The Food and Drug Administration April 29 that it will reserve the dates June 8, 21 and 22 for its vaccine advisory committee to review the emergency use authorization requests of Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus shots for toddlers. While the dates remain subject to change, they provide an indication of when doses may be available to those under 5, as the FDA typically follows the recommendation of the committee in the weeks following its meeting.

Members of Congress sent a to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Monday asking whether the agency intended to delay reviewing Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine for children 5 years old and younger and for “the scientific basis and any other rationale” for such an action.

The move comes after White House officials told last week that young kids, the last age group not yet eligible for coronavirus vaccines, will likely have to wait until the summer for immunizations — a longer timeline than previously expected.

Although Moderna completed the trial for its toddler vaccine in late March and submitted a on Thursday, Anthony Fauci said that the FDA is considering reviewing the pharmaceutical company’s application at the same time as Pfizer-BioNTech’s, which has not yet been submitted.

“[The] two products … are similar but not identical, particularly with regard to the dose. And what the FDA wants to do is to get it so that we don’t confuse people to say, ‘this is the dose. This is the dose regimen for children within that age group of 6 months to 5 years,'” President Biden’s chief medical advisor on Thursday.

“Such a decision could delay the potential authorization and administration of the Moderna vaccine by several weeks,” points out Rep. James Clyburn, chair of the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, in its letter to the FDA. The committee asked for a staff briefing on the subject by May 9.

In early February, Pfizer-BioNTech submitted data on a two-dose vaccine series for children under 5 to the FDA, but in a highly unusual move withdrew their application just 10 days later. The two shots, which are 10 times less potent than the companies’ adult doses, were safe for all age groups, but did not provide enough protection against the Omicron variant for 3- and 4-year-olds. Pfizer-BioNTech now plans to request that the FDA authorize a three-dose regimen for children under 5, the companies have said.

The Moderna series currently submitted for review includes two shots that are each one-quarter the dose adults received. Trial data showed shots to be 44% and 38% effective in preventing illness among children 6 months to 2 years old and 2 years to under 6 years old, respectively.

But despite the relatively low efficacy, many parents of young children are anxious for a base level of protection for their kids, especially as mask mandates and social distancing requirements continue to fall across the country. 

For some, the idea that the FDA would delay the Moderna shots on parents’ behalf — ostensibly to avoid confusion — struck the wrong chord.

“If I sign a waiver saying ‘I don’t find this confusing at all,” can I go ahead and get the vaccine for my four-year-old?” parent and New York Times writer Whet Moser .

Meanwhile, a Tuesday report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that more than half of Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, including . Rates of prior infection nearly doubled over the course of the Omicron surge, the agency found.

Jennifer Shu, an Atlanta-based pediatrician, agrees that if doses are ready for emergency use authorization, Washington should not delay the rollout. After all, vaccines from separate companies were approved at different times for other age groups, she pointed out.

“If it’s ready to go, if the science has proven that the vaccine is safe and effective, then why not let the parents educate themselves on it?” she told ����Ӱ��, adding that health professionals like herself can help families make an informed choice.

Parents of kids under 5 may feel they’re being “thrown under the bus” as pandemic precautions dwindle and the BA.2 Omicron subvariant threatens, said Shu.

But despite thousands of families eager to vaccinate their toddlers, still more are likely to pass on the opportunity when it becomes available. 

Immunization rates remain relatively low for older kids and teens with 28% of 5- to 11-year-olds and 58% of 12- to 17-years-old fully vaccinated as of April 20, according to the . New immunizations have slowed nearly to a halt, with vaccine coverage having increased only 1 percentage point in each age group since mid-March.

Even as vaccination rates are flatlining, Pfizer-BioNTech is planning to seek authorization for a third booster shot for kids 5- to 11-years old after trials found that it offers added protection against the Omicron variant.

Even before the World Health Organization labeled the Omicron coronavirus strain a new “variant of concern” Friday, school closures were continuing to increase across the country. 

Last week, 621 schools across 58 districts announced new closures for a variety of reasons including teacher burnout, staffing shortages and virus outbreaks, according to counts from Burbio, a data service that has tracked school policy through the pandemic. Since the start of the academic year, nationwide have added extra days off.

