal editor. 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Mark Keierleber digs in. 

A New Kind of Curriculum Night: Armed With Protest Signs and Data, Diverse Group of Minneapolis Parents Demands Better Reading Instruction for Their Kids

Curriculum: Frustrated by years of rock-bottom literacy rates, an unlikely coalition of families has begun staging protests at Minneapolis Public Schools headquarters, hoping to push district leaders to acknowledge that the way the city’s schools teach reading runs counter to what science shows about how children learn. While there鈥檚 nothing new about angry parents raising their voices at school board meetings, what鈥檚 different about the situation in Minneapolis is that the protesters are armed with a trove of research, the district鈥檚 own data and an understanding of strategies that have made children proficient readers in other places. In this story, Beth Hawkins describes how families of color, National Parents Union organizers and affluent parents of struggling readers have joined forces to demand change. Read the full feature. 

Exclusive Data: Absenteeism Surged Among English Learners During Pandemic

Chronic Absenteeism: Before COVID-19, Mia Miron almost never missed class. Her parents, who had immigrated from Mexico, instilled in her a belief in the value of education as the path to a better life. But when the pandemic hit, her absences began to pile up 鈥� sometimes because of a faulty laptop charger and sometimes because she was marked absent even when she had logged in. Her grades fell from B’s and C’s to D’s and F’s. 鈥淸School] was no longer our primary concern. We had to do anything to survive 鈥� to pay bills, rent, everything, before anything else,鈥� Miron鈥檚 mother told 蜜桃影视 through a translator. Across the country, the obstacles posed by remote learning appear to have triggered a disproportionate jump in absenteeism among English learners like Miron, new data indicate. The numbers, delivered to 蜜桃影视 through public record requests, offer further insight into the devastating effects of the pandemic on the education of America鈥檚 5 million English learners. Asher Lehrer-Small brings you the exclusive report.

Long-Term NAEP Scores for 13-Year-Olds Drop for First Time Since Testing Began in 1970s 鈥� 鈥楢 Matter for National Concern,鈥� Experts Say

Student Learning: Over the past few years, education observers have grown accustomed to downbeat news from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, with multiple rounds of the test pointing to largely stagnant scores across various subjects. The release this month of results from NAEP’s 2020 long-term trends assessment offers revelations that are startling as well as discouraging: For the first time in the half-century history of that test, reading and math scores for 13-year-olds significantly declined. Black and Hispanic students in that age group both lost ground in math since the test was last given, in 2012, and the lower performance of 9-year-old girls opened up a gender gap with boys that did not exist nine years ago. Worst of all were the plunging scores of low-performing students 鈥� especially those scoring at the 10th percentile, who declined an astonishing 12 points in eighth-grade math. “It’s really a matter for national concern, this high percentage of students who are not reaching even what I think we’d consider the lowest levels of proficiency,” said George Bohrnstedt, a senior vice president at the American Institutes for Research. Kevin Mahnken reports.

鈥榃e Are Going to Hold You Accountable鈥�: Just 1 in 5 Families Was Asked for Input into School Stimulus Fund Spending, New Poll Finds

School Funding: Despite a congressional mandate to draw on parents, students and a broad range of community and advocacy organizations as they draft plans for spending $122 billion in stimulus funds, states and school systems have failed to ask the vast majority of families what their priorities are, according to a new poll. Just 1 in 5 parents queried in a new National Parents Union survey said they were asked for their input by their schools as leaders make plans for spending an unprecedented infusion of recovery funds. Affluent households were more likely to report being consulted than low-income families, while half had heard little or nothing about the money. 鈥淏lack and brown families throughout the pandemic have been more engaged than ever,鈥� parents union President Keri Rodrigues tells Beth Hawkins. 鈥淭o now turn your back on them and say, 鈥榃e鈥檝e got it from here鈥� really underestimates these families.鈥�

How Many Kids Are Attending NYC Schools? As America鈥檚 Top District Refuses to Disclose Numbers, Growing Concerns About a Mass Exodus

New York City: More than a month into the academic year, it鈥檚 still not clear how many students are attending school in the nation鈥檚 largest district. The New York City Department of Education has not yet released data on the number of young people enrolled in its roughly 1,600 schools, nor has it confirmed exactly how many show up each day. Officials say the DOE has the data on hand but is keeping the numbers under wraps amid fears that as many as 150,000 students have not yet set foot in a classroom this year. School officials say they will release the figures after the Oct. 31 deadline for reporting to the state. The nation’s second- and third-largest districts, Los Angeles and Chicago, have already reported drops of over 27,000 and 10,000 students, respectively, compared to last year. Asher Lehrer-Small has the story.

An Experiment at the Crossroads: In Year Two, Pandemic Pods 鈥楩ind Their Legs鈥� 鈥� and Face Their Limitations. Will They Endure Beyond COVID-19?

Learning Pods: Wichita Public Schools lost roughly 2,400 students last year, including Megan Monsour鈥檚 two boys. They joined a nature-focused microschool, where they get one-on-one reading help and have no plans to return to the district. They are among 1.5 million students expected to be participating in pods this fall 鈥� a movement that started in response to school closures but has now expanded to accommodate families’ desires for culturally relevant education and frustration with their children’s public schools. One parent said she鈥檚 gone from 鈥渁 place of extreme anxiety鈥� over her decision to join a microschool 鈥渢o a total place of liberation.鈥� But as pods enter their second year, some organizers are recognizing their limitations and have started linking up with larger, established networks of homeschoolers for support. 鈥淣ow that they have a year under their belt, they are starting to find their legs,鈥� Kija Gray, a coach who advises mostly Black families in Detroit, told reporter Linda Jacobson. But some remain skeptical about pods’ staying power: 鈥淭hey’re not likely to scale substantially post-pandemic,鈥� said FutureEd鈥檚 Thomas Toch. “Free public schools, we learned 鈥� play a central role in most families’ lives.鈥� Read our full report. 

蜜桃影视 Interview: Colorado Springs Superintendent Michael Thomas on Being a Black Leader Working to Change a White System

Equity: When Colorado Springs School District 11 appointed Michael Thomas as its new superintendent, school board members gave him two big tasks. He needed to make the district 鈥� the increasingly diverse center of an affluent city 鈥� more culturally affirming for families. And he had to stop a decade-plus exodus of 700 to 1,000 students a year. A Black man who came up in predominantly white schools and then went on to work in them, Thomas firmly believes that if you take care of the first task and make schools welcoming and relevant, families will stay. As tall an order as that is, the first thing Thomas had to do was to convince the adults in the system that there was a problem. In an interview for 蜜桃影视鈥檚 recent series on the ways in which COVID鈥檚 inequities are showing up in schools, Thomas talked to Beth Hawkins about continuing to push hard changes even in a pandemic, recalling his own George Floyd moment and persisting as a Black leader without 鈥渃ommitting cultural sacrifice.”

鈥擲pecial Report: After a K-shaped recession, a classroom crisis?

When Graduating Isn鈥檛 Enough: New KIPP Scholarship Will Help First-Gen College Grads At Risk of Being 鈥楿nderemployed鈥�

Social Capital: Closing the opportunity gap for low-income, first-generation college students is a moving target. Author and 74 contributor Richard Whitmire has been writing about the evolution for years 鈥� from the initial push to get these students into college, which morphed into getting them through college and is now focused on securing appropriate post-college career paths. To that end, the KIPP charter school network announced the Ruth and Norman Rales Scholars Program, which will provide four years of mentoring, summer internship assistance, financial literacy training, networking advice and funding to defray college costs. The supports are valued at $60,000 per student, and the grant covers 50 students a year, up to 250 students over five years. Whitmire rounds up what some of the nation鈥檚 other big charter networks are doing to help launch alumni careers. Read the full report. 

The Great Shortage: Explore How Districts in All 50 States Are Grappling With Missing Teachers, Nurses, Cooks, Bus Drivers & Other Essential Workers

Interactive Map: A month into the academic year, schools in all 50 states are experiencing staff shortages, 蜜桃影视 has found. The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show there were 460,000 state and local education job openings in July, and schools report that they need more cafeteria and afterschool workers, school safety agents, custodians and nurses. Across the country, schools have asked parents to provide transportation to school for their children and ordered in pizzas when there were no cafeteria workers to make lunch. A bus driver shortage described as 鈥渟evere鈥� pushed one Minnesota superintendent to get her bus driver鈥檚 license, while a Nebraska district canceled class for a 鈥渞est and reset鈥� day due to shortages, burnout and illness. 鈥淚 fear the worst is yet to come,鈥� said Superintendent Susan Enfield of the Highline Public Schools, outside Seattle, where central office staff are filling teaching positions. Scan through a sampling of the staffing shortages districts are currently experiencing nationwide in a new interactive map, compiled by 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Meghan Gallagher.

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These experiments from last year provide some important examples of how families and educators can affirm students鈥� identities, instill a sense of belonging, and help them resolve conflicts and navigate social situations when they are freed from traditional assumptions and rules about how school is supposed to look.

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Over the past year, we surveyed 253 pod parents and educators throughout the United States. Among the 101 teachers we surveyed, 57 percent previously taught in a public, charter, or private school. We also conducted detailed interviews with twenty-seven parents and thirty-five pod educators to gain a deeper understanding of how they supported students鈥� well-being.

Fifty-eight percent of surveyed teachers reported they were better able to support their students鈥� social and emotional well-being in pods than they had been in traditional classrooms.

In interviews, parents and teachers said the combination of small group sizes and flexibility to shape the learning experience enabled educators to form strong relationships with their students and ensure students felt seen, known, and heard, which, in turn, helped them support students鈥� learning and well-being.

Learning in pods 鈥渞eally shifted to focus on the social and emotional, and working together as a group,鈥� said one teacher. 鈥淸Learning is] more focused and more based on their interests, and [with a] more reactive and smaller group, I can do more than a teacher who has thirty students.鈥�

Pod teachers said they had more control over their schedule and lessons, which allowed them to address students鈥� needs on the fly. When teachers could be more responsive, they said their students trusted them more, which improved relationships throughout the pod, leading to a more positive learning environment.

For example, one teacher we interviewed described how she used her flexibility to work closely with a second-grade student who struggled with interpersonal skills and socializing with his peers. The structure of the pod allowed her to spend additional time to understand his frustrations and help him communicate his needs. This led to stronger relationships between students. 鈥淗e learned to be with other children … We were able to deal with so many social and emotional issues over time in such a communicative way,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e had so much time in between lessons.鈥�

Ultimately, pod environments allowed teachers and students to build deeper connections with each other and work through conflicts that arose鈥� something that might be difficult to achieve in large, traditional classrooms where it鈥檚 easier for students to get lost in the crowd. 

One parent said the pod experience was 鈥渢remendous for [my child鈥檚] social and emotional development … They had conflict. They had disagreements. They had a hard time working things out sometimes. But they learned to … sit down and talk and hear each other … They were like, 鈥楾hese are my people. I鈥檝e got to figure this out.鈥欌�� 

Another parent remarked that her six-year-old daughter had developed better communication skills than most adults while attending her pod. The strong relationships that formed in pods helped set up an environment where teachers could easily support students as they worked through social situations and learned to advocate for themselves, creating a learning environment where students felt safe among their peers.

Small groups and teacher flexibility are hardly new or innovative ideas. But pandemic pods are a good reminder of their power. Both are difficult to implement in traditional school systems with large classes, mandates, and pressures on teachers. 

Still, school system leaders can draw lessons from small pandemic learning communities to better support their students鈥� well-being and learning. For example:

鈥�Community-based organizations and parents spend the most time with students outside of school and understand their needs best. They know how to create environments where students feel safe, known, and heard. Leaders should honor their expertise by forming partnerships with organizations and parents (e.g., including them as advisors) to design new learning environments鈥攂oth inside and outside traditional campuses鈥攚here students feel valued and motivated to learn, as some districts have done with. 

鈥擶ithin schools, students often form their most authentic relationships and experience some of their most profound learning outside of their core classes, of school (extracurricular activities, or elective classes like music or drama). Schools should look for ways to develop that same intimacy and authenticity in math, English, or science classes.

鈥擶hile existing tools for gauging student well-being are often inadequate, measuring students鈥� perceptions of safety and belonging at school can help leaders understand and respond to their needs. Myriad surveys can measure student well-being; leaders should be intentional about using survey data as a starting point to dig deeper into their needs and experiences. For example, used a combination of student surveys and interviews. When leaders learned students didn鈥檛 feel understood by teachers, they searched for ways to improve teacher-student relationships and create a culture of belonging. Creating a feedback loop where leaders track and respond to students鈥� needs can help build trust and show students that their school cares about them.

Fundamentally, the positive experiences many families and teachers had during their unplanned experiments with learning pods underscore the benefits of giving educators and families the ability to shape learning environments around students鈥� needs鈥攔ather than assumptions about what the school day should look like or how students should spend their time. 

This flexibility allowed teachers to respond more effectively to student needs, which in turn built trust, strengthened relationships, and created the conditions for better learning. The question this raises for our education system is: What will it take to give educators, parents, and students everywhere that same power over their learning environment that allows student needs to drive every decision?

Lisa Chu is a research analyst with the Center on Reinventing Public Education. This analysis . 

The long list of symptoms finally made sense when her doctor diagnosed her as a COVID-19 鈥渓ong hauler.鈥�

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It was then Terrazas, 64, knew she couldn鈥檛 return to Ascarate Elementary School this fall, where she spent her entire 36-year career in education, first as a physical education assistant and then as instructional aide in the dyslexia department. As an aide, she was frequently called on to help with crossing guard duties or fill in as a substitute teacher.

鈥淚f I couldn鈥檛 do the job right 鈥� the way I wanted to do it and I鈥檓 used to doing what the principal expected of me 鈥� then I should let somebody come in there and do the job that鈥檚 needed,鈥� Terrazas said about her decision to retire early in June after being on catastrophic leave since February. 鈥淓ven though it was really sad for me, it was time to let go.鈥�

Terrazas is one of many Texas educators who left the profession on account of the pandemic. Some feared contracting the virus while others were exhausted by the sudden shift to remote instruction.

These early retirements haven鈥檛 helped local staffing shortages that existed prior to the pandemic.

The 134 teacher vacancies in the El Paso Independent School District as of Sept. 10 are slightly up from last fall, but still below the nearly 200 openings the region鈥檚 largest district had at the start of fall 2019. The Socorro Independent School District, however, had 64 teacher vacancies, up from 26 two years earlier. Ysleta, the district where Terrazas worked, had 33 openings, nearly on par with those from 2019.

Other school personnel shortages

The staffing shortage isn鈥檛 limited to teachers: districts are down bus drivers, custodians, food service employees and especially substitute teachers. SISD aims to have 900 substitutes on payroll annually 鈥� right now, it has about 600 for 49 schools.

鈥淚t鈥檚 always been hard to find substitutes, but now it鈥檚 doubly hard because of COVID,鈥� SISD Chief Academic Officer Lucia Borrego said.

Districts partly rely on retired teachers to work as substitutes, but retirees don鈥檛 want to risk their health by returning to the classroom.

College students and recent graduates 鈥� who also fill the substitute pool 鈥� are more enticed by the high hourly wages districts are paying for tutors to provide state-mandated accelerated instruction to students who failed last year鈥檚 standardized tests.

Tutors can earn as much 鈥� or more 鈥� working part-time as they could as a full-time substitute. Tutor pay in EPISD, for example, ranges from $15 to $50 an hour while substitutes earn $75 to $100 daily.

Without substitutes, schools have been pulling whoever they can find to staff a classroom, whether that鈥檚 a librarian, assistant principal or even principal.

鈥淚t cripples the campus a little bit because we have to get all our extra people to cover classrooms,鈥� Borrego said.

In an effort to recruit new substitutes, SISD has boosted pay rates by about $25 an hour and lowered the hiring requirement from 60 to 30 college credit hours to attract current students. It鈥檚 also offering a $500 retention incentive for substitutes who work at least 100 days 鈥� slightly more than half the school year.

Hiring new staff has become more difficult over the past decade as fewer teachers enter the profession, said Desiree Carver-Thomas, a researcher and policy analyst at the Learning Policy Institute, a California-based nonprofit education think tank.

鈥淲e鈥檝e seen a significant drop in the number of candidates enrolling in teacher preparation programs 鈥� which means not enough new fully-prepared teachers to replace those that are leaving,鈥� Carver-Thomas said. 鈥淭eacher preparation can be expensive and there isn鈥檛 that competitive compensation that makes it worth it to go into debt to become a teacher.鈥�

Texas saw a 27% drop in the number of newly certified teachers between the 2014-15 and 2019-20 school years, according to data from the Texas Education Agency. During that same time, the state鈥檚 public school enrollment grew 5%.

High rates of educators leaving the field also compound staffing challenges. Texas has averaged a 10% attrition rate over the last decade, according to TEA data. It remains to be seen how this fall鈥檚 return to in-person instruction will impact that rate.

Alicia Pineda, 65, would have stayed on for at least another year as a sixth grade language arts teacher at Ascarate Elementary School had she been allowed to continue teaching virtually. Instead, she retired in June after 40 years.

鈥淚n spite of COVID, they want to treat it like it鈥檚 a regular year,鈥� Pineda said. 鈥淚 see the kids getting sick, I see teachers getting sick, a friend of mine passed away due to COVID 鈥� and my doctor told me 鈥榶ou have a lot of underlying conditions that will jeopardize your health.鈥欌��

Districts look to mentorship opportunities to retain teachers

Attrition is particularly high among new teachers. Nationwide, 44% of teachers leave the profession within the first five years, according to a University of Pennsylvania researchers.

In El Paso, an expanding teacher training program aims to keep new educators in the field.

The University of Texas at El Paso鈥檚 College of Education launched a paid, year-long residency program in 2019 in which college seniors co-teach alongside veteran educators in EPISD, SISD and YISD classrooms. Research shows that teachers who go through a residency tend to stay in the profession longer, Carver-Thomas said.

Last year, the College of Education unveiled a mentorship program that pairs new teachers in the Canutillo, Fabens and Tornillo districts with instructional coaches from UTEP.

鈥淭he effort is really trying to improve the whole continuum,鈥� said Amy O鈥橰ourke, director of the Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development鈥檚 鈥淐hoose to Excel” initiative. CREEED is a funder of both UTEP programs.

鈥淵ou’re elevating the profession, you鈥檙e recruiting people to choose teaching as a profession, you鈥檙e making sure that the training they go through is really robust and is going to make sure they鈥檙e ready day one,鈥� O鈥橰ourke said. 鈥淎nd once they’re in the classroom they鈥檙e continuing to receive coaching and support so that not only are they having an impact on student learning 鈥� (but feel) like this is the career for me.鈥�

Disclosure: Amy O鈥橰ourke is a financial supporter of El Paso Matters.

This article originally appeared at .

Two months into this school year, the number of reported coronavirus cases among students has surpassed the total from the entire 2020-21 school year. Schools are prohibited from taking precautions such as requiring masks, though some are fighting the banning mask mandates. Far more students are on campus, since most districts do not have a remote learning option.

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Every Friday, the releases COVID-19 case counts for students and staff, as reported by the state鈥檚 school districts. Here is the latest situation for the week ending Sunday, Sept. 26:

State data on school cases is incomplete and likely an undercount. TEA suppresses some districts鈥� case counts to protect student privacy, and not all districts report student and staff cases to the state, despite agency guidance requiring otherwise. The agency also retroactively updates its data from previous weeks as more districts report cases.

Some large districts, such as and , have not consistently reported cases to the state since TEA started tracking COVID-19 data on Aug. 2 for this school year. Many districts publish a COVID-19 dashboard that shows cases, and TEA recommends families check for the latest data there.

Entire districts, including Angleton and Lumberton, have without reporting cases to the state. These districts don鈥檛 necessarily report their closures, either, since they are not required to do so. TEA informally tracks closures based on media and district reports, said Frank Ward, an agency spokesperson.

Here are the 10 districts reporting the most cases for the week ending Sept. 26:

Going into the school year, districts had fewer options to slow the spread of the virus and keep students and staff safe.

Last year, school districts were permitted to require masks. This year, Gov. has tried to prohibit . After remaining silent on the issue for weeks, TEA quietly last week to say school districts can鈥檛 require masks, which has drawn a federal investigation for possibly violating the rights of students with disabilities. Still, some districts have continued to contest or ignore the ban.

Before the school year began, the state did not fund online options. Instead, school districts either used federal relief dollars or dug deep into their budgets to provide remote programming for families.

But now, some families and districts may find relief, as Abbott recently signed into law , which expands and funds virtual learning. While advocates for the law say it is a step in the right direction, it excludes students who failed the STAAR test.

In the last school year, almost 40% of students did not pass their math assessment, and nearly a third didn鈥檛 pass reading. Those who failed were disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

This article originally appeared .听

Here were our most popular and important articles of the month:

Student Safety: When the pandemic forced Minneapolis students into remote learning, district officials partnered with Gaggle, a digital surveillance company that uses artificial intelligence and a team of content moderators to track the online behaviors of millions of kids across the U.S. every day. Now, public records obtained by 蜜桃影视 that saw rapid national growth during the pandemic but carries significant civil rights and privacy concerns. The data highlight how Gaggle puts children under relentless digital surveillance long after classes end for the day. In Minneapolis, officials say the tool helps identify youth at risk of suicide. But some worry that rummaging through students’ personal files and conversations on their school-issued Google and Microsoft accounts could backfire. .

鈥擝补肠办蝉迟辞谤测: How the Minneapolis School District is spending big on new student surveillance technology, raising ire after terminating police contract (Read more)

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鈥楨veryone Had Their Heads in the Sand鈥�: Push To Reopen Schools Leaves Many Quarantined Students Without Remote Learning Options

Learning Loss: The Delta variant is spoiling leaders鈥� best-laid plans for a full return to school, with some now shifting back to remote learning and others leaving families hanging over how their children will stay on track. Facing pressure from parents and the Biden administration to get students back in classrooms, state and district leaders, some argue, have now 鈥渙vercorrected,鈥� making it harder to give students in quarantine real-time access to instruction. States, such as Ohio and North Carolina are now considering policies that would bring back remote options, and some districts are tapping federal relief funds for online tutoring programs. But others, such as Texas lawmakers, want to limit virtual options only to higher-achieving students. It鈥檚 a reversal in some ways from where schools were a few months ago, fully intending to leave remote instruction behind. 鈥淚 really can’t believe our schools are as unprepared for remote learning as they seem to be,鈥� Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education told reporter Linda Jacobson. 鈥淓veryone had their heads in the sand, and kids will pay the price.鈥� Read the full article.

Four-Day Work Weeks, Big Signing Bonuses and Paid Moving Expenses: See How Districts Across the U.S. Are Luring Subs, Special Ed Teachers

Interactive 鈥� School Staffing: Districts nationwide are experiencing a shortage of special education and substitute teachers, exacerbated by the pandemic and rolling quarantines. So how are they addressing these challenges? From $15,000 bonuses in Detroit for special education teachers to four-day work weeks in a small Colorado district to extra pay on Mondays and Fridays for subs in Las Cruces, Texas, administrators and state governments are innovating to fill gaps and bring eligible educators into the classroom. Retirees are returning to work in Nevada and California, parents are being recruited for full-time positions in Georgia and college graduates in all fields are in high demand to support students returning to class and prevent school closures. Marianna McMurdock and Meghan Gallagher created interactive maps to show which recruitment and retention solutions are popping up nationally. See our full report.

From Tragedy to Triumph to Failure: How 9/11 Helped Pass No Child Left Behind 鈥� And Fueled its Eventual Demise

20th Anniversary: Two decades have passed since the morning that changed America forever 鈥� a morning that found President George W. Bush in a Florida elementary school, reading with students and attempting to jump-start the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. Within months of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a collective sense of grief and purpose led the federal government to declare war on terrorism, even as it pledged to provide an excellent education for every child. But while it is generally acknowledged that Congress passed the landmark legislation partially as a demonstration of national unity, some believe the Bush administration鈥檚 emphasis on the global war on terror set back the mission of education reform, as attention waned and bipartisanship dissolved. 鈥淭hat whole sweet thing that was put together in the ’80s and came together in various states and then saw this incredible peak in Washington in 2001 鈥� all of that largely fell apart because of 9/11, and the failure of everyone on all sides to hold it together in the wake of 9/11,” former Bush adviser Sandy Kress told 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Kevin Mahnken. Read our full report.

Schools Didn鈥檛 Plan for Online Classes This Year. Then Delta Struck, Demand Is Surging & Districts Are Scrambling for Virtual Options. Will They Be Good Enough?

Student Quarantines: As COVID-19 threatens a return to 鈥渘ormal鈥� for a third academic year, the number of quality online schools is growing 鈥� but not as fast as the number of districts and charter school networks inking contracts with education technology companies to provide services ranging from digital curriculum to 鈥渢urnkey online school systems.鈥� Yes, mask and vaccine mandates and families鈥� reactions to the Delta variant鈥檚 surge are moving targets, say researchers, but unless education leaders make the quality of online instruction a priority, last year鈥檚 lackluster experience with remote learning is likely to repeat itself. Beth Hawkins has some background on why districts are again scrambling to provide online learning alternatives and what the new academic year might look like in places where school leaders started thinking about quality early on. Read our full report.

Curriculum: Arnold Ambers was still a teenager himself when he woke up early each morning and drove a school bus that took local children to a nearby segregated elementary school. Then, he arrived late to his own segregated high school classroom despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found such isolation unconstitutional years earlier. Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Ambers experienced first hand how many white Americans fought tooth and nail to stop integration, a movement that became known as 鈥渕assive resistance.鈥� These days he鈥檚 on edge as racial strife engulfs the country and the community of his childhood 鈥� Loudoun County, Virginia 鈥� , opposition to the catch-all and now-ubiquitous phrase critical race theory. 鈥淚t鈥檚 painful to realize that we鈥檝e come a long way, but in the last five years we鈥檝e really gone backwards quite a bit,鈥� Ambers said. 鈥淎nd I guess the painful reality is that racism has always been there.鈥� 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Mark Keierleber explores the historical connections between education in America post-Brown v. Board and the current controversy, a showdown one Loudoun County official called 鈥渢he massive resistance of our generation.鈥� .

鈥楽taggering鈥�: New Research Shows that Child Obesity Has Soared During Pandemic

Student Health: Since COVID-19 first shuttered schools last spring, K-12 students have been subjected to a kind of natural experiment in inactivity, with exercise and time spent outdoors declining as screen use has skyrocketed. Now, the physical effects are becoming clear: According to a study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children鈥檚 body mass index (a common measure of weight relative to height) increased twice as fast during the early months of the pandemic as it had previously. The findings match the results of several existing studies, all of which have found that kids are increasingly overweight or obese as they’ve been largely confined to home. Dietitian Michelle Demeule-Hayes, the director of a clinical weight-loss program at Baltimore鈥檚 Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital, called the trends 鈥渟taggering鈥�: 鈥淚t鈥檚 never been this bad,鈥� she told 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Kevin Mahnken. 鈥淪o the research is definitely accurate.鈥� Read our full report.

As the Pandemic Set In, Charter Schools Saw Their Highest Enrollment Growth Since 2015, 42-State Analysis Shows

Enrollment: Charter schools experienced more growth in 2020-21 鈥� the first full year of the pandemic鈥� than they鈥檝e seen in the past six years, according to preliminary data released today from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. While traditional public schools saw sharp declines in enrollment during the tumultuous year, charters in 39 states saw an influx of 240,000 new students 鈥� a 7 percent increase over last year. 鈥淔amilies are sending a clear message. They want more public school options,鈥� Nina Rees, president and CEO of the alliance, told 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Linda Jacobson. Those options include virtual schools, which in Oklahoma accounted for much of the state鈥檚 nearly 78 percent growth in charter enrollment. While it鈥檚 too soon to tell whether the enrollment shifts will last, the Fordham Institute鈥檚 Michael Petrilli suspects many of the families who opted for virtual charters will find their way back to district schools 鈥� 鈥渙nce things return to 鈥榥ormal,鈥� whatever the heck that is.鈥� Read the full story.

鈥楽omething Was Missing鈥�: 97% of North Carolina Survey Respondents Never Taught About State鈥檚 Grim Eugenics History

History: Down the road from Joseph Palko鈥檚 North Carolina high school stood a spooky, deserted old campus. Classmates would sneak onto the grounds and scare each other with ghost stories about the run-down buildings. His curiosity piqued, Palko turned to the internet for answers and quickly learned that six teenage boys at the reform school 鈥� some as young as 14 鈥� had been ordered to undergo vasectomies by the state’s eugenics board in 1948. 鈥淭hat was really shocking,鈥� Palko told 蜜桃影视. 鈥淚t鈥檚 scarier than anything anyone said was going on.鈥� On further investigation, he found that from 1929 to 1974, the state sterilized over 7,600 people in an effort to weed out so-called 鈥渇eeblemindedness.鈥� But Palko, like the vast majority of North Carolinians, was never taught about the state鈥檚 eugenics past 鈥� and its later, overt targeting of poor, Black women. Previous reporting from 蜜桃影视 uncovered that, despite a 2003 state-level directive that eugenics history be included in North Carolina鈥檚 K-12 curricula, none of the state鈥檚 10 largest districts require that students learn about the tragic episode. Now, responses from 175 individuals to a reader survey by 蜜桃影视 help quantify the impact of those untaught lessons. Read what we found.

鈥擥enocide 鈥業n My Own Backyard鈥�: North Carolina educators ignored state鈥檚 eugenics history long before critical race theory pushback (Read more)

With Up to 9 Grade Levels Per Class, Can Schools Handle the Fallout From COVID鈥檚 K-Shaped Recession?

Achievement Gaps: Wealthy newcomers from expensive cities like New York and San Francisco propelled housing prices in Austin, Texas, into the stratosphere in 2020, pushing out families of modest means and sending demographic shockwaves through the area鈥檚 schools. It鈥檚 just one manifestation of the pandemic鈥檚 K-shaped recession, a downturn barely felt by the affluent people at the top of the K but devastating to the people at the bottom. As schools prepared to reopen in August, research showed COVID has put the most disadvantaged students even further behind while propelling privileged children ahead and hollowing out the middle. Meaning the span of academic mastery in individual classrooms 鈥� seven grade levels in 鈥渘ormal鈥� times 鈥� is likely to widen even further, to as many as nine grade levels. In this installment of 蜜桃影视鈥檚 series examining the link between the pandemic鈥檚 economic turmoil and challenges in classrooms, Beth Hawkins takes you inside an Austin school that鈥檚 poised to meet the needs of its 鈥渂ookend students鈥� 鈥� the kids furthest ahead and behind 鈥� and may be a model for addressing the COVID classroom crisis. Read the full feature.

鈥擡xplore Our Special Report: After a K-shaped recession, how will America鈥檚 schools avert a COVID classroom crisis? (Read more)

Homeschooling Is on the Rise. What Should That Teach Education Leaders About Families鈥� Preferences?

Analysis: With school closures, student quarantines and tensions over mask requirements, vaccine mandates and culture war issues, families’ lives have been upended in ways few could have imagined 18 months ago. That schools have struggled to adapt is understandable, writes contributor Alex Spurrier. But for millions of families, their willingness to tolerate institutional sclerosis in their children’s education is wearing thin. Over the past 18 months, the rate of families moving their children to a new school increased by about 50 percent, and some 1.2 million switched to homeschooling last academic year. Instead of working to get schools back to a pre-pandemic normal, Spurrier says, education leaders should look at addressing the needs of underserved kids and families 鈥� and the best way to understand where schools are falling short is to look at how families are voting with their feet. If options like homeschooling, pods and microschools retain some of their pandemic enrollment gains, it could have ripple effects on funding that resonate throughout the K-12 landscape. Read our full report.

When Climate Change Forces Schools to Close: Fires, Storms and Heatwaves Have Already Kept 1 Million Students Out of Classrooms This Semester

Photo Essay: An elementary school burned to the ground as wildfires scorched Northern California. In New Jersey, a tornado destroyed a high school鈥檚 stadium. Floods from multiple hurricanes and historic storm systems damaged or destroyed school buildings, paralyzed campuses and, in Louisiana, have forced 45,000 students out of classrooms until October. Twenty schools in Columbus, Ohio, had to start remotely because of excessive heat. And just this month, as Hurricane Nicholas shuttered schools in Texas, a mid-September heat wave forced Baltimore to shorten school days for lack of air conditioners. In a third school year already complicated by COVID, as in-person learning resumes, in fits and starts, for the first time in 18 months, extreme weather exacerbated by climate change has led to closures affecting more than 1 million students across the country. 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Meghan Gallagher looks back at the disruptions from the first month of the school year and offers a snapshot of the chaos and obstacles that one California superintendent dubbed the new normal. See our full gallery.

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The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights launched the investigation on Tuesday, just days after the TEA its public health guidance. On Friday, the state agency said that school districts once again can鈥檛 require face coverings, citing that courts are not blocking Gov. 鈥檚 executive order prohibiting local mask mandates.

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The agency did not immediately respond to request for comment or say how or if it will enforce the order or if every school district in the state has been notified of this change.

In a letter to TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, federal officials said the investigation will focus on whether or not students with disabilities who are at greater risk for severe illness from COVID-19 are prevented from safely returning to in-person education, which would violate federal law, wrote Suzanne B. Goldberg, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights.

Goldberg wrote that her office is worried that Texas鈥� mask policy does not allow for 鈥渁n equal educational opportunity to students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from COVID-19.鈥�

The education department has launched similar investigations in Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. It had not done so in Texas because the TEA was previously not enforcing the governor鈥檚 order while there was .

Disability Rights Texas, an advocacy group, . The group, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of 14 children, says that the governor’s order and the TEA’s enforcement of it deny children with disabilities access to public education as they are at high risk of illness and death from the virus. The group claims that because of this, the state is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which forbids organizations and employers from excluding or denying individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to receive program benefits and services. The lawsuit has not yet been resolved.

Dustin Rynders, supervising attorney at Disability Rights Texas and lead attorney on the lawsuit, said in a statement that the TEA’s latest guidance is “reckless” and that the agency shares culpability for the “dangerous” situation in Texas schools. The organization’s case is set for an Oct. 6 trial.

“The Governor鈥檚 order and the Attorney General鈥檚 enforcement and intimidation campaign are creating an impossible situation for students with disabilities in Texas schools,” Rynders said. “Our state鈥檚 refusal to allow mask requirements is blatantly discriminatory to children with high risk health conditions who can鈥檛 yet be vaccinated.”

The TEA鈥檚 guidance released Friday is the latest development in an ongoing war over coronavirus precautions that has left school officials and parents with whiplash about what requirements are 鈥� or aren鈥檛 鈥� in place.

In early August, the agency had said districts couldn鈥檛 mandate masks because of the governor鈥檚 order. But as the new school year approached, a surge of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations prompted some local officials to buck Abbott鈥檚 prohibition in order to protect teachers and schoolchildren. Coronavirus vaccines still aren鈥檛 approved for children younger than 12.

About a month into this school year, is approaching the total from the entire 2020-21 school year. State data on school cases is incomplete and likely an undercount. TEA suppresses some districts鈥� case counts to protect student privacy, and not all districts report student and staff cases to the state despite agency guidance requiring otherwise.

School districts, cities and counties have fought Abbott鈥檚 order in court, and some have won temporary restraining orders allowing them to require face coverings. Meanwhile, , making good on the state鈥檚 threat of coming after districts that defied the governor.

Those lawsuits aren鈥檛 all yet resolved and some have so far played out in different ways. That鈥檚 created even more confusion as a patchwork of differing local rules have popped up throughout the state.

Shannon Holmes, executive director of the Association of Texas Professional Educators, said in a statement that school districts should be free to make their own decisions to protect students and staff and that includes 鈥減rotecting groups of high-risk students so as to provide the free appropriate public education required under federal law.鈥�

The Texas State Teachers Association said in a statement that it applauds the federal governments investigation into the TEA and the Texas mask policy. Once again, the organization called on Abbott to drop his order so schools can impose a mask mandate.

“Educators and parents want to keep students safe. But the governor cares less about the health and safety of children than he does about his political base,” said organization president Ovidia Molina. “That is not leadership. That is pandering.”

Kevin Brown, executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators, said in a statement that his organization supports local control of public schools when it comes to making decisions about student and staff safety.

“Texas is a very large state and each community has different situations, needs and expectations, and we think they are uniquely situated to decide what is best for their students and staff,” Brown said.

The Texas Tribune reached out to Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and Round Rock school districts for comment as well as the Texas Association of School Administrators. None immediately responded.

Raise Your Hand Texas, a public school advocacy group, declined to comment.