The numbers suggest that nearly 10 percent of the nation’s roughly 98,000 K-12 schools have experienced closures this year. In Maryland, more than 3 in 10 schools have been affected by at least one day of disruption this academic year. In North Carolina, where such events have been most frequent, the number is above 4 in 10.

Now, schools already struggling to keep classrooms open could face further challenges should the recently identified Omicron variant, which has already , fuel a COVID surge this winter. 

“This is only going to make matters worse,” Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association, told ����Ӱ��. “We already see that most districts are short-handed.”

Earlier in November, lack of substitute teachers forced multiple large school systems to announce unplanned closures as teachers took additional time off around Veterans Day and Thanksgiving.

Shutting down is a last-resort option that schools should seek to avoid, said Domenech. But sometimes it’s school leaders’ only viable choice, he said.

“If they have a staff that’s on the verge of burnout and they keep pushing them, they’re only going to lose more staff. And that’s going to result in more closures and fewer kids being in person.”

Now, with K-12 staff stretched thin in districts across the country, health experts are scrambling to understand the threat posed by the new variant, which Moderna’s President Dr. Stephen Hoge described as having a “” of mutations. 

In South Africa, where Omicron was first identified Nov. 24, the strain has contributed to a sharp spike in cases, leading doctors to believe that it is more transmissible than previous versions of the virus. But whether those cases are more severe, and exactly how much protection is delivered by the vaccines, remains unclear. 

The South African doctor who first discovered the variant told the BBC on Sunday that symptoms have generally been “.” But other experts point out that these initial observations are only based on a very small sample size.

“This variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic,” said President Joe Biden in an address to the nation Monday morning.

Health experts, the president said, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, believe that existing COVID vaccines will continue to provide a degree of protection against the new strain, especially for individuals who have upped their immunity through booster shots. But it will be before scientists gain more precise results on just how effectively antibodies built up through vaccination neutralize the Omicron variant, Dr. Kavita Patel, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, told CNBC on Monday. Still, there’s reason to be hopeful, she said.

“The current vaccines don’t just generate the variant-specific antibodies. They try to generate kind of a broad antibody response,” said the Washington, D.C.-based physician.

Because of the Omicron variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday on booster doses to recommend that all adults “should,” rather than “may,” receive a third shot six months after their second. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported Monday evening that Pfizer-BioNTech plans to for 16- and 17-year olds, after initial booster data out of Israel showed positive results within that age group.

While the details of the new variant come into focus, Atlanta-based pediatrician Jennifer Shu said K-12 buildings need to keep their guard up to stave off in-school transmission.

“It’s important for schools to continue protective measures such as masking, hand washing, physical distancing when possible, disinfecting, optimizing ventilation, etc. to limit the spread of COVID-19,” the doctor wrote in an email to ����Ӱ��.

At this point, Domenech said he is not aware of any school leaders within his network having changed their safety procedures in response to the emergence of the Omicron variant.

Over the course of this school year, many districts have moved to introduce ‘test-to-stay’ measures that allow students potentially exposed to the virus to skip quarantine, provided they test negative for COVID on a rapid test. The WHO confirmed Sunday that existing PCR tests do accurately detect infection from the Omicron variant, but studies are ongoing to determine the effectiveness at recognizing the new strain employed in most test-to-stay schemes.

Since September, there have been over , and in the week before Thanksgiving, children accounted for about a quarter of new infections, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Weekly youth cases are on the rise, up 32 percent as of Nov. 18 over the previous week to 142,000, but they are well below their peak in early September of 252,000.

Over 19 million youth have received at least one vaccine dose, President Biden said in his Monday address. Over 99 percent of schools nationwide are now open for in-person learning, he pointed out, compared to less than half this time last year.

The new strain further underscores the importance of continuing efforts to boost vaccination rates within school communities, said Domenech, and raises the stakes for immunizing newly eligible children.

“The bottom line here is that unless we get to the point where the majority of people are vaccinated, where we can get to that herd immunity point, these variants are going to keep coming [and] kids are going to get infected,” he said.

Correction: Last week, 621 schools across 58 districts announced new closures for a variety of reasons. An earlier version of the story incorrectly reported that 9,313 campuses across 916 districts had announced closures last week. Those numbers represent the total closures since the start of the academic year.

Pfizer-BioNTech has submitted initial data to the Food and Drug Administration that its COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for 5- to 11-year olds, the pharmaceutical company Tuesday.