Brian Lopez is a reporter covering public education , the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Disclosure: Association of Texas Professional Educators, Raise Your Hand Texas, Texas Association of School Administrators and Texas State Teachers Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

鈥淲e sat down and we started talking about the experiences that we had in high school and what we felt the ecosystem of El Paso was in the education realm,鈥� said Eric Diaz, a mathematics senior at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Although somewhat strangers to one another, they found a similarity in all of their experiences: a lack of knowledge on how to access and prepare for college.

鈥�(We) looked at the struggles that we had when going to college, when applying for college, and looked at the fact that three of us were first-generation students,鈥� Diaz said. 鈥淲e realized that there was this sort of academic malnourishment in El Paso. That problem is because of a lot of reasons, but we noticed that it was just a little bit harder for us when we wanted to go to college.鈥�

That conversation led to the creation of the , a non-profit organization that aims to mentor El Paso high school students as they prepare to transition to college.

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鈥淲e think it could really help out the youth of El Paso to accelerate their understanding of the importance of college as well as, feeling super confident in the transition over to college,鈥� said Diaz, vice president and one of four co-founders.

Now in its second year, the network has over 60 members across the nation.

Known as the 鈥淪cholars Program,鈥� local high school juniors are paired with mentors for two years. The mentors are native El Paosans and current college students from across the country.

Every two weeks, all of the network鈥檚 mentees and mentors meet as a group over Zoom to discuss various topics that include how many colleges to apply to, essay writing, how to fill out college applications, financial aid and more. The individual mentees and mentors also meet separately and develop their own relationships.

鈥淭he junior curriculum is more like, 鈥極h, let’s think about all the high level things about college, like what kind of college you want to go to and meeting recruiters.鈥� But senior year, we like to get a little bit more personal because we know social life is changing, so we look at college organizations or personal finances,鈥� Diaz said.

Diaz said the network is able to explore topics that may not be addressed by high school counselors because the mentors are not much older than the students in the program.

鈥淎s current college students we know what it takes, so there鈥檚 specific workshops that we have that actually aren’t really addressed maybe by older generations like mental health,鈥� Diaz said.

Adriel Bustillos, a senior at Mission Early College High School, is a mentee of the program and a first-generation college student. As an accelerated college high school student he鈥檚 already received an associate degree in business from El Paso Community College and is attending UTEP this fall to receive his bachelor鈥檚 in political science.

鈥淚’m happy that I have this program to rely on to guide me every step because you do have your (school) counselors, but it’s okay to have a backup advisor or mentor to help you lead the way,鈥� Bustillos said.

His mentor, Ana Rodriguez, studies political science at UTEP and is the network鈥檚 director of public relations.

鈥淚 think every mentor has had the process of realizing, 鈥榃hat could I do for this mentee?鈥� 鈥榃hat do I think I can give that maybe they’re not thinking of at the moment,鈥欌�� Rodriguez said.

As a first-generation student and political science major, Bustillos said having a mentor that studies the same area has been beneficial.

鈥淚t closes the gap between college readiness and financial aid,鈥� Bustillos said about his concerns on navigating financial aid for the first time. 鈥淚 think it also gives you that push to actually do better and find opportunities for yourself.鈥�

As his mentor, Rodriguez said she has been able to give him a reality check on his upcoming college journey.

鈥淚 think one of the biggest pieces that I wanted to provide Adriel was that support system. It’s OK if you don’t need me all the time, but sometimes it’s just about talking to someone and seeing where you’re at and thinking about what’s going on,鈥� she said.

Diaz said the network is currently expanding to include more opportunities and mentorship programs.

鈥淲e’re starting to raise money to give out scholarships for our scholars,鈥� he said.

Diaz said these scholarships would allow students to fly out and visit colleges they鈥檙e interested in. He also said the money will be used to pay for application fees and provide vouchers for SAT or ACT tests.

The network will also be adding a mentorship program for college students to connect them with professionals who are from El Paso.

鈥淲e’re creating a separate program called 鈥楨PLN Professionals鈥� where we get expat El Paso people who are across the country doing amazing things,鈥� he said.

Diaz said it has been heartwarming to see the progress the network has been able to make since its establishment two years ago.

鈥淚t’s exciting because it was very homegrown,鈥� he said. 鈥淏eing able to expand on our interests and talk about how we want to come together as a network, and come together as a community, and give back to the city as much as we can is amazing.鈥�

are currently being accepted for mentees and mentors for the program.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

They pride themselves on their allegiance to a moral code, a firm compass that distinguishes them from progressives who are always 鈥� allegedly 鈥� trying to erode the core principles that make America great.

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Which is why it鈥檚 so tragicomic to witness conservative state leaders in , , , , and beyond search for some shred of principled moral reasoning to justify their mandates forbidding school districts from requiring masks on their campuses.

It鈥檚 a tough task, since most of conservatives鈥� usual lines just don鈥檛 fit. They certainly can鈥檛 justify their actions in the name of American federalism and local control of schools. It鈥檚 hard to squash local school boards鈥� abilities to determine whether or not students and staff must wear masks 鈥� in the name of local control. determining the masking rules for every locale in his state, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott explained that 鈥淭exans, not government, should decide their best health practices.鈥�

Nor can conservatives shield themselves in the name of protecting personal responsibility. If the last 18 months have taught Americans anything, it鈥檚 that the cautious also suffer when their feckless, carefree neighbors ignore the pandemic鈥檚 risks. Which, by the way, is also why they鈥檝e shelved their 鈥減ro-life鈥� rhetoric for this particular debate.

So conservative leaders have made a desperate grab for the banner of individual freedom. For instance, in his executive order limiting districts鈥� pandemic mitigation efforts, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis insisted he was acting to 鈥減rotect parents鈥� freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.鈥� That is, masks can鈥檛 be required at school during a still-raging pandemic because that would disempower families from choosing what鈥檚 best for their children and, presumably, teachers from managing their own tolerance for risking infection.

But this is a profound distortion of America鈥檚 traditional approach to freedom. about how virtuous behavior and personal responsibility were fundamental to sustaining individual liberty. It was obvious to them that the stability of America鈥檚 limited, representative government rested upon individuals behaving responsibly. 鈥淰irtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,鈥� George Washington wrote in his Farewell Address. And, when it鈥檚 politically convenient, modern conservatives know this. 鈥淔reedom relies on virtue for its survival,鈥� announced . Its authors continued: 鈥淚t is virtuous citizens taking personal responsibility for their actions and exercising mutual responsibility for the welfare of others who make ordered liberty possible.鈥�

In his towering 1859 essay, 鈥淥n Liberty,鈥� English philosopher John Stuart Mill, articulated his 鈥渉arm principle,鈥� one of that tradition鈥檚 famous definitions of individual freedom. 鈥淭he only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will,鈥� Mill wrote, 鈥渋s to prevent harm to others.鈥� The gist of the principle should be intuitive 鈥� indeed, to most Americans. It鈥檚 the intellectual ancestor of : my freedom to swing my fist ends precisely at the point where it hits your nose.

In that vein, then, the case for curtailing families鈥� liberty to send their children unmasked hinges upon whether or not this will cause harm to others. This is not a complicated calculation.

To be sure, throughout the pandemic, it has been both tempting and fashionable to claim that the coronavirus is not particularly threatening for children. Further, advocates from across the political spectrum have made a series of cavalier claims about the relative safety of school settings. Last March, Brown University economist and prominent school reopening advocate Emily Oster , 鈥淵our Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma.鈥� In his executive order as proof that school masking was unnecessary.

However, much of the confident talk about the safety of school reopening comes from earlier moments in the pandemic when fewer children were being tested and attending in-person schooling. As in-person school reopening launches across the country, there is that children are to catching the Delta variant than previous strains of the coronavirus. It鈥檚 driving , perhaps because those under the age of 12 are still not yet eligible to receive any of the coronavirus vaccines. it increases the risk of hospitalization for people of all ages.

Data on the latest pandemic spike suggest that these concerns are warranted. Pediatric hospitals 鈥� 鈥� . Test positivity rates for school-aged children . That is, more of the kids being tested for COVID are testing positive. an overall as the baseline threshold for when it is safe for governments to reopen in general. Perhaps we might tolerate a slightly higher rate for school reopenings, but Florida鈥檚 positivity rate for kids is four times the WHO鈥檚 benchmark: in that state, . Meanwhile, over 98 percent of Americans live in counties .

Finally, in elementary schools with universal masking and widespread COVID testing, that nearly one-quarter of students will be infected in the first three months of school. Remove students鈥� masks, and their models suggest that nearly 80 percent of an elementary school鈥檚 students will be infected in the same time frame. These CDC models are looking gloomily prescient: as Georgia schools near the end of their first month since reopening, the state鈥檚 Department of Public Health reports that . Gwinnett County Public Schools, just outside Atlanta, by the end of the school year, and possibly more if case rates increase with colder weather 鈥� despite requiring masks at all times on campus.

In such an environment, at such a precarious moment for public health, the application of Mill鈥檚 harm principle is relatively straightforward. The new variant of the virus is already threatening the health of children and families, and it will threaten more if schools reopen without mitigation measures in place. Universal masking is just the simplest, easiest and cheapest of these. Political and education leaders are absolutely justified in taking all of the standard approaches to slowing the spread of the coronavirus 鈥� including mandatory masking, vaccine mandates and strict quarantine protocols for schools with new COVID cases.

Notably, as the Delta variant began taking hold of campuses around the country, even Prof. Oster and Brown University took touting Gov. DeSantis鈥� citation of her research .

That conservatives are abandoning their prior moral convictions to explain their behavior makes clear that the whole effort to 鈥減rotect the freedom鈥� of the recklessly unmasked is really about scoring political points in a moment of enormous peril for children, families and the country. Indeed, in the face of school districts鈥� opposition to his executive order, to families determined to send their children to schools unmasked. Note, of course, that this extension of freedom, in the form of 鈥渆mpowering families,鈥� doesn鈥檛 isolate the risks only to the private schools willing to tolerate these unmasked families鈥� choice. It simply provides the virus with more vectors to transmit, threatening everyone in Florida 鈥� and the rest of the country.

Worst of all, it鈥檚 not even the first time that conservatives have tried to use the virus as leverage for attacking public schools and educators. Last summer, then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that would allow parents to enroll in private schools willing to open into the teeth of .

To be fair, modern conservatives鈥� brand of radical individualism is taken into account elsewhere in the Western intellectual canon. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that this rugged freedom was something like humans鈥� natural state 鈥� each of us fending for ourselves and charting our own life courses. Famously, however, he warned that this was incompatible with civil society, for in this state of nature, life was 鈥渟olitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.鈥�

Dr. Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. Find him on Twitter . The views expressed here are his alone. 

And then came the Delta variant.

Pediatric coronavirus cases have now surged above 250,000 for the first time since the start of the pandemic, according to . Hospitalizations of children stricken by the highly transmissible strain are reaching and some of students across the country last week were quarantining away from schools that had just barely begun. With a swiftness that surprised even health experts, the virus has across some 278 districts in 35 states, according to the website Burbio, a data service that tracks school calendars.

As for the adults in schools, at least have died of the virus since mid-August and shut down all its schools earlier this month after two teachers perished in the same week.

The Delta drumbeat of distress is one of the main reasons that President Joe Biden came out Thursday with a new plan of attack, including mandatory vaccinations for some 300,000 school staff members working for federal programs, such as Head Start or schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Education, and grants for districts confronting loss of funding for implementing mask mandates.

It will take some time to tell if Biden鈥檚 new strategy will be successful in beating back this latest surge. Right now, many parents and school officials are in a state of anxiety about how to keep their K-12 communities safe and perhaps questioning whether they miscalculated the strength of the COVID-19 enemy.

Complicating the matter further, decisions to implement basic virus mitigation measures in school have in some cases exploded into or even .

Amid the uncertainty and high tensions, and with , 蜜桃影视 spoke directly to health experts for clarity on how to understand the virus in this critical stage and tips on how to safely navigate the back-to-school season.

Here鈥檚 what they had to say:

1 We鈥檝e seen a surge in pediatric coronavirus cases. Should we abandon the prior wisdom that kids rarely catch COVID, and when they do, it鈥檚 not too serious?

Not exactly.

鈥淸The Delta variant] is more infectious, but it鈥檚 not a whole new game,鈥� explained Benjamin Linas, professor of medicine at Boston University.

The variant鈥檚 high transmissibility has pushed up case counts, including among children, he told 蜜桃影视. But serious illness among young people remains 鈥渧anishingly rare,鈥� he said 鈥� citing a case fatality rate of .00003 for those under 20.

鈥淭his underlying reality that kids are at far less risk of severe COVID-19 than adults remains true, even with Delta.鈥�

Young people do represent a larger share of infections nationwide now than they did at the outset of the pandemic. But that鈥檚 likely because far fewer minors than adults are vaccinated, and many remain ineligible for shots, said Kristina Deeter, professor of pediatric medicine at University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine.

In most cases, 鈥淸kids] are not as sick as the adults,鈥� she agreed.

Still, Rebecca Wurtz, professor of health policy at the University of Minnesota, cautions that the risk of infection remains high, particularly for the unvaccinated. The idea that young people couldn鈥檛 catch or spread COVID was always silly, she told 蜜桃影视, and the Delta variant means that transmission is now easier than ever before.

鈥淒elta will find you if you are not thoughtfully masking and social distancing,鈥� she said.

2 Does the Delta variant make kids sicker than previous strains?

There is no conclusive evidence that it does, according to the experts.

鈥淭he jury鈥檚 still out,鈥� said Deeter.

Studies from Canada and Scotland have found that than those infected with previous mutations of the virus.

And while those papers don鈥檛 examine virulence specifically among young people, Wurtz believes it could still be 鈥渞easonable to extrapolate that to kids.鈥�

Evidence from the U.S., however, seems to contradict the idea that Delta causes more severe infections among youth. Even as pediatric COVID cases have surged, the proportion of children and adolescents hospitalized with severe disease has , points out Amruta Padhye, pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Missouri.

The hospitalization rate among unvaccinated adolescents was , recent CDC data reveal.

3 After the Pfizer vaccine鈥檚 full approval from the FDA, parents may now theoretically seek 鈥渙ff-label鈥� vaccines for children under 12. Should they do so?

In short, no.

Although the FDA鈥檚 full approval of the Pfizer vaccine for those 16 and up means that doctors now have the power to prescribe the shot 鈥溾�� to any individual regardless of age, it would be irresponsible to do so, said Deeter.

The biggest unknown, she explained, is dosage. She prescribes drugs off label every day as a pediatrician, but explained that the COVID vaccine is different because it鈥檚 still so new.

鈥淚 don’t feel safe even deciding on what dose I might want to prescribe for a child. I have no idea what’s going to work,鈥� she said, explaining that too much vaccine could elevate risks such as myocarditis, already more prevalent in young vaccine recipients than adults, and too little vaccine might not provide adequate protection against the coronavirus.

鈥淭here’s a reason that we have the approval process, even in the middle of a crisis,鈥� added Linas. 鈥淚 don’t recommend going out to get your child vaccinated before the vaccine has actually been approved or emergency authorized for kids.鈥�

Youngsters aged 5 to 11 are expected to become eligible for coronavirus shots , experts say. The process has stretched out over months in part due to federal health regulators efforts to bolster confidence in the shots by in clinical trials.

Once shots are approved for that age group, they will be the most effective way to keep children healthy, said Linas.

鈥淲ith the vaccine, you鈥檙e very well protected from the bad outcomes.鈥�

4 Should schools implement vaccine mandates for staff?

Immunization requirements for school staff have multiplied since the FDA issued full approval for the Pfizer vaccine. 鈥�, , and multiple other states have enacted rules requiring educators to receive the COVID shot or be regularly tested for the virus.

In his Thursday address, which unveiled new vaccination rules covering two-thirds of all U.S. workers, President Biden to help move the needle on teacher immunization from its reported 90 percent level up to 100 percent.

鈥淰accination requirements in schools are nothing new,鈥� said the president.

Expecting teachers to be immunized against COVID represents a sound public health policy, says Linas.

鈥淚t’s reasonable for school districts 鈥� to say to their educators and staff鈥� 鈥榃e have an expectation that if you鈥檙e going to come into our buildings where we have our unvaccinated children, we expect you to be vaccinated. And if you won’t do that, then I’m sorry, you can’t teach.鈥欌��

That strategy also minimizes learning disruptions, pointed out Janet Englund, professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

鈥淲hen a teacher gets sick, he or she is unable to perform his or her job,鈥� she told 蜜桃影视.

5 What about vaccine mandates for students?

Very few school districts have extended vaccine mandates to students, as 12- to 15-year-olds remain eligible for shots only on an emergency authorization basis, and those under 12 are still ineligible.

On Thursday, however, Los Angeles Unified School District, which serves 600,000 students, became the first major U.S. school district to require that eligible students attending school in person be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. Students 12 and older in the nation鈥檚 second-largest school system will have to receive their second dose of the shot by Dec. 19, officials announced.

Culver City, California and also instituted similar requirements for students in late August. Experts told 蜜桃影视 that they expect the vaccination rules to face legal challenges.

Although Englund said she is a believer in many student vaccine mandates 鈥� they helped control diseases such as measles and polio, she pointed out 鈥� requiring a vaccine that is approved only on an emergency use authorization may be premature.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not quite time,鈥� she said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, however, expressed his while speaking on CNN in late August, and the University of Minnesota鈥檚 Wurtz told 蜜桃影视 that she is 鈥渁bsolutely in favor of mandatory vaccinations for students,鈥� due to the high safety and efficacy of COVID shots.

6 How effective are masks and other safety mitigation measures at slowing the spread of COVID in school?

Experts agree that safety measures to slow the spread of COVID are more effective when implemented in tandem with multiple others than on their own.

鈥淸Masking] has to be a part of a layered protection strategy,鈥� UCLA professor of pediatrics Ishminder Kaur told 蜜桃影视.

That means that classrooms should employ all strategies available to them, she said: universal masking, ventilation, distancing, outdoor activities and rigorous testing to keep infected students out of the classroom.

Doing so can result in schools effectively containing the virus and keeping case rates below those of surrounding communities, academic studies show.

Although quarantining students exposed to the virus can disrupt academics, experts said it is a necessary step to contain transmission. They pointed out that with widespread access to testing, a negative result after five days may allow students to return to the classroom more quickly. On Thursday, Biden announced that the White House will move to make 280 million rapid and at-home tests available using the Defense Production Act and lower the cost of over-the-counter tests from Walmart, Kroger and Amazon.

Some districts鈥� quarantine protocols are more stringent than those recommended by the CDC, according to a recent survey of 100 districts from the University of Washington鈥檚 Center for Reinventing Public Education.

Some observers have recently made the case that the , but Kaur points out that a recent study from Bangladesh with a randomized design 鈥� considered the 鈥済old standard鈥� in causal research 鈥� finds that , though it cautions that cloth masks may be less effective.

And while masking controversy has turned many school board meetings ugly, including in Broward County, Florida where the board chair said 鈥�all hell broke loose鈥� when they required face coverings in defiance of Gov. Ron DeSantis鈥檚 order, kids don鈥檛 actually seem to mind wearing masks, said Kaur.

鈥淭hey鈥檙e not fidgeting, they鈥檙e not touching it,鈥� she said of the youngsters who come into her clinic. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the new normal for them.鈥�

Deeter, who works in a sedation clinic and has to ask kids to remove their masks, has observed the same.

鈥淭hey get so upset when I try to take it off of them. It’s their buddy,鈥� she said.

7 Outside of school, what鈥檚 the best way to navigate playdates and other social activities?

The number one tip, experts say, is to stay outside as much as possible.

鈥淥utdoor activities were not the ones that were spreading these infections, which remains true even for Delta,鈥� said Kaur, although she recommended avoiding overcrowded locations even outside. For example, coaches calling players into a huddle might ask everyone to momentarily mask up.

Even when the weather gets cold, Wurtz recommends limiting indoor hangouts. She suggests some compromises: building a snowman outside then coming indoors for hot chocolate at the end, perhaps.

8 What鈥檚 the COVID end-game for schools?

Once all students have had the opportunity to receive COVID vaccinations, it could be time to consider rolling back virus mitigation protocols, Linas said, and beginning the conversation about how to live with a virus that within the global population. But that鈥檚 still a long way out.

鈥淲e鈥檙e not there yet,鈥� he said.

President Joe Biden鈥檚 push for more employers to require vaccines is likely to accelerate an already-growing trend in schools.

In the past month, the number of states requiring teacher vaccinations has jumped to 10, including the District of Columbia, according to a new analysis we conducted at the Center on Reinventing Public Education.

Those include roughly a third (31) of the districts in our review of 100 large and high-profile school systems. And Los Angeles Unified鈥檚 high-profile move to require eligible students to get vaccinated suggests vaccine mandates won鈥檛 be confined to school employees.

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Rising vaccination rates are good news for the country鈥檚 students. They increase the chances schools will be able to keep them safe, and keep them learning, all year and in person as much as possible.

But they won鈥檛 totally eliminate other challenges school systems are likely to face. Clarifying quarantine rules, and supporting high-quality instruction for students who are forced to quarantine or isolate because they鈥檝e tested positive or been exposed to the virus, remains a critical task for state and school district leaders.

Right now, the amount of time students can expect to spend in quarantine if they are suspected of being exposed to the virus, and the amount of instruction they can expect to receive, varies a lot depending on where they live.

State quarantine and isolation policies leave districts hanging

Forty-three states and D.C. have updated their quarantine and isolation guidelines for the 2021-22 school year, while seven states offer no guidance and simply link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage.

In 15 states and D.C., schools and districts must follow statewide quarantine guidance, while 29 states offer only recommended guidance. The remaining six states provide very little. , for example, stated that it is 鈥渘ot currently issuing isolation or quarantine orders for COVID-19 positive or COVID-19 exposed individuals.鈥�

Half of the states provide detailed guidance about how long a student should spend in quarantine. Of these, 14 specify isolation periods that range from seven to 14 days for different categories of exposure, and 11 specify periods that range from seven to 10 days.

The other half of states give school districts broad flexibility to determine the number of days students and staff are expected to quarantine, depending on whether they are asymptomatic, vaccinated or have a negative COVID-19 test.

The result of this loose, varied and minimal state guidance is a wide range of district quarantine policies.

Alaska鈥檚 Anchorage School District allows up to 24 quarantine days for students who live with an infected household member and cannot avoid continued close contact. At the other extreme, Kansas鈥檚 allows exposed students to return to class immediately, provided they wear a mask for 14 days and take daily rapid antigen tests for eight days.

The shortest quarantines are heavily concentrated in Florida, where seven of eight districts in our review allow students to return as early as two to five days after exposure. , which requires a 10-day quarantine, is the exception. Florida state guidance recommends four to seven days of isolation.

When will students and teachers have to quarantine? For how long? It depends

Most states have at least some policies that ease quarantine requirements for students who meet certain criteria.

Thirty-eight states exempt fully vaccinated students from quarantines, 23 provide exemptions if an individual has previously been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 7 exempt individuals if they are asymptomatic. In addition, 19 states include the to determine whether a student counts as having been exposed to the virus.

Easing quarantine rules for vaccinated people can reduce unnecessary learning disruptions and create an incentive to get vaccinated that stops short of a mandate. But some states have tied districts鈥� hands.

In , a state law prohibiting people from being treated differently based on vaccination status means that local leaders cannot use it as a way to shorten quarantines. In Ohio, a outlines 鈥渁nti-discrimination鈥� practices that would prohibit schools from establishing safety precautions specifically for unvaccinated individuals.

Some states devised creative guidance to keep teachers and students in schools as much as possible. The allows for teachers and staff deemed 鈥渆ssential鈥� to keep working if they remain asymptomatic, wear a mask at all times, self-monitor for symptoms and self-quarantine at home when they are not at work. In , local health departments and districts can offer students the option to wear a mask at school for 10 days in place of following quarantine-at-home protocols.

How will students in quarantine continue learning?

Remote learning is a critical tool for keeping students learning during quarantine, but not all students will have access. Eight states 鈥� Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas 鈥� are restricting at least one aspect of remote learning.

In some cases, states outlined these restrictions in their American Rescue Plan documents, which were created before the Delta variant started rampaging across the country. For example, New Jersey states that, 鈥淚n the 2021-22 school year, if buildings are open for in-person instruction, parents or guardians will not be able to opt their child out of in-person instruction.鈥�

Only 17 states have stated they will require districts to ensure that students can access instruction during quarantine or isolation.

Some provide detailed guidance in their 2021 reopening plans about how districts should provide remote learning. explains that schools opting to provide long-term virtual options must commit to quality instruction, state-aligned standards and certified, well-trained staff. The spelled out details about instructional time and enrollment.

Five districts of the 100 we reviewed 鈥� Boulder Valley, Colorado; Houston ISD; Kansas City Public Schools; Metro Nashville; and San Diego Unified 鈥� are offering their remote learning program, or an equivalent, to quarantined students. The rest will likely rely on schools and teachers to create their own solutions 鈥� which, again, means the education students will receive could vary a lot depending on where they live.

Chicago Public Schools expects teachers to provide coursework aligned to the instruction students would have received in class, and for students to receive up to two hours of live, real-time teaching a day while they鈥檙e in quarantine.

In Miami-Dade County Public Schools, teachers will be expected to revive a practice from last year: concurrent instruction, in which some students join class by videoconference while others attend in person.

Vermont鈥檚 Champlain Valley Public Schools distinguish between individually quarantined students and whole-class quarantines. The district will provide remote instruction only if the entire class must quarantine. Otherwise, quarantines will be treated as regular absences, and students won鈥檛 receive instruction.

Most states back COVID-19 testing

The majority of states 鈥� 36, as well as D.C. 鈥� provide schools and districts with both guidance and funding to administer COVID-19 testing. A robust initiative from the Washington State Department of Health, , helps schools provide vaccines and tests.

The remaining 14 states provide either limited or no information about statewide COVID-19 testing. In the “,” testing is mentioned as one of nine key prevention strategies. However, there is no reference to statewide support for districts that wish to establish and run these programs.

This month, a new type of policy, known as test-to-stay, has emerged to limit major school-based outbreaks.

Under 鈥檚 recommended policy, if 30 students, or 2 percent of a school鈥檚 student body 鈥� whichever is lower 鈥� test positive for COVID-19, the school will screen all students. Those who test positive will be required to isolate at home, but those whose results are negative can continue in-person classes.

In , schools can opt in to a test-to-stay protocol in which someone who comes into close contact with an individual testing positive for COVID-19 can receive a negative test and continue to attend classes, but quarantine from all extracurriculars and other activities.

These policies can help catch outbreaks before they spread out of control. But they also underscore the importance of providing instruction to students who are asked to stay home.

Vaccinations necessary but not sufficient

States and districts received a historic infusion of federal COVID relief dollars with the charge to keep kids safe and learning through the 2021-22 school year.

However, emerging fall trends reveal that states鈥� plans are underwhelming and largely miss the mark. Policymakers and education leaders can shift course to ensure students are safe and learning this fall and beyond by reinforcing the things that work:

• Provide districts support for coordinated vaccination and COVID-19 testing. States can give districts a framework to increase vaccinations among staff and students while implementing robust testing programs to catch potential outbreaks. For example, state education and health agencies can develop a network of local health authorities who can facilitate both vaccination and testing in schools.
• Develop a sense of safety by reporting staff vaccination coverage. A  across a state will protect students who are not eligible to be vaccinated and limit learning disruptions. Many states publish COVID-19 vaccination rates for health care professionals by county on public dashboards to establish transparency and trust among those who visit care facilities. Reporting similar data for teachers would help develop a  for parents and students.

• Establish clear, easy-to-follow quarantine rules. Differing federal, state and local policies on quarantine and isolation leave parents and students confused and uncertain about what is safe and what to do next. States can establish clear, straightforward quarantine policies along with streamlined communications efforts to ensure students, teachers and families feel secure about school safety precautions and reduce guesswork for local education leaders.

• Ensure students have access to remote learning throughout the year. States must set clear expectations about enrollment, attendance and quality of remote learning. With many competing priorities, districts need state support to ensure schools are providing high-quality remote instruction to students in quarantine or isolation.

These measures demand stronger action by state leaders. Students cannot afford to lose days or weeks of instruction while school district administrators navigate vague, conflicting or counterproductive guidance from other layers of government.

Christine Pitts is a resident policy fellow at the Centers on Reinventing Public Education. Bree Dusseault is principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, supporting its analysis of district and charter responses to COVID-19. 

This the first in a series of weekly analyses of COVID-19 policies in 100 large and high-profile school systems, produced by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, Bothell. Get this weekly snapshot, as well as rolling daily pandemic updates, delivered straight to your inbox 鈥� sign up for 蜜桃影视 Newsletter.

Then the pandemic hit鈥攁nd like so many other facets of family life in America, Dallas鈥� afterschool programs felt the effects, closing down or drastically shrinking as program staff quit for higher paying jobs in other industries and fear over COVID-19.

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With fewer spots available, children are now waiting up to 60 days to be enrolled. Another way to see it: For every child in an afterschool program in Dallas, there are three to four waiting for an available spot.

鈥淲e saw there was about a 45 percent seat loss in programs that were either no longer able to run, or that had to close,鈥� said Dallas Afterschool vice president of program services Marjorie Murat. 鈥淭hese afterschool programs are really a lifeline for working families, and they exist to support the working families and sustain the family unit.鈥�

The afterschool shortage in Dallas is not unique.

As the pandemic has continued, afterschool programs across the country are facing staffing shortages, forcing them to reduce the number of children they serve or close down completely.

COVID-19 has exacerbated the long-standing issue of low wages of afterschool staff, advocates said. Most afterschool care programs have a starting salary of $9-$12 an hour. Coupled with rising concerns about the virus and now the Delta variant, many are not returning to work, with some leaving for jobs that pay much more and are less risky.

The staff shortages have resulted in child care headaches for parents like Jessica Canales, a Dallas employment recruiter, whose kids were waitlisted for weeks after returning to school in early August. Pent up demand created a huge need for afterschool care.

For weeks, with no childcare in place, Canales was forced to leave work, picking up her children at 1 p.m., halfway through the school day. 鈥淢y kids would miss everything else,鈥� she said.

It took a direct appeal to the principal to finally get her kids off the waitlist and into the program.

鈥淚t was very frustrating,鈥� said Canales, 鈥渆specially when you have two parents working … I was so stressed out, I thought I had to quit my job.鈥�

The issue of retaining afterschool workers is longstanding, advocates say.

鈥淏efore working during the pandemic, these jobs barely paid a living wage, let alone access to sick leave,鈥� said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance. Once COVID-19 hit, she said, workers became fearful about showing up for work.

In at least one state, afterschool workers who refused to get vaccinated have continued to come to work and are wearing masks 鈥� prompting some colleagues to leave their posts.

There have been warning signs the worker shortage in afterschool has been getting worse in the last 18 months.

A national report by the Afterschool Alliance found more than half of summer programs (52 percent) 鈥� many of which also run afterschool programs 鈥� have waitlists compared to 40 percent last summer. Officials say the increase is due to staffing shortages created by the pandemic.

The workers have found opportunity and less risk during the pandemic: Within the last 16 months, afters school staff in some Omaha, Nebraska programs have been leaving for higher paying jobs at outlets such as Target and other businesses where workers start at $15 an hour compared to the $11.50 to $12 an hour offered to starting afterschool workers.

鈥淲e have sites that will not be able to open because they just don’t have the staff,鈥� said Megan Addison, Executive Director of Collective for Youth in Omaha.

鈥淲e have sites that will not be able to open because they just don’t have the staff,鈥� said Addison, Executive Director of Collective for Youth in Omaha.

In addition to low pay, advocates say workers have little room to grow.

鈥淧eople have to look into other industries not only due to money but also due to the lack of social mobility within the sector. It鈥檚 very hard for people to grow and move on into other positions,鈥� said Lissette Castillo, the Director of Community Schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 鈥淔or example, educators can move from paraprofessional to educators to administrators, there is a lack of support for afterschool staff to have access to programming like that.鈥�

With news of the Delta variant, other afterschool care programs are also struggling to navigate vaccine and mask mandates and protocols. In Nebraska, when educators were able to get vaccinated in early spring, only 50 percent of the afterschool staff at Collective for Youth programs did so.

鈥淎 majority of our staff are younger, and we also work with a lot of people of color who had some concerns regarding the vaccination. Some staffers also already had gotten COVID-19 and didn鈥檛 feel the need to get vaccinated,鈥� said Addison. 鈥淏eing a Republican state, and having many opportunities to get vaccinated, many of our partners are leaning towards optional, to not seem self-superior.鈥�

Some Omaha afterschool centers are operating with non-vaccinated staff, but are still short staffed as workers fearful of getting sick leave their job, said Chief Operating Officer of Kids Can Community Center, Josh Gillman.

鈥淲e鈥檝e been operating with 70 percent of our staff being vaccinated, and the other 30 percent who have declined even though they鈥檝e been offered. We require all staff to wear masks presently at all times,鈥� Gillman said. 鈥淥ur normal daily service scope of students would be 800 if we were fully staffed, but right now we have 20 vacancies with our normal 70 positions…which reduces our capacity by a couple hundred of students we can serve each day until we wait to fill those positions.鈥�

In Minnesota, an afterschool official in Saint Paul said the most alarming issue for afterschool programs is the lack of follow through with COVID-19 safety protocols, as administrators avoid having the corrective conversations with staff and students.

鈥淧eople will say it’ll be safe if we all wear masks and stay six feet apart. But when you enter a building, and people aren’t wearing masks and aren’t six feet apart, those that are a little bit more sensitive to the health risks of COVID-19 don’t feel comfortable,鈥� said one official. 鈥淎nd the principals and assistant principals in the past haven’t done anything, because we did go back to school last spring, and that was a big issue.鈥�

As the United States intends to return to normalcy, with some delays due to the Delta variant, afterschool care programs will be integral to aid those with children in order to go back to work.

鈥淢any people have no choice but to go back to the workforce and put their fears aside…there are many reports out there and research on the impact of afterschool and how it is an integral part of children’s learning,鈥� said Castillo. 鈥淎nd yet the [afterschool care] staff at the frontline have been shamefully neglected and disregarded and the field itself has yet to receive the recognition and the respect that it deserves. Keeping in mind how families need to go back to work and the ones at the frontline will be on the line helping them get back to work.鈥�

For her part, Canaldes knows she was lucky 鈥� lucky that she could leave her job and pick up her children early while she wanted for a spot in the afterschool program; and lucky she was able to finally get them into the program.

鈥淭here’s certain families who cannot wait three to four weeks to find afterschool care programs, especially with the epidemic and everybody going back to school. It鈥檚 an immediate challenge,鈥� said Canales. 鈥淚t is very frustrating.鈥�

This summer, as COVID-19 vaccinations increased, it seemed like the major impetus for these efforts was fading from view. We turned to our of 372 school district- and community-driven learning pods to answer this question: How sustainable is the learning pod movement?

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That question has taken on greater urgency as new, more transmissible variants of the virus raise new safety fears 鈥� especially for children too young to be vaccinated 鈥� and school systems explore options for families who remain hesitant to return to normal classrooms.

Our analysis found clear evidence that a little over one-third of the learning environments we tracked operated through the end of the school year. But we also identified promising evolutions of the original concepts that will continue into next school year. While, in the short term, most students will likely return to some sort of 鈥渘ormal鈥� school model, the lessons of these small learning communities have the potential to persist in new ways.

Public school learning models changed considerably between our and the end of the school year. Though there were school districts that remained fully remote through the school year, by the end of the year had added at least some in-person options which would, in theory, minimize the need for many of the learning pods in our database since many of them were designed to provide in-person support and internet connections to students who were learning remotely. If pods continued after school districts resumed in-person instruction, that offers some evidence families valued the alternatives to traditional classrooms that they provided.

We found that 37 percent of all learning pods identified in the database operated through the full 2020-21 school year (figure 1). Half of the pods were 鈥渦nclear,鈥� meaning there was no clear end date to the pod-like offerings, but also no clear indication they continued through the end of the year. Only 12 percent had definitively closed at some point before the end of the year. It鈥檚 possible that many of the 鈥渦nclear鈥� pods also ceased school-day support but never updated their websites or social media to make the announcement.

Many of the learning pods that existed before the pandemic as afterschool programs or summer camps switched back to their pre-pandemic programming. For example, as schools opened, some YMCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs, and other afterschool enrichment clubs simply closed their school-day supervision.

But others continued on. Some, like the network, which supported culturally relevant community-based pods across the country for Black and brown students, finished out the school year even as districts in some locations opened for at least some of the year. Some virtual learning centers, such as the city-led options in or , likely continued based on ongoing need as schools reopened late in the school year and some families chose to stay remote.

Even as the school year came to a close, some organizations that emerged specifically to support remote learning are evolving to serve their communities in new formats. For example, , a learning pod that provided whole-student support to BIPOC youth through the full school year, runs a summer program and continues to provide mentorship opportunities for teens. And a program between a local nonprofit and the Jefferson County School District in Kentucky is leading summer learning hubs across the county with staffing support, including counselors and teachers from the school district, to re-engage students and prepare them for the upcoming school year.

These continuing programs provide glimpses of where the learning pod movement might go beyond the pandemic. Six school districts in the organized by CRPE and TNTP are developing plans for pod-like structures in the next school year, with goals like providing space for students to focus on their purpose and passion projects, or to create opportunity for mentorship and serve as a pipeline to develop a more representative teacher workforce. Programs like the new , or the virtual learning pod program launched by provide further examples of efforts to build intentional small learning communities into the future鈥攁nd seed ideas for school districts that want to find new ways of supporting students who continue with virtual learning options.

In all of these examples, it鈥檚 clear some families and communities discovered something during the pandemic that they would like to preserve鈥攄ifferent ways to organize school, new approaches to supporting students, stronger ties between school and community. And while many learning pods simply launched to meet a specific need in a crisis 鈥� providing in-person support to students learning virtually 鈥� that function, too, is likely to remain relevant as school systems across the country create or expand virtual learning options.

Sustaining these crisis responses through the next phase of the pandemic will likely require shifts in funding and staff, as well as changes in policies governing everything from teacher credentialing to the definition of school. CRPE will continue to share lessons we learned from studying small pandemic learning communities. We can鈥檛 afford to let the possibilities they uncovered simply vanish.

About this analysis: The CRPE database focuses on learning pods sponsored by school districts and community organizations 鈥� as opposed to the learning pods some parents and independent educators offered in their homes. We checked the original sources for each of the learning pods in the database to identify whether the learning pods were still operational as of the end of the 2020鈥�21 school year. As in prior analyses, the data here should be considered an estimate and is not representative of all learning pods across the country. For many learning pods in the database, we could find no updates from the original source. In these cases, we marked that it was 鈥渦nclear鈥� whether or not the pod continued through the school year. We only coded 鈥測es鈥濃�攖hat the pod continued鈥攊f we could closely ascertain that the pod was offering services through the end of the year by advertising program end dates, session schedules, or other evidence such as an end-of-year report noting that school-day learning supports had continued.

Alice Opalka is a research analyst with the Center on Reinventing Public Education. This analysis .

But each time he thought he might be close, money, or lack thereof, got in the way.

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Myers鈥� luck changed in July 2020, when Iowa received $50 million in federal funds through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, aka the CARES Act. The act passed in March 2020 as a $2.2 trillion relief package to respond to the economic fallout from COVID-19.

Of that $50 million in CARES Act money, $30 million was allocated per capita, at $9.50 per Iowan. The funds went to Iowa鈥檚 14 Mental Health and Disability Services regions. The CARES Act money gave Myers鈥� effort a boost.

School leaders in the 330 public districts and dozens of private schools across the state are in the same boat as Myers鈥� 鈥� looking to help students with struggling mental health.

IowaWatch reached out to all 14 mental health regions about .

The Need Is Real

Teachers and staff took extra social-emotional training over the summer of 2020 to prepare them for the added demands of the 2020-21 school year, which, at the time, was a question mark. New approaches, such as leading classes in yoga poses, breathing techniques and journaling helped kids and teachers handle the new struggles that come with a pandemic.

鈥淓verybody suffered a trauma of sorts,鈥� said Myers, the principal at Terril Elementary and curriculum director for the Graettinger-Terril and Ruthven-Ayrshire school districts in northwest Iowa.

Consider this scene from Terril Elementary in northwest Iowa.

As winter wound down in March 2021, the lockers belonging to Pennie Klepper鈥檚 fourth-grade students started to stink.

Klepper told her students it was time to clean. But the mood shifted before the hum of children sorting through outdoor gear, books and papers could even start. Twenty-four pairs of eyes filled with worry above their facemasks, and then, for some, even tears.

鈥淥ne kid starts saying something to another kid, 鈥榦h we鈥檙e cleaning out lockers, this is just like last year,鈥� and then it kind of was the trickle effect,鈥� Klepper said. 鈥淚t was just so strange, because the whole vibe in the hall got different. 鈥� They just instantly went into a panic mode. It was almost like they were starting to re-live the whole pandemic thing all over again.鈥�

Leaving school in March 2020 created an undercurrent of uncertainty. The one-year mark of the pandemic鈥檚 onset caused those memories to be even more palpable.

The 2020-21 school year鈥檚 fourth-graders were especially good about sharing and talking out problems, said Klepper, who has taught there for eight years. So, that鈥檚 just what they did about cleaning out the lockers on that March day.

鈥淲e just stopped in the hall and started talking about it right there. And I thought it was the best, at the time, just to let them get their feelings out, and really talk about it. 鈥� And they kind of almost consoled each other a little bit, too,鈥� she said. 鈥淪ome of them really missed each other [last year]. They felt that isolation, and I think that worries them still, and I don鈥檛 know how that鈥檚 going to affect them going down the road.鈥�

How Did CARES Act Money Get to Schools?

In August 2020, the mental health regions received $30 million in CARES Act funds, with stipulations that they were not allowed to use them on services they had already budgeted for, and that the money could only be spent on services related to the pandemic. Each mental health region invited schools, as well as mental health service providers and other entities such as universities, libraries and daycare centers to apply for funding.

Initially, mental health regions were required to spend each dollar by December 30, 2020, but the deadline was extended until June 2021, said Russell Wood, CEO for the Central Iowa Community Services region.

Regional leaders asked for proposals from providers and school districts they had never worked with. They also reached out to providers they already had relationships with. Within three to four months after receiving the funds, more than $20 million of the $30 million had been allocated. Regional CEOs told IowaWatch they expected all their funds to be spent. If any money is left over, it would go back to the state on July 1.

Nine regions spent all the CARES Act money, with five returning funds. Eastern Iowa MHDS Region sent back $27,712.15; Central Iowa Community Services returned $30,532.04; Rolling Hills Community Services Region returned $160,000; County Social Services returned an unspecified small amount after an organization didn鈥檛 use all the funds allocated to it; and the East Central Region sent back $820,777, and is waiting for the Iowa Department of Human Services and the governor鈥檚 office to decide if they can have $250,000 of those funds back for a research study to be done with the University of Iowa.

The $30 million was not the only support for Iowa schools鈥� mental health efforts. Other federal funding, including the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, the American Rescue Plan, and funding from FEMA and the Department of Health and Human Services, has been sent to states as the pandemic has persisted. Some of those funds may have gone to schools for mental health services as well.

鈥淭he intention in D.C. is to get the money out and provide states with the flexibility on how to spend it鈥� both now and throughout the next six to seven years. How much of that money is funneled to mental health programs is up to state officials, said Taylor Foy, communications director for Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.

A spokesman for Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds did not respond to requests for comment.

鈥楢 Springboard鈥�

An influx of cash through the CARES Act forged new relationships among mental health providers and schools and their mental health regions.

鈥淚t鈥檚 unfortunate that we鈥檝e limited it to the fact that we have a pandemic, but for us we鈥檙e looking at it as a springboard,鈥� said Mae Hingtgen, CEO for Iowa鈥檚 East Central Region. 鈥淧eople know who we are as an MHDS region now, [and] we can use that with the ongoing funding that we have all committed in each of our regions to provide support in a little bit more of a comprehensive system for children鈥檚 brain health needs.鈥�

Hingtgen said her region funded 22 of its 39 school districts. Some districts received enough federal dollars directly from the CARES Act and didn鈥檛 need any of the funds allocated to mental health regions.

In the Southwest Iowa Region, CEO Suzanne Watson provided funding to 33 of her region鈥檚 36 school districts. Those funds went to helping schools purchase mental health curricula, sensory items such as texturized or brightly colored toys, creating outdoor sensory paths, and quiet, self-care rooms or areas within classrooms to give students feeling anxiety a safe place to go, among other things, she said.

In some of the Heart of Iowa Region鈥檚 more rural school districts, region leaders already helped fund therapists in the school, said Darci Alt, the Heart of Iowa CEO. But in larger, more suburban school districts, like those in Dallas County, some district leaders asked for additional funding to increase how frequently therapists or counselors, funded by Employee and Family Resources, visited their school buildings.

But not everything that is tied to children鈥檚 mental health starts with therapy or sensory items.

Personal protective equipment and plexiglass dividers helped children鈥檚 brain health just by helping to get them back into the classroom, Wood said.

鈥淚 think what we鈥檝e learned from this is that kids need other kids. They need to be around each other, and to take them out of that environment is going to cause a significant amount of stress,鈥� Watson said. 鈥淪o I think any of these supports we were able to provide to keep them in the classroom, and to give them some idea that everything is going to be OK and to provide hope, I think that was one of the biggest things we were able to do for the kids and the teachers.鈥�

Access 鈥楳akes All the Difference鈥�

A counselor from Plains Area Mental Health began visiting once a week for appointments with Ruthven-Ayrshire and Graettinger-Terril students starting in March 2021, thanks to the CARES Act dollars.

鈥淲e literally turned around within a two-week timeframe and set up a space to work and did all of those kind of things, so the person can come in once a week,鈥� Myers said.

Being a rural district is a factor in having such a hard time getting access to mental healthcare, said Marshall Lewis, superintendent of the district and elementary principal at Ruthven-Ayrshire.

鈥淔or us, we鈥檙e traveling one way an hour sometimes to get the same services, and so you just put a three-hour period of time together, that somebody鈥檚 off work, out of school, and [Myers] has been able to bridge that by creating maybe a 30- to 40-minute window for one individual to get a half-hour session out of it, and wow, that makes all the difference in the world. If we were in a community that, 15 minutes or less I鈥檓 there, that鈥檚 a lot easier,鈥� Lewis said.

Last summer, one family in the district was trying to access a mental healthcare provider for their child, and was on a waiting list for three months, followed by another waiting list for four months.

鈥淚 think maybe in January they finally got some connections. And we had to facilitate that a little bit by calling in and pleading, saying 鈥榟ey this is a family that鈥檚 really wanting to reach out,鈥欌�� Lewis said. A few other families connected with another service just before the in-school opportunity was available, which was also a very difficult process. 鈥淚f it had been a month later that we were looking for these families, I think we would鈥檝e had a lot easier time making it happen.鈥�

The bar for accessing counseling in school buildings is lower in more populous places like Cedar Rapids and the surrounding area, where mental health provider Tanager Place offers counseling and therapy in schools, clinics and even a camp. Tanager Place counselors visit about 60 school buildings in eight districts and a private school in Iowa City, Faith Academy, said Maggie Hartzler, school-based program manager for the organization and a licensed independent social worker.

Tanager Place received CARES Act funds through the region鈥檚 MHDS, and used that funding to offer help to children in all Cedar Rapids buildings and Linn County buildings, and offer more support to children and families via virtual care.

Part of clinicians鈥� roles is to provide therapy for children individually, and the other part of their jobs is prevention. That includes things like sitting in on meetings to offer a mental health perspective, training teachers about mental health and trauma, offering self-care sessions for teachers, and identifying mental health needs for kids, families and educators in each building.

But as more students have access to mental healthcare, that individual support will also help things run more smoothly both in and out of classrooms. Schools that have been able to add counselors, even if it鈥檚 only part-time, will start seeing benefits, Peggy Huppert, executive director of the National Alliance for Mentally Ill-Iowa, said. 鈥淥nce you start something, it鈥檚 a lot harder to not do it or to take it away.鈥�

鈥業t鈥檚 Like 鈥楩ield of Dreams鈥欌��

In Terril, just having a counselor visiting the school regularly since the second week of March helped to cut through the stigma around mental healthcare. Three families started sessions in March 2021, and several others have shown interest and are working with scheduling issues.

鈥淚t鈥檚 like 鈥楩ield of Dreams,鈥� 鈥榠f you build it, they will come,鈥欌�� Myers said.

And although CARES funding is one-time, and the service is hoped to be perpetual, connecting therapists with clientele means a continuing funding stream that can continue even after federal dollars run out.

鈥淲e might come to rely on it in some ways, and it鈥檚 a no differencing cost,鈥� Lewis said. 鈥淭he school would love that, 100 percent, I鈥檓 sure that the providers would love that, and I know our families would love that. So beyond a win-win, we鈥檙e talking about a triple win here, as well as for our community.鈥�

Iowa鈥檚 Mental Health System

Iowa鈥檚 14 Mental Health and Disability Services regions are a setup to distribute mental health services that was created in 2012 and launched in 2014. The regions replaced the 99-county system used for decades. The regions are part of an effort by Iowa鈥檚 governor and lawmakers to bolster Iowa鈥檚 mental health services for adults and children.

This article originally appeared . Leah McBride Mensching is a freelance reporter for IowaWatch. She has worked as a reporter, editor, photographer and media researcher over the past 15 years, both as an independent journalist and as an editorial manager for WAN-IFRA, the global organization of the world鈥檚 press.听

The delta variant is driving Texas鈥� case surge, and doctors are seeing more infections in children and more children being hospitalized.

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Here鈥檚 what El Paso parents should know about how to protect their school-aged children from being infected with the virus:

Q: What should parents know about the delta variant?

The delta variant is twice as contagious for children and adults as previous COVID-19 strains, said Dr. Stanley Spinner, chief medical officer and vice president of Texas Children鈥檚 Pediatrics and Texas Children鈥檚 Urgent Care.

鈥淏ecause of the contagiousness of the delta variant, even people that are vaccinated can get infected 鈥� they will either be asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic. But they can still spread the virus to those that aren鈥檛 protected, mainly our kids under 12,鈥� Spinner said.

Q: Should children wear a face covering at school?

Texas doctors emphatically say yes. And that includes teachers and school staff.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recommends that students, teachers and school staff wear face masks, even if they are vaccinated.

Q: What can teachers do if children remove their mask during the school day?

Teachers cannot ask students to wear a mask because Gov. Greg Abbott forbade schools from requiring them, stressing the need for 鈥減ersonal responsibility rather than government mandates.鈥�

El Paso districts have disposable masks on hand and can offer them to students who request them.

Q: Beyond masking, what else can students do to stay safe while at school?

Good hand hygiene can help protect students from becoming infected. Students should wash their hands before lunch, after using the restroom and before and after touching their face, said Jose Luis Salas, infection control director at El Paso Children鈥檚 Hospital.

Sharing food and drinks with their peers should also be avoided to minimize exposure and cross contamination, Salas said. And when possible, students should put a few feet of distance between themselves and their classmates.

Students should stay home from school if they have potential COVID-19 symptoms, such as a runny nose, sore throat or fever. They should get tested and not return to school until they receive a negative test result.

Q: Can parents find out whether teachers are vaccinated?

No. Districts are not collecting this information as the COVID-19 vaccine is voluntary and is not a requirement for public school enrollment or employment.

Q: How often should school-aged children be tested for COVID-19?

Students don鈥檛 need to be regularly tested for the virus, Spinner said. They should, however, get tested if they believe they were exposed to the virus. They must quarantine at home, away from others, until they receive a negative test result.

Q: What should parents of unvaccinated children do to keep their children safe?

Parents should wear a mask in indoor public spaces and keep their distance from others, regardless of whether they are vaccinated. That鈥檚 especially important now that the CDC considers El Paso County of community spread. Parents who have not yet been vaccinated should do so as soon as possible.

鈥淯ltimately, defeating COVID is a team sport that鈥檚 going to require the highest number of people possible to adhere to masks, (and) in time the highest number of people to get vaccinated,鈥� said Dr. Glenn Fennelly, chair of the department of pediatrics at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso.

Mask wearing and vaccination prevent new variants from emerging that could be more contagious, more deadly and less responsive to the vaccine.

Q: Are Texas doctors seeing hesitancy among vaccinated parents to take their children to get the vaccine?

Less than a quarter of 12- to 15-year-olds in El Paso have been vaccinated against COVID-19, which Fennelly says is 鈥渃oncerning.鈥� It鈥檚 not unusual for parents to be more cautious with their children, though the vaccine is just as safe for children as it is for adults, he said. Parents should speak to their pediatrician or family doctor about any concerns they may have.

鈥淭he most important thing they (parents) can do for their child鈥檚 safety is to vaccinate them to protect them鈥� from the virus, Spinner said. When they don鈥檛, they put their child at risk of serious infection and even death.

Q: What are the common COVID-19 vaccine side effects in adolescents?

The common vaccine side effects in adolescents are no different than the ones adults experience. These include soreness at the injection site, muscle aches, fatigue and fever, all of which typically last one to two days.

The risk of adolescents experiencing myocarditis and pericarditis 鈥� inflammation of the heart 鈥� are .

Q: What is the status of the COVID-19 vaccine for children under 12?

The Food and Drug Administration likely won鈥檛 issue an emergency use authorization for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to be used in children ages 5 to 11 until late fall at the earliest.

This article originally appeared .

As COVID cases surged across the country this summer, fueled by spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention joined the American Academy of Pediatrics in recommending that all students and staff wear masks in school. But in Texas, as in a handful of other conservative states, an executive order banning mask mandates forbade school districts from following that guidance.

In Dallas, Superintendent Michael Hinojosa felt that he was faced with a choice: risk over 153,000 students鈥� safety or risk legal challenges. The superintendent chose the latter, defying Gov. Greg Abbott鈥檚 ban and paving the way for dozens of other districts in the state to follow the same path.

Now nearly a month into the school year, and as COVID rages through the Dallas community, the struggle is making its way through state courts. And all the while, Hinojosa is contending with the urgent question of how to bring students back up to speed after a year of disrupted learning.

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This year, Dallas is rolling out discipline reforms to end racial disparities in suspension, new social-emotional supports and revamped school calendars to boost students鈥� learning time.

蜜桃影视 caught up with Hinojosa over the phone to hear how those efforts are unfolding and get the latest on the district鈥檚 legal showdown over masks.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

蜜桃影视: It鈥檚 been a pretty surreal back-to-school season and Dallas has been in the news a lot. What’s top of mind for you right now?

Hinojosa: Last year was a year like no other, and this August has been an August like no other. Even as surreal as last year was, this August has been even crazier.

On Aug. 3, our county went to code red (representing high COVID transmission). The very next day, I鈥檓 attending a meeting of some superintendents 鈥� and we heard from a very prominent attorney that maybe the governor can鈥檛 enforce this (ban on mask mandates). So the Houston superintendent calls me and is telling me they’re thinking about implementing a mask mandate protocol and so I said, 鈥淚鈥檓 with you.鈥� I really felt it was under my authority, since I have the authority to run the day-to-day operations of the school district.

Aug. 9 we announced our mask protocols, and then everything breaks loose.

I’ve been following along with the legal developments. Dallas ISD鈥檚 mask mandate was challenged, and then a judge ruled in your favor. But now the state attorney general has appealed. Can you give me a sense of where you think this whole thing is headed?

Well, it changes almost on a daily basis.

We prevailed at the district court. But the governor (Greg Abbott) and attorney general (Ken Paxton) can appeal to an appeals court and we think we鈥檒l win there. But we think eventually we’re going to lose at the (Texas) Supreme Court 鈥� because they鈥檙e all conservative members.

It’s very interesting that the attorney general and the governor have both said publicly that they’re going to prosecute anybody who implements a mask protocol. But in the court pleadings, they said that they had no authority to do that. Then the commissioner of education (Mike Morath) has come out and said that they鈥檙e not going to enforce anything until all of these court proceedings are over.

So what I predict is that eventually this will go to the Supreme Court and we will be told at some point that we cannot have our mask protocol as we want it. But there’s going to be no enforcement, because I don’t see the local district attorneys coming after all 60 superintendents in Texas that are defying the governor’s executive order.

We’ve said all along, this was temporary. Come November, if we get back under 500 COVID cases in the county and we鈥檝e stopped the spread on campuses, then I’ll be glad to lift the mask mandate. I don’t really like it myself, but we’re trying to protect the health and safety of our students.

As I’m sure you know, the federal government is opening civil rights probes into five states over their ban on mask mandates in schools. Texas isn鈥檛 on that list because the issue is already in the hands of the courts. But more broadly, what type of federal involvement might be useful in Texas? And do you see bans on mask mandates as a civil rights issue?

One of the reasons [the U.S. Department of Education] didn’t go after Texas is that they now have the understanding that what the governor has done is unenforceable. So that’s why we weren’t included in that order.

But it could be a civil rights issue. We’ll have to see how that plays out. We do get federal dollars for special education and economically disadvantaged students and, of course, they have given us significant dollars for the Recovery Act. So the feds do have some skin in this game and they’re not just sitting on the sidelines.

Seems like the federal government is trying to find out whether bans on mask mandates systematically exclude specific students, perhaps immunocompromised students from the classroom.

Yeah, that’s the focus of their inquiry, which gives them standing on this matter and, of course, those students are all over the country, so it does give them an entr茅e, I believe. But I’m not an attorney.

Over the weekend, Dr. Fauci told CNN that school [COVID] vaccine mandates for eligible students are a good idea based on the benefit-to-risk ratio. Schools already require a number of other vaccinations for enrollment and the FDA recently gave full approval to the Pfizer shot for folks 16 and up. What are your thoughts on the topic of mandating student vaccinations?

I’m supportive. I’m not ready to litigate at this time yet. What we’ve done instead to start with is we’re giving a $25 gift card for any student who provides his or her proof of vaccination. So we’re going down that path, we’re going a little bit more slowly (than we did with our mask policy).

But we would be supportive, especially when our younger students can take the vaccine, and we’re now hearing late November, early December when that vaccination will be available. I would be in favor of [a student immunization requirement]. You’re exactly right. We require other vaccines and so I would be very supportive of that, although I’m not going to be as assertive on that one as we have been on the mask protocol.

So just to clarify, when students under 12 do become eligible for shots that might open the door for Dallas to move toward mandating student vaccines?聽

Yes, I would definitely consider it at that point because it’d be much more universal.

And for staff vaccine mandates, they鈥檙e banned in Texas but have been implemented in a number of states. Do you think making COVID shots mandatory for teachers might be an appropriate public health measure? And how do politics play in?

We have 22,000 employees and so we told them that we would give them a $500 stipend if they prove that they were vaccinated. Within three hours, we had 6,000 staff turn in their documentation. We are now up to around 11,000 and then the ones that just went out and took the vaccine, it takes them a while to get their documentation. So we anticipate we’ll get probably three-quarters on a voluntary basis.

But to answer your question, yes, I would be very supportive, especially for campus employees who deal with children to be required to have a vaccination. But even our county hospital can’t require vaccination in Texas for their nurses because of the state laws that are in place. When San Antonio ISD tried to do that, they got halted by the attorney general.

And in a sentence or two, what’s at stake in these safety decisions for students, families and teachers?

Everything’s at stake here.

Not only their safety, but the data is overwhelming that in-person instruction is by far the best. A few, maybe five percent of the students, do better virtually. But can you imagine if we have to have students at home because [COVID] spread got so bad that they lose another year of instruction? A whole generation could be at risk of falling so far behind that they can’t catch up. So there’s a lot at stake.

We’re very proud that we got to 97 percent of our projected enrollment and out of that, 96 percent of it is in person. So our students are glad to be back. Our families are glad to be back, but boy, we’ve got a big hill to climb academically.

On that topic of catching students up, especially given the fact that more often than not, some of those students who fell furthest behind last year were those who perhaps had fewer supports or financial resources at home, what efforts are underway in Dallas to help kids get back up to speed? I read about a tutoring program, for instance.

Well, we had 36,000 households without connectivity, so we put together a program called Operation Connectivity to connect our families and we executed on that plan. [At first] we did hotspots, but now we put up towers so that at least they can have access if they’re having to learn from home.

We鈥檙e also going to have tutoring during the school day, afterschool and in the summer.

But we now have three different calendars. One of them is a year-round calendar, where you get more time. Another one is what we call an intersession calendar, where you go five weeks, and then you’re off a week, go another five weeks, and you go off a week. We catch students up [who are behind during that week off]. For our most challenging schools 鈥� we have 60 that we call 鈥渉igh-priority campuses鈥� 鈥� we have a very robust afterschool program from 3 to 6 p.m. for enrichment activities and strong academic activities to try to get them caught up.

And we’ve completely reinvented our summer school. So we’re doing all of those things all at the same time to accelerate learning.

Can you tell me a bit more about those different calendars? Where did the idea come from, what鈥檚 the goal, and do you know of other districts using that same model?

There’s a school district in the El Paso area called Socorro that has had this intersession calendar ever since the 鈥�90s and they’ve had good academic results where they bring in the students that are behind during the week that they鈥檙e off. Garland ISD, which is one of our neighbors, went to that calendar last year, but there is no other district that has the multiple options that we have.

To be one of the five schools using the year-round calendar or [one of the] 41 schools that are in intersession calendars, each had 80 percent of the teachers and 80 percent of the parents opt into those calendar options. 鈥� We didn’t want to force families to take one of those calendars.

At scale, nobody else is doing it like we are, other than the two that I mentioned, Garland and Socorro. So we think that students in those schools they’re going to have a better opportunity to catch up than if you just went with a traditional calendar.

We’re using a lot of our federal ESSA dollars to pay for this extra time. We know who our best teachers are, and our best teachers get more money to teach those intersession opportunities. Instead of working 180 days, they’ll be working 210 days. So there’s significant dollars that will be going into the pockets of our teachers, and especially our best teachers, because they’ll get the opportunity to do a lot of those enrichment and intervention opportunities.

I know last year Dallas moved to end suspensions. Where does that effort now stand?

We’re pulling forward with it. Ten percent of our students are African-American males, yet 51 percent of our suspensions were African-American male, until now. If you [engage in severe misbehavior] you will still be suspended, but we’re talking about the discretionary suspension and the discretionary suspensions were 75 percent of our suspensions. We鈥檙e going to have a different alternative on how to redirect their behavior.

We’ll have some data sets at the end of the first nine weeks about where we are and we’ll also have data in a year about how this journey to redirect behavior through these reset centers went. So stay tuned.

We鈥檒l be following those results. Turning to the social-emotional well-being of the wider student population, I know that last fall Dallas ISD teachers were trained in trauma-informed care. What results did you see from that training? How do you see Dallas ISD鈥檚 commitment to social-emotional learning changing in response to COVID-19 traumas?聽

We got $7 million from the Wallace Foundation to implement social-emotional learning districtwide. They hired the RAND Corporation to do a research study. But we ran into a problem because we couldn’t have a treatment group and a control group. All of our campuses wanted to have that training and so we kind of threw the research out the window.

We trained the teachers first so they could help deal with the students and we also hired 58 mental health and social work professionals last year, knowing that we were going to need them this year. 鈥� We just went all in, as many as we could afford.

Last question, what鈥檚 sustaining you through the pandemic? Where are you finding positive stories to counterbalance all the tense circumstances?

People don’t want a whiner. They want a problem solver. So if you lose hope and aspiration, then that gives other people permission to lose hope. I’m generally a positive person, I look for solutions.

I’ve had very little pushback on my mask mandate protocol. In fact, I’ve had mostly universal support and so I think that just shows that if you’re willing to take a risk, and look to the future in a positive way that people will climb aboard with you. So far, so good.

Between Aug. 16 and Aug. 22, there were 14,033 positive cases reported among students across the state, 34% more than the week with the most student cases reported last school year, the Department of State Health Services data shows. That week鈥檚 totals also represent a 182% increase from the week ending Aug. 15, though fewer students were in school then.

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There have been 20,256 reported cases among students since the state agency started tracking data on Aug. 2 for this school year. That鈥檚 less than 0.4% of the 5.3 million students enrolled in the state as of January. Districts with the highest rates of cases include Midland, Humble, Conroe, Corpus Christi and New Caney, all of which reported more than 10 new cases per 1,000 students, based on January enrollment numbers.

Out of these school districts, Corpus Christi is the only district with a mask mandate, and it was recently issued for 30 days after school officials saw a rise in cases.

Districts were allowed to require masks last school year. But for the better part of the last month, the rules around masking requirements have gone back and forth in Texas courts.

Gov. has tried to ban mask mandates in schools. But some school districts have decided to continue the masking orders anyway, joining lawsuits that have had varying degrees of success. Meanwhile, the battle has raged in local school districts for weeks as concerned parents on both sides continue to clash. In one instance in Eanes ISD on the outskirts of Austin, the tension led to verbal assault and a parent ripping a mask off a teacher.

State officials said they did not know how many districts have already started school or what share of students those districts serve. At this point last year, districts with slightly less than half of all students had started class, and the state had reported 313 positive cases among students.

Among staff members, there have been 3,425 positive cases reported through the week ending Aug. 22, a 26% increase from the week before.

The rise in cases among students comes as hospitals across Texas continue to fill up and intensive care unit beds become scarce. In more rural districts, schools have already had to shut down because of fears that cases among staff and students could overwhelm already strained hospital systems.

Most school districts are not offering virtual learning for the start of the year, since the state did not fund that option. Some school districts are offering remote learning but are using federal funds to recoup lost dollars.

A COVID-19 vaccine for children under 12 is not yet available. Best-case scenarios suggest it could be late September or early October before one is approved.

Brian Lopez is public education reporter and Kalley Huang is a data visuals fellow , the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

It鈥檚 impossible to overstate how controversial school reopening has become in the U.S. this past year. After a spring of universal Zoom school, the country diverged: some administrators, parents, and scientists were determined to get kids back in classrooms, while others prioritized COVID-19 safety above all else.

Reopening debates have dominated headlines. In August 2020, images of maskless crowds in Georgia鈥檚 Cherokee County School District went viral on social media 鈥� and the school just one week after the semester started. That same month In New York City, teachers brought to a protest against Mayor Bill de Blasio鈥檚 reopening plan. Chicago鈥檚 schools remained closed through the fall, and the teachers union during reopening negotiations in early 2021. And districts like Brookline, a liberal Massachusetts suburb, saw over social distancing, vaccinations, and more.

The divided communities made the news 鈥� but not all U.S. schools were fighting grounds. In fact, many districts managed to bring the majority of their students back into classrooms without breeding a dreaded COVID-19 outbreak.

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Here, at the COVID-19 Data Dispatch, we鈥檙e sharing stories from five such communities. The series will be published in installments: one profile a week for the next five weeks, followed by a conclusion with overall insights and lessons for fall 2021.

This project fits into a school of reporting called 鈥渟olutions journalism.鈥� Rather than focusing on uncovering society鈥檚 problems, this type of journalism seeks to identify and uplift responses to these problems. In other words, instead of asking, 鈥淲hy was it so hard to reopen schools in the U.S?鈥�, the CDD is asking, 鈥淲hich schools did reopen, and what made them successful?鈥� The 鈥� which, as you may guess from the name, is a nonprofit that supports solutions journalism 鈥� provided the CDD with a grant to pursue this project, as well as trainings and other guidance.

Identifying Districts that Reopened

Before introducing you to the five districts that we profiled, let鈥檚 talk methodology, also known as how these districts were selected for the project. As we鈥檝e discussed at length here at the CDD, there鈥檚 a lack of good data on . The country is approaching a fourth pandemic semester, but the federal government still does not provide comprehensive information on how many students are attending public school in person or how many of them have contracted the virus. And while the majority of states provide some data on this topic, these data are scattered and unstandardized 鈥� and some at their reporting since the 2020-2021 school year ended.

So, to identify success stories for this project, we relied on two main sources. First, we used a at school districts across the country, covering approximately 94% of districts across 98% of U.S. counties. These data come from SafeGraph, a company that aggregates location data from cell phones; this database was also used in a on disparities in school closures. Using the SafeGraph data, we could see which districts had high in-person traffic numbers in spring 2021 compared to shutdowns during spring 2020, indicating that the majority of students returned.

It鈥檚 important to establish here that the aim of this data analysis was not to identify the districts that had the biggest in-person comebacks or to do any kind of comprehensive ranking. Instead, we looked for outliers: districts that had a larger attendance change than the schools around them.

This geography-based method was important because the 2020-2021 school year looked very different from one state to the next. For example, in New York City, just over one-third of public school families attended school in-person before June 2021, . Meanwhile, in Texas, the majority of schools had at least 70% of students back in-person by spring 2021, according to data from the state department of health.

You can see the variation in the map above, based on a study published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention鈥檚 earlier this summer. According to this analysis, every single student in Montana and Wyoming had access to in-person learning five days a week, between September 2020 and April 2021, while in Maryland, just 2.3% of students had that access during the same period.

Comparing COVID-19 Case Numbers

After using the SafeGraph dataset to identify outliers in a given state, we used data from state public health departments to identify districts鈥� COVID-19 case numbers. This step restricted the analysis to states that provided a.) COVID-19 case data by individual district and b.) data for the entire school year. Few states meet both of these criteria. It鈥檚 no coincidence that New York and Texas 鈥� also the only two states providing in-person enrollment numbers 鈥� are both represented among the five focus districts of this project.

You can find more information on state K-12 data reporting .

Over the next few weeks, you鈥檒l learn about how schools from rural Indiana to New York City faced the challenge of bringing kids back to classrooms while keeping their communities safe. Some took advantage of novel COVID-19 technologies, such as tests and ventilation updates. But others utilized less technical strategies such as personalized communication with parents and close collaboration with local public health officials.

As the Delta variant for this coming fall, the stories of these five communities tell us that virus cases can be kept down during in-person learning if administrators, teachers, and families all work together.

These schools are:

• Scott County School District 1 in Austin, Indiana
• Garrett County Public Schools in Garrett County, Maryland
• Andrews Independent School District in Andrews, Texas
• Brooklyn Arts and Science Elementary School in Brooklyn, New York
• Port Orford-Langlois School District 2CJ in Curry County, Oregon

Past K-12 Schools Reporting

• . Unlike other districts in Maryland, Garrett County Public Schools was able to bring the majority of its students back to classrooms during the spring 2021 semester. The district built trust with its community by utilizing local partnerships, providing families with crucial supplies, setting up task forces to plan reopening, and communicating extensively with parents.
• . Scott County School District 1 is the subject of the first profile in the COVID-19 Data Dispatch鈥檚 鈥淥pening鈥� series. While Austin鈥檚 experience with HIV/AIDS is unique, the school district offers lessons for other communities. An open line of communication between Austin鈥檚 county public health agency, school administrators, and other local leaders fostered an environment of collaboration and trust. Plus, the administrators took advantage of teachers鈥� and parents鈥� knowledge of their students to make them an integral part of identifying COVID-19 cases and stopping outbreaks.
• . Many states have paused their school COVID-19 case reporting for the summer鈥攁nd a few have stopped reporting school cases entirely. Hawaii appears to be an exception: this state actually improved its reporting for the new school year.

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Here were our most popular and important articles of the month:

D.C.鈥檚 Missing Students and the Rush to Avert a K-Shaped COVID Classroom Crisis

Achievement Gaps: To judge from the dry run that was kindergarten orientation, 4-year-old Mustafa Fletcher will be wearing crisp chinos, a tidy polo shirt and an irresistible smile when he starts school a few days from now. But after a year isolated at home, logging onto different remote preschools a few minutes at a time, how ready is he really? Last year, some 2,000 D.C. kindergartners and preschoolers didn鈥檛 show up at the start of the school year. Those children come from communities with some of the highest poverty rates in the country; in the public housing complex where Mustafa lives, across the Anacostia River from wealthy Capitol Hill, median family income is less than $20,000 a year. The deficits in academic and social-emotional development such children normally face have been multiplied many times over by the isolation, financial instability, illness and fear inflicted by the pandemic.

This story, about the unprecedented demands the coming year鈥檚 supersized kindergarten classes will place on D.C. schools, is the first in a series of deep dives by 蜜桃影视 examining the impact on America’s classrooms of COVID-19’s K-shaped recession. Before the pandemic, Beth Hawkins reports, Mustafa鈥檚 mother cleaned houses in affluent neighborhoods. But when wealthy Washingtonians, who barely noticed the economic downturn, stopped spending on services like hers, the ripples reached the city鈥檚 littlest learners.

See other parts in Beth鈥檚 series:

鈥� School Funding: Will the financial fallout from the pandemic finally fix Jim Crow-era school funding rules? (Read more)

鈥� Learning Gaps: Now facing up to 9 grade levels per class, can schools endure the turbulence of COVID鈥檚 K-shaped recession? (Read more)

鈥� Career and Technical Education: Recession, recovery & robotics 鈥� Can CTE and Reno鈥檚 reinvented schools avert a post-COVID classroom crisis? (Read more)

鈥� 74 Explains: WATCH 鈥� Why the fallout from the pandemic鈥檚 K-shaped recession may be felt by students for years. (Read more)

鈥� Expert Q&A: Professor John Friedman explains how an economic tracker discovered the K-shaped recession 鈥� and what it means for schools (Watch the full conversation)

鈥� Go Deeper: See the full series 鈥� COVID鈥檚 Classroom Crisis.

Genocide 鈥業n My Own Backyard鈥�: North Carolina Educators Ignored State鈥檚 Eugenics History Long Before Critical Race Theory Pushback

Teaching History: Even as a young girl, the shadow of a dark history hung over Orlice Hodges. At 7 years old, her grandmother offered an explanation 鈥� chilling, in retrospect 鈥� of what happened to young women taken away by social workers: They went to Black Mountain to get 鈥渇ixed.鈥� As she got older, the North Carolina woman would learn the awful meaning. 鈥�’Fixed’ meant sterilization,鈥� said Hodges, who was told by family members that her own aunt had been a victim. From 1929 to 1974, North Carolina鈥檚 eugenics program sterilized over 7,600 people 鈥� in its latter years, disproportionately targeting Black women. To this day, reports Asher Lehrer-Small, none of the state鈥檚 10 largest school districts include the episode in social studies curricula, despite a two-decades-old recommendation from a governor-appointed committee calling on the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to do just that. An exhibit that included first-person accounts and victims鈥� medical records commissioned 鈥渢o ensure that no one will forget what the State of North Carolina once perpetrated upon its own citizens鈥� toured colleges and universities for a few years in the early 2000s before being packed away in a state office basement. That North Carolina鈥檚 K-12 schools have almost without exception ignored this tragic history offers a compelling example of how knowledge of racially motivated, government-inflicted harm was suppressed long before the recent debate over critical race theory. Read the full article.

鈥� Related: Critical race theory and the new 鈥楳assive Resistance鈥� (Read more)

鈥� Chaos Theory: Amid pandemic recovery efforts, school leaders fear critical race furor will 鈥榩aralyze鈥� teachers (Read more)

Twitter Breaks, Meditative Walks, Security Guards: How School Leaders are Responding to an Unsettling Season of Public Outrage

School Leadership: During a pandemic recovery task force meeting earlier this year, Virginia Beach schools Superintendent Aaron Spence interrupted the conversation with a personal request. 鈥淲hen are we going to talk about us?鈥� he asked the group. Spence, like superintendents nationwide, had been taking so much heat on social media over district reopening plans that he finally left Twitter for a year. With the added turbulence related to critical race theory, threatening tweets, emails and phone calls not only rattle district leaders, but are contributing to increased security at school board meetings. 鈥淧eople are just so angry right now,鈥� Susan Enfield, superintendent of Washington’s Highline Public Schools, told reporter Linda Jacobson. District leaders aren鈥檛 the only ones under attack. Some of the hateful words are directed at parents who are speaking out against what they view as indoctrination. 鈥淭he temperature and rhetoric is too hot on all sides,鈥� said Erica Sanzi of the nonprofit Parents Defending Education. Experts see the virtual attacks on superintendents as part of a larger trend of threats against public officials. According to Tufts University sociologist Sarah Sobieraj, 鈥淭hings that used to seem like regular good jobs that had a public face now seem like dangerous, high-risk activities.鈥� Read our full report.

Ask the Doctor: With Delta Variant Rampant, How Can Parents Protect Young Kids from COVID this Summer and Fall?

Student Safety: If you鈥檙e the parent of a child under 12, you may feel like you鈥檙e in a tricky spot right now. Spread of the highly infectious Delta variant has driven COVID-19 cases up more than 200 percent in the past month nationwide, with especially rapid transmission in undervaccinated areas. But the most recent vaccination timelines say your child won鈥檛 be eligible for coronavirus shots until midwinter. 鈥�The Delta variant resets the COVID clock back to March 2020 for people who are not yet vaccinated, including children,鈥� Rebecca Wurtz, professor of health policy at the University of Minnesota, told 蜜桃影视. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed course on masking recommendations in schools, now urging students and adults in K-12 settings to cover up. In this quickly changing landscape, and as the back-to-school season approaches, 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Asher Lehrer-Small asked health experts how parents of children under 12 can best navigate the months ahead.

鈥� Quarantine Rules: 鈥楤uried鈥� CDC guidance emphasizes universal masking, says properly protected 鈥榗lose contacts鈥� need not quarantine (Read more)

Trailblazing Leader Was Hired to Fix Colorado Springs Schools. Will Doubling Down on His Reforms Avert COVID Classroom Crisis?

Equity: In conservative Colorado Springs, a Black superintendent watched as the pandemic took a disproportionate toll on the low-income students his schools served. Overall, the city is wealthy, but the poverty rate in District 11 schools has risen over the last decade as enrollment has fallen and academic achievement plunged 鈥� trends made worse by the pandemic’s K-shaped recession. So while many school system leaders were scrambling to develop policies about masks and personal protective equipment, Michael Thomas fixed his sights on a much longer horizon and doubled down on a pre-COVID plan to put equity at the center of every decision. Thomas grew up in Minnesota’s Twin Cities and was a frequent target of racial animus, from the teacher who hurled an epithet at him when he was in sixth grade to the cops who pulled him over and chased him out of an all-white suburb when he was a teenager. After George Floyd was killed by a police officer 鈥� on a Minneapolis streetcorner Thomas recognized 鈥� he wrote an open letter to his Colorado Springs community describing his run-in with the cops and explaining its significance to the work he was leading in the school system. The pandemic, he tells Beth Hawkins, did not create the inequities that make it hard for his most underresourced students to flourish. But with COVID-19 throwing the disparities into stark relief, it鈥檚 time to make systemic changes 鈥� and he hopes the community, which has supported him so far, will go along. Read our full profile.

Saturday Science Lessons in the Park: Cleveland School District Sneaks Science Learning into Eye-Catching, Hands-On Experiments at Festival

Summer Science: If you thought science lessons were just for indoor classrooms, take a look at what the Cleveland school district has done this summer. In a city where kids regularly score near the bottom on state science tests, the district conducted eye-catching, hands-on experiments 鈥� including vinegar and baking soda volcanoes; huge, light-refracting soap bubbles; and paper airplanes 鈥� at a weekly summer festival. Students and parents also got take-home kits to do more experiments together. It was a way to spark interest in science, particularly after COVID-19 closed classrooms for more than a year. 鈥淭his is an opportunity to extend learning beyond the traditional means,鈥� said Victoria Weisberg, a preschool teacher in the district who organized the activities, all funded with federal COVID recovery dollars. 鈥淲e鈥檙e hoping to create curiosity about science and engineering and further enhance family bonding.鈥� Read the full story.

鈥擲hipwreck Camp: How a creative Ohio camp is delivering a treasure trove of science with the search for sunken boats in Lake Erie (Read more)

Peering 30 Years into the Future, Economists See Lost Earnings for the Pandemic Generation of Students 鈥� But Summer School Might Help

Future of Work: The year 2050 may seem a long way off, but in 29 years our current crop of K-12 students will be well into their careers. Recent findings from the University of Pennsylvania warn that over the next three decades, our recent COVID-related U.S. school closures, as well as the shift to virtual schooling, could massively impact our national gross domestic product, putting a huge dent in future workers鈥� earning potential. But, as 74 contributor Greg Toppo reports, researchers suggest an expensive remedy: extending the school year. Adding just one month of summer school won鈥檛 be cheap 鈥� about $75 billion 鈥� but the study finds it could help shrink GDP loss about half a percentage point, from 3.6 to 3.1 percent, producing gains of $1.2 trillion over the next three decades. Read our full report.

State of Play: What Researchers Know 鈥� and Don鈥檛 鈥� about Enrollment Declines and Learning Loss as School Year Gets Underway

Learning Loss: With the new school year getting underway, data from spring 2021 should lend urgency to calls to find missing students and assess learning losses, researchers say. The number of third-graders in high-poverty schools at grade level on a nationwide exam fell 17 points, from 39 percent in 2019 to 22 percent last year 鈥� and in Newark, for example, math proficiency was just 9 percent in grades 2 to 8. In Indiana, fewer than one-third of students passed both the state math and reading tests. Overall enrollment was down 3 percent nationwide, and 13 percent of preschool and kindergarten students never showed up. Meanwhile, the number of families homeschooling their kids has mushroomed, fueling historic increases among Black households. Beth Hawkins has some key takeaways.

Amid Historic Federal Windfall, School Leaders Find that Soaring Inflation is Curbing Their Ability to Purchase, Hire and Build

School Finances: School districts have more federal money than they鈥檝e ever had. But with inflation at a 13-year high, educators are slowly awakening to the reality that those funds might not go as far as expected. Delays of supplies and equipment for construction projects and labor shortages are driving up the cost of just about everything schools need to operate. Wages are also climbing, because districts can鈥檛 find enough employees to drive buses or give students additional academic support, and finance directors are wondering whether ongoing revenues will keep pace with expenses. 鈥淪chool districts are like little cities,鈥� Charles Carpenter of the Denver Public Schools told reporter Linda Jacobson. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e got food service. You鈥檝e got transportation. You鈥檝e got maintenance. Inflation across the sectors will impact all those areas.鈥� Read the full report.

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Family practitioners with emergency room experience staff the hospital. There are no specialized doctors, no ventilators and no ICU. The closest hospitals with those kinds of services are in Midland, Odessa and San Angelo, all 80 miles or more away 鈥� if hospitals there are accepting transfers, a real question as the latest pandemic wave surges.

So having 50 people in Iraan test positive for COVID-19 in the last few weeks is a very scary thing. Only four of the adults needed hospitalization, but three of them needed ventilators and were airlifted out, said Jason Rybolt, administrator of the Iraan General Hospital District.

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No one in Iraan has died due to COVID-19 and no children have been hospitalized for it. But when Tracy Canter, superintendent of the Iraan-Sheffield Independent School District, looked at the figures and then considered what the return to school could mean for her 335 or so students and 70 employees, the path seemed clear. She announced on Aug. 16 that the district would close until Aug. 30.

Before the shutdown, 23% of the district鈥檚 staff was out either because they had tested positive for COVID-19 or been exposed to it, Canter said. About 27% of the instructional staffers were already out because of coronavirus and about 17% of students were also out because of either exposure or contracting the virus. Those numbers were more than the district saw for all of last year, she said. And they鈥檙e even worse for a tiny district where employees may perform several jobs. During the day, some teach and then coach and then drive the bus.

鈥淲e felt, based on these extenuating circumstances, that it was best for the safety and security of our students and staff to go ahead and quarantine,鈥� Canter said.

Three other rural districts in Texas have since taken the same route, temporarily closing some or all of their campuses because of the pandemic, due to rising numbers of staffers and/or students out sick with the virus or in quarantine, and, in Iraan鈥檚 case, because of the lack of local medical facilities to deal with those who need hospitalization.

At Morgan Mill Independent School District, southwest of Fort Worth, more than half the staff was out sick, a school official said. The district shut all its campuses through Thursday, Aug. 19 due to COVID concerns. No classes had been planned for Aug. 20 anyway, and officials announced they would evaluate the situation over the weekend. Bloomburg Independent School District in East Texas closed its doors for at least several days the week of Aug. 16. And Waskom Independent School District, also in East Texas, first closed its elementary school for the week and then on Aug. 18 announced it would close all its campuses until at least the 23rd due to COVID-19.

All four districts are in areas where fewer than a third of residents are fully vaccinated, and nearby hospitals that offer critical care are experiencing staffing shortages while the delta variant wages war on the Texas health system.

In Morgan Mill, Superintendent Wendy Sanders said in an email that even though half the school district staff is out sick, many of them do not want to be tested for the coronavirus.

鈥淚t was their personal choice to not get tested,鈥� Sanders said. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 believe in taking away personal freedom of choice and enforcing testing.鈥�

Closings of the small districts led the Texas State Teachers Association on Aug. 18 to call, again, for Gov. Greg Abbott to withdraw his order against mask requirements. The group urged all educators and students in the state to wear masks to campuses, as recommended by health care experts.

鈥淯nfortunately, the closure of these small school districts is more proof that the COVID pandemic is still dangerous and needs to be taken seriously by the governor and school officials,鈥� the organization said in a statement. 鈥淧eople must get vaccinated, and educators and students need to wear masks to school.鈥�

But while other districts across the state are battling Abbott over mask mandates, these four small districts will nonetheless follow the governor鈥檚 order. They will not require masks for students or teachers. And they will follow the latest Texas Education Agency guidance.

The Texas Education Agency did not respond to comment about how it is dealing with school districts that have closed.

Kevin Brown, executive director for the Texas Association of School Administrators, said children learn best in person, and after a year of uncertainty, schools were ready to be back in classrooms. But for small communities, someone being sick or in need can take an emotional toll not only on one family but on the whole community, he said.

鈥淭hey are a human being with a name that everybody in the community most likely knows,鈥� he said.

Brown also reiterated that these small districts have limited options in terms of staffing and that big districts can more easily find substitutes or find other ways to not completely shut down. One of the other challenges with rural districts is that one staff member may be doing multiple jobs like teaching and coaching.

Iraan-Sheffield ISD will have remote conferencing for students, as the latest TEA guidance allows.

Like Iraan, Waskom ISD will have remote conferencing options and plans to make up the lost time at the end of the year, said Superintendent Rae Ann Patty. Bloomburg ISD will not offer remote conferencing, and officials are still discussing how to make up for the time lost.

Tracy Jackson, a parent of a senior in Bloomburg ISD, said closing the school was the best decision the district could make for students and staff. While she isn鈥檛 scared for her 17-year-old, she knows the district will do what it takes to make schools safe and not have to go through another closure, she said.

To help reduce the spread of the virus, Jackson 鈥� like others 鈥� said masking and vaccination are the only way to get out of the hole. She worries that closures because of the virus could keep happening.

鈥淚’m hoping that one is enough to clean the school and heal the staff and students that may be sick,鈥� she said.

In Iraan, 50 positive cases out of 119 tests for COVID are concerning for Rybolt, the hospital district administrator, and his staff. It鈥檚 the most positive cases the hospital has seen since Rybolt took on the administrator鈥檚 job in December 2020. If more town residents need to be hospitalized, it could spell trouble since other hospitals in the region are already having staffing shortages.

Russell Tippin is president and CEO of Medical Center Health System, which includes Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, one of the facilities to which the Iraan hospital transfers.

鈥淚t’s a very small hospital,鈥� Tippin said. 鈥淪o when you get one or two, definitely three or four patients in there, that puts them under a lot of stress.鈥�

Tippin said the Odessa hospital could well surpass its peak number of COVID-19 patients and run into more trouble because of staff shortages.

鈥淥ur staff is tired, they’re stressed out,鈥� Tippin said. 鈥淭hey’re tired of seeing these healthy 20-, 30-year-olds come in with COVID and either being on a ventilator and being very, very sick or passing away.鈥�

Don McBeath, director of government relations for the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals, said he鈥檚 seen a drop in the number of nurses employed in rural hospitals because of the hardships endured over the last year. There are than there are nurses seeking to fill them, according to a labor analysis by the Texas Workforce Commission.

鈥淲e have nurses that retired and said, 鈥業鈥檓 too old for this,鈥欌�� McBeath said. 鈥淲e probably have some younger nurses that just said, 鈥楾his is not what I bargained for.鈥欌��

Brian Lopez is a reporter covering public education , the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Disclosure: The Texas Association of School Administrators and Texas State Teachers Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

The El Paso Independent School District鈥檚 Board of Trustees late Tuesday voted 6-1 to follow Dr. Hector Ocaranza鈥檚 health order announced Monday requiring people 2 years and older to wear face coverings in most indoor settings, including schools. Masks will be required in EPISD buses and schools beginning Thursday.

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The motion approved by the EPISD board also committed the district to joining a pending lawsuit by La Joya Independent School District and others in Travis County challenging Gov. Greg Abbott鈥檚 ban on local mask mandates. Trustee Daniel Call cast the only dissenting vote on the motion to require masks and sue the governor.

The El Paso City Council voted 5-3 Monday to file a lawsuit against Abbott to protect Ocaranza’s mask mandate. On Tuesday, County Court-at-Law No. 7 Judge Ruben Morales issued a temporary restraining order finding that Abbott’s executive order barring mask mandates exceeded his authority, the city said in a news release.

After local judges in Bexar and Dallas counties issued similar rulings, the Texas Supreme Court earlier this week .

Call said the litigation before the state鈥檚 high court factored into this decision.

鈥淭he likelihood of a mask mandate standing up to scrutiny with the Texas Supreme Court is very small, so if there is a mask mandate it probably will not last very long,鈥� he said. 鈥淭o me, judicial activism is not something that I think a school district should be involved with.鈥�

But Trustee Israel Irrobali said decisions about what鈥檚 best at the local level shouldn鈥檛 come from lawmakers hundreds of miles away.

鈥淎t the end of the day, local control should be supreme and I believe that we should have the power in this situation to make that decision,鈥� said Irrobali, who has said he . 鈥淚t shouldn鈥檛 be left up to individuals in Austin that don鈥檛 know how it is in El Paso and have not been down here in quite a while.鈥�

About a half hour later, the Socorro Independent School Board of Trustees voted unanimously to follow Ocaranza鈥檚 mask mandate unless it was struck down by a court. The order from Ocaranza, who briefed the Socorro board Tuesday night on current COVID-19 data, takes effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.

Socorro trustees voted without comment after getting a closed-door briefing from their attorney, Steve Blanco, about current litigation and other legal issues regarding mask mandates.

The votes followed hours of public testimony before both school boards from a divided constituency whose members included parents who advocated for more protection for students amid an increase in the cases of the delta variant of COVID-19, and others who said masks were detrimental to the mental and physical wellbeing of their children.

The votes were another attack on Abbott鈥檚 statewide executive order issued late last month that stripped local governments and school boards from making decisions about their own jurisdictions. Several large districts, including Dallas Independent School District and the Austin Independent School District, have mandated masks and smaller districts in rural areas have followed .

This article originally appeared .

With the rapid rise of the , large swaths of the nation are once again battling out-of-control community spread and wrestling with decisions to reopen schools and possibly put teachers and students at risk. The increased concern around the Delta variant coincides with a tumultuous month for state masking mandates and other COVID-19 precautions, with states taking divergent paths on mask mandates, teacher vaccinations, or even to allow schools to remote or options.

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At the national level, the , the , and the all issued strong guidance and recommendations urging states and districts to keep mask mandates in place as the school season begins, citing lower-than-expected rates of vaccination and the aforementioned variant. Pediatric specialists from the Duke University School of Medicine to provide more context to that position, sharing evidence gathered from over one million students on the effectiveness of various COVID-19 precautions. Aside from vaccination, the experts write, 鈥淢asking is one of the best, most readily available methods to protect [students] from the disease, with universal masking being one of the most effective and efficient strategies for preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in schools.鈥�

In states, however, arguments over masking and in-person schooling are reaching a boiling point, with disputes between stakeholders at all levels bubbling up to be resolved by state officials or courts in states like , , and . Some governors, chiefly those of Florida and Texas, were , who admonished actions to ban mask mandates, even as large districts like and rebuked their governors by mandating mask requirements for the new school year. 鈥淒on鈥檛 be the reason why schools are interrupted,鈥� Cardona stated during a press event. Even in states that long held firm in their COVID-19 precautions鈥� like , , and 鈥� districts are often at odds with state or national guidance.

Beyond the obstacles surrounding school reopening and classroom safety, here are 12 other updates from across the country about how states and school systems are confronting the challenges posed by the coronavirus emergency 鈥� and working to preserve student learning amid a pandemic:

CALIFORNIA 鈥� Educators and School Leaders Prepare for Unpredictable 鈥業ndependent Study鈥� Surge

California districts and superintendents are expressing rising 鈥渁nxiety鈥� as the beginning of the school year approaches. They brace for unknown implications stemming from a surge in the Delta variant and Some superintendents are saying they expect as many as 1 in 8 students to apply for independent study, a number that might trend higher as COVID precautions are reinstated and if the school year results in a spike in cases. In addition to navigating the continued pandemic, school leaders will also be directing a into education programs, including transitional kindergarten, extended school days or years, and initiatives to combat the growing teacher shortage.

ALABAMA 鈥� Fully Vaccinated Students Will Not Be Required to Quarantine This School Year

According to the Alabama Department of Education, students who are fully vaccinated , though unvaccinated students would be expected to follow quarantine guidelines followed last year. At this time, individual Alabama school districts are given discretion in deciding whether to open for fully in-person instruction and whether to implement masking or social distancing mandates.

ILLINOIS 鈥� Governor Signs New Investment in Teacher Pipeline

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law late last month. The funding is expected to support over 5,000 candidates in becoming childcare providers or teachers in the state through 2024. Gov. Pritzker also signed a bill offering an , an action taken in other states as the pandemic disrupted schooling for many students with disabilities.

MINNESOTA 鈥� Local Decisions Allowed on Continuing Online Options

Minnesota public schools this fall 鈥� but are not required to do so. The Star Tribune is unaware of how many districts are offering this option but notes that those taking the state up on its offer have just six or seven weeks to establish a model for distance education. Minnesota Education Commissioner Heather Mueller stated that with the Governor phasing out 鈥渉is emergency powers,鈥� mandates regarding social distancing and mask wearing are more of a local decision.

OHIO 鈥� Some Schools Digging Deeper Into 鈥楳astery鈥� Approach to Learning Amid Pandemic

What started as a summer project for Ohio students has transformed into something more beneficial 鈥� mastery learning. As many students have fallen behind due to at home learning, Cleveland and Columbus school districts are considering mastery learning to help bring students up to speed. District CEO Eric Gordon stated, 鈥淥ver time, [it] will actually close achievement gaps more quickly and effectively.鈥� 蜜桃影视 Million states that the concept 鈥渢hrows out standard expectations鈥� in a specific school year, by acknowledging that students learn differently. Mastery learning gives students time to learn at their own speed, 鈥渞epeating and reinforcing skills鈥� until they鈥檝e essentially mastered them.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 鈥� Fearing a 鈥楰-Shaped鈥� Recovery In Capital Classrooms This Year

Beth Hawkins covers how the pandemic鈥檚 鈥淜-shaped鈥� recovery might play out in the nation鈥檚 capital this school year, citing the fact that thousands of students, particularly at younger ages, went missing from schools during the pandemic. Teachers, bracing for unexpected learning conditions and a resurgent virus, are preparing to differentiate instruction for students at a daunting scale – with some national experts concerned that there could be as many as nine grade levels per class. Adding to the confusion, as traditional DC public schools prepare for an in-person start to the year, 3 large DC charter networks are seeking permission to continue offering all-virtual learning, citing parent demand and continued pandemic safety concerns.

MICHIGAN 鈥� Increased Revenues Allowed for Equal Per-Pupil Funding This Year

Record amounts of federal and state education funding will allow Michigan schools to receive the same amount of money per student this fall, a step up following 鈥渄ecades of unequal funding.鈥� According to lawmakers and other advocates, this rise in funding is not a result of 鈥渉ard political work鈥� — but more existing money that is available for investment. Doug Pratt, spokesman for the Michigan Education Association stated, 鈥淚t鈥檚 something that lawmakers have long wanted to do across both sides of the political aisle and there resources were there to finish the job.鈥�

SOUTH CAROLINA 鈥� New Funding Reserved for Early Childhood Programming:

South Carolina education officials announced they in the state. South Carolina First Steps Executive Director Georgia Mjarten said the funding would help transition programs, after-school and summer pre-school programs, parent engagement programs, and early childhood health programs reach as many as 25,000 more students and families over the next three years.

IDAHO 鈥� Teachers Union Urges Governor to Direct Portion of State Budget Surplus Towards Schools

Idaho Gov. Brad Little announced that the state鈥檚 budget surplus is projected to reach $900 million this year. Following the announcement, . Their recommendations include increased funding for mental health services and staff, increased pay for teachers and paraprofessionals, and decreased class sizes. Idaho Education Association President Layne McInelly believes that a strong public school system will draw more families and businesses to the state, 鈥減ublic education funded properly will only help everybody succeed.鈥�

KANSAS 鈥� State Education Agency Directs Some Federal Funding to Early Literacy

The Kansas State Department of Education . The Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling program provides teachers with 鈥渟pecialized training in the science of reading.鈥� A main objective of the initiative is to provide teachers with the proper tools to know when a student is struggling and how to intervene. Like many other states, Kansas鈥� students faced academic difficulties last school year that are reflected in test scores.

IOWA 鈥� Summer Programs Reengage Kids with Learning, Prepare Them for New Year

Expanded summer school programs in several Iowa school districts are drawing attention for their use of federal and state relief funding . Educator Sarah Lyons, who taught at the We Believe Summer Learning Academy at Fred Becker Elementary in Waterloo, said many of her students missed school last year due to coronavirus-related absences and that, thanks to the expanded summer programming, are now better prepared to re-engage this school year.

NEVADA 鈥� Reno Goes All In on Career and Technical Education

The city is going all in on Career and Technical Education as its schools emerge from the worst of the pandemic. Citing how the pandemic鈥檚 K-shaped economic recovery is driving greatly different outcomes for high earners compared to low earners, 蜜桃影视 reports Reno is attempting to adjust its education system to align with its success in attracting a number of technical startups and corporations, including Tesla and other robotics and energy companies. 鈥淩eno鈥檚 success in reinventing itself as a high-tech hub and attracting associated growing industries is great,鈥� says Amy Fleming, a representative of the Nevada Governor’s Office for Workforce Innovation, writes. 鈥淏ut looking further out, the key to true long-term economic health is whether regional officials 鈥� and the school system 鈥� can nourish Reno鈥檚 blossoming startup sector.鈥�

This update on pandemic recovery in education collects and shares news updates from the district, state, and national levels as all stakeholders continue to work on developing safe, innovative plans to resume schooling and address learning loss. It鈥檚 an offshoot of the Collaborative for Student Success鈥� QuickSheet newsletter, .

鈥淎t this time, our public health authorities have informed us that the district may not quarantine students,鈥� said the letter from Erick Pruitt, who began as . 鈥淲e will continue to collaborate with the Iowa Department of Public Health and the Polk County Health Department to ensure our actions are aligned with their direction. We recognize that this guidance is subject to change. Please refer to the Iowa Department of Public Health for the most recent guidance.鈥�

Ankeny is the sixth-largest district in the state with more than 12,000 students and 2,285 employees, according to the .

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LaKeshia Richmond of Ankeny is a mother of three children. The family chose virtual learning for their kids last year.

鈥淲e were looking forward to going back to school this year,鈥� Richmond said. 鈥淥nce again our family is thrown a curveball regarding the pandemic and schools.鈥�

IowaWatch contacted Pruitt for comment and did not hear back at the time of publication.

The Polk County Department of Public Health said they didn鈥檛 advise the school on that letter but indicated they are bound by the laws and guidance of the Iowa Department of Public Health IDPH).

Nola Aigner Davis of the Polk County Health Department clarified quarantine only applies to a child who has been exposed to a COVID-19 positive individual. However, if a child tests positive for COVID-19 they must stay home.

鈥淭here is a sick child policy [for the district] so if a child tests positive they must stay home,鈥� Aigner Davis said.

Schools are required to provide face-to-face learning this fall; however, a district can opt to implement hybrid and virtual learning models as well.

With no mitigation strategies mandated in Iowa, online learning may be the only option some medically fragile children have.

鈥淢y 8-year-old daughter was a preemie and was on oxygen for six months,鈥� Ankeny parent Ashley Lappe said. Her daughter was diagnosed with chronic lung disease as an infant.

Luckily her daughter has been healthy and was looking forward to being back in school this fall.

Lappe chose a hybrid option that worked for her family last year. But now Lappe is not sure what to do if the school doesn鈥檛 offer hybrid or online learning models again this year.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to send my daughter to school only for her to get COVID and find out the hard way that she is medically fragile,鈥� Lappe said.

Iowa public health department guidance to public schools. The letter provides revised medical guidance that children who have been in close contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19 do not need to be quarantined. Garcia is not a medical doctor.

鈥淭his is not founded in science,鈥� Dr. Megan Srinivas, a Fort Dodge infectious disease doctor, said. 鈥淚 do not understand how this guidance was decided on as it goes against everything the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and medical professionals advise.鈥�

鈥淲e know kids can fall seriously ill with COVID-19, which can have long term health implications,鈥� Srinivas said, 鈥渁nd we know that kids can be completely asymptomatic but still transmit the COVID19 virus.鈥�

In July, the CDC issued a science brief, 鈥溾�� Since children can be asymptomatic carriers the CDC encourages proactive screening testing in schools to promptly identify cases and that mitigation strategies including isolation and quarantine be implemented to ensure kids stay healthy, according to the brief.

Pruit鈥檚 letter mainly focused on face masks, stating that the Ankeny district could not require masks to be worn. A law signed by Reynolds in May bans mask mandates in schools, cities and counties, with some education and extracurricular activity exceptions. There is no law backing Garcia鈥檚 direction on quarantines.

The superintendent鈥檚 letter says that families are encouraged to decide what steps are best for them and that other mitigation practices for the upcoming school year will be discussed at the Aug. 3 board meeting.

IowaWatch also contacted the Iowa Board of Education, the 10-member panel that 鈥渙versight, supervision, and support for the state education system,鈥� to find out if they reviewed the governor and Garcia鈥檚 school guidance to ensure no disabled child or medically fragile child鈥檚 civil rights would be violated by not requiring quarantining, masking or proactive screening. Students are ensured equal access to education under the Americans With Disability Act and Individuals with .

The education board did not return calls in late July. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds鈥� office and IDPH also did not respond to IowaWatch at time of publication.

This article was produced by the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch, a non-profit, online news website that collaborates with news organizations to produce explanatory and investigative reporting. Read more at .

Parents and community members know Kimberly Robel, principal of San Bernardino鈥檚 North Verdemont Elementary School, as an unshakably enthusiastic leader. The administrator gives off 鈥渁 cheerleader energy because she鈥檚 just so gung-ho, rah-rah,鈥� said district spokesperson Maria Garcia.

But last week, Robel was anxious.

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She was planning for her school鈥檚 Aug. 2 reopening, when the full 516-student body would return in person to classrooms. For the entirety of the past school year, the 47,000-student San Bernardino City Unified School District had remained fully virtual with no face-to-face instruction. Aside from a cohort of young people who participated in a three-week summer program at Robel鈥檚 elementary school in July, none of her learners had stepped foot inside the building since March 2020.

Fears replayed in her head like a song she couldn鈥檛 quite get out.

鈥淲e worry about our kids getting sick, worry about adults getting sick,鈥� Robel told 蜜桃影视, wondering, 鈥淚s the Delta variant going to devastate us again? Are we going to have to shut down again?鈥�

Yet come Monday, the school was again filled with the long-awaited buzz of students, and to the great relief of many, the day went off without a hitch, according to Garcia. Across the district, some and North Verdemont reported no COVID cases.

鈥淚t鈥檚 something that we have missed so much,鈥� said Robel. 鈥淭he little faces and eyes smiling over the mask 鈥� it just makes your heart kind of explode.鈥�

After a summer that brought renewed pandemic worries amid a surge in Delta variant infections, and with children under 12 not yet eligible for coronavirus vaccines, the return to full-time, in-person learning that appeared all but inevitable this spring as schools embraced reopening is now shadowed by doubt.

Hallways across the country are beginning to once again echo with excited conversations and the squeak of new sneakers. Among the first to go back are districts like San Bernardino and some others that took a conservative approach to COVID mitigation by remaining fully remote or hybrid last year. Their first-out-of-the-gate experiences may prove a bellwether for what鈥檚 to come this fall.

鈥淭hey’re the ones to watch whether they open traditional (in person, five days a week), because they haven’t been traditional in over a year,鈥� Dennis Roche, who has tracked school reopenings through the pandemic as co-founder of the website Burbio, told 蜜桃影视.

Schools that reopened fully last spring, 鈥渢hey鈥檝e already rode this train,鈥� Robel admits. But as her district marches forward with the return to classrooms, the principal is confident that they will rise to any challenges that may unfold.

鈥淭he people here are resilient,鈥� she said of her community, which weathered a mass terrorist shooting in 2015 that claimed the lives of 14 individuals and seriously injured another 22.

Clayton County Public Schools, a suburban district just south of downtown Atlanta, also returned to the closest it’s been to normal schooling since March 2020 when it reopened Monday. After the majority of its students remained remote through the last school year, about 95 percent of the district’s 52,000 students returned to in-person learning this week.

鈥淲e are ready,鈥� Teffany Bedford, a third-grade teacher at Fountain Elementary School, told 蜜桃影视. 鈥淲e feel safe. I think it鈥檚 going to be great getting back to those face-to-face interactions, which is what we’re used to.鈥�

At her school, only about half of families came back to school last spring, Principal Jamilah Hud-Kirk told 蜜桃影视, while this August, all but eight families have chosen to attend in person.

鈥淲e鈥檙e excited to welcome them,鈥� said Hud-Kirk. 鈥淲e missed our scholars and they missed us.鈥�

With the Delta variant , masks are required in her building and across Clayton County schools, as they are in San Bernardino. The California district has also installed air filters and updated ventilation systems in each of its schools.

But additionally, the administrators at both Fountain and North Verdemont have put a premium on communicating their reopening plans clearly with families. Both held virtual information sessions for community members to learn about their school鈥檚 reopening plan and ask any questions. Last week, teachers at Fountain directly called the households of every student in their classes. Ms. Bedford, as her students call her, was able to connect with the families of every single youngster on her list.

鈥淵ou have to meet your community where they are,鈥� said Hud-Kirk.

Not all school systems, however, were able to respond as readily to parent concerns. Tucson Unified School District, which ended last year in a hybrid learning scheme and returns students to classrooms Aug. 5, had planned to begin the year without requiring face coverings due to an Arizona state law banning mask mandates. That edict stands even after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated their school guidance with a recommendation for universal teacher and student masking in late July, and despite State Superintendent Kathy Hoffman calling on the governor鈥檚 office to . Gov. Doug Ducey doubled down instead, calling the CDC鈥檚 new guidelines 鈥�.鈥�

At a school board meeting in late July, a steady stream of public comments prompted Tucson Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo to remind viewers that 鈥渢he decision of whether or not to mandate masks in any Arizona school or school district is no longer in the hands of any school governing board, superintendent or principal.鈥�

Despite that, at an emergency meeting called the morning before school opened, the Tucson Unified board did just that, . By doing so, the district joined 鈥� two of which are in Phoenix 鈥� in defiance of the ban.

鈥淭hey really do have their hands tied,鈥� Clare Robinson, parent of a 7-year-old in the district, lamented before the board voted to disregard state law. The young mother was already planning on sending her child to school clad with a face covering and, at that point, just hoping other parents would do the same.

But without a universal masking policy, Robinson told 蜜桃影视 she was worried kids would increasingly skip out on wearing face coverings. At her son鈥檚 summer camp, for instance, fewer and fewer kids kept their masks on as the weeks went by, building a social pressure against masking.

Perhaps out of concerns for kids鈥� safety, slots in the district鈥檚 virtual learning program were filling rapidly. On July 20, enrollment had spiked from 700 to 1,200 in just a week. 鈥淲e are projecting that the numbers will keep going up,鈥� Trujillo said at the time.

Still, the vast majority of the district鈥檚 47,000 students will be attending school in person. As of Aug. 3, only 2,045 students were enrolled in the district鈥檚 virtual academy, according to spokesperson Veronica Castro-Vega 鈥� that鈥檚 slightly below the 5 percent opt-out rates in San Bernardino or Clayton County.

Robinson says many Tucson parents who were uncomfortable with their school鈥檚 previous masking policy faced a tough choice, especially if their child struggled with remote learning. On balance, most students tuning in online fared worse than their in-person peers, copious research shows.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 see [virtual school] as the answer that鈥檚 best for the greater good,鈥� said Robinson. For her own family, Robinson had been considering a temporary move to her parents鈥� home in Berkeley, California, where masks in schools were never in doubt.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona seconds Robinson鈥檚 stance, advocating for schools to return students to face-to-face learning this fall 鈥� .

“We know that mask wearing and mitigation strategies allow [schools] to reopen safely,鈥� the education secretary told National Public Radio Monday. If increased spread of the virus shutters schools, he said 鈥渢o me, that鈥檚 a failure of adults.鈥�

As the new school year unfolds in San Bernardino, where masking is a non-negotiable, Principal Robel has navigated some unforeseen hurdles: staffing is a bit short, and she wishes her school had held a welcome session for first-graders and their families who, while learning virtually last year, never became familiar with the ins and outs of the building. But the bumps are smoothing out and the principal believes her community can face whatever COVID’s next curve may be for the 2021-22 school year.

鈥淚 think they鈥檙e feeling cautiously optimistic,鈥� she said.