The development represents another key step toward shots for young children, but Pfizer has yet to formally submit a request to the FDA for authorization to inoculate the roughly Americans under 12 years old, which it must do before the federal agency can fully begin the weeks-long review process.

Though younger children are not yet cleared for the vaccine, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday ordered COVID shots for all eligible K-12 students in the state, marking the first such statewide move in the nation. The mandate but depends on when vaccines receive full FDA approval for young people ages 12 and up, the Los Angeles Times reports. Currently, Pfizer shots have full FDA approval for use in individuals 16 or older.

“This is just another vaccine,” Newsom said. Coronavirus shots will be added to “a well-established list that currently includes 10 vaccines and well-established rules and regulations that have been advanced by the Legislature for decades.”

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Pfizer’s submission for emergency use authorization among kids under 12 will come , CEO Albert Bourla told ABC News on Sunday.

If Bourla’s company sticks to that timeline, young kids should have access to COVID shots before the end of next month, said Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“I would imagine in the next few weeks [the FDA] will examine that data and hopefully give the OK so we can start vaccinating children hopefully by the end of October,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert told MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

An anonymous source familiar with the authorization process, however, told The Wall Street Journal that if Pfizer delays its submission to the FDA, clearance for young children to receive shots

Either way, it’s big news for schools, says Atlanta-based pediatrician Jennifer Shu. Though classrooms have not proven to be the locus of viral spread through the pandemic, circulation of the highly contagious Delta variant this fall has spurred outbreaks forcing some already since buildings opened. In late September, minors made up , the American Academy of Pediatrics reports, though the risk of severe outcomes remains small, doctors say.

“Once kids ages 5 to 11 are eligible for [the] vaccine, attending school during the pandemic will be safer,” Shu wrote in a message to ����Ӱ��.

The Pfizer data included 2,268 participants ages 5 to 11 who were each given a two-dose regimen of the vaccine 21 days apart. Children were given a 10 microgram dose, smaller than the 30 micrograms administered to older children and adults, which the drug company said was a carefully selected dosage for safety, tolerability and effectiveness.

In an internal review of the results last week, Pfizer reported that one month after the second dose, the shots produced a “robust” antibody response, including immunity and side effects comparable to that delivered by the larger dose in 16- to 25-year-old patients.

The FDA said that it will analyze those data as soon as possible, the .

In the Atlanta pediatrician’s practice, patients are eager to have youngsters inoculated — though Shu’s clientele may be the exception, from a nationwide perspective.

“I’m mostly seeing families that are all in,” she said. “​​Children are telling me they can’t wait until they can get the vaccine, since they are often the only ones in their family who haven’t even gotten one dose yet.”

Youth ages 12 and up have been eligible for doses since May, but , according to the AAP. By that measure, inoculating those under 12 years old may prove a challenge.

A Kaiser Family Foundation national poll from mid-August found that only of 5- to 11-year olds would want their child to receive the COVID-19 shot right away after it’s cleared, while another 40 percent said they would “wait and see.” That attitude may be changing, however, as of U.S. parents surveyed in a Gallup poll published Tuesday indicated that they would have their children inoculated against COVID-19 if shots were available.

Getting children under 12 vaccinated “will be an uphill battle,” Rebecca Wurtz, professor of health policy at the University of Minnesota, told ����Ӱ��. “I think parents are even more protective of their younger kids (than their older children).”

In the Kaiser survey, an additional 9 percent of parents said they would get their youngsters vaccinated only if the shots were required. Meanwhile, momentum is building for schools to do just that.

Last week, Oakland Unified School District in California joined Golden State counterparts Los Angeles and Culver City, as well as Hoboken, New Jersey, in in order to attend in-person school.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials chose not to comment when asked by ����Ӱ�� last week whether they would extend their student vaccine requirement to learners ages 5 to 11, should shots be approved for that age group.

Whether or not student vaccination mandates continue to expand, Shu believes the real-world outcomes from COVID shots should encourage parents who may be on the fence.

“More than 5.5 billion doses of COVID vaccine have been given worldwide,” she points out. “I hope that builds confidence for parents to give it to their children.”

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’ safety or risk legal challenges. The superintendent chose the latter, defying Gov. Greg Abbott’s 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’ learning time.

����Ӱ�� caught up with Hinojosa over the phone to hear how those efforts are unfolding and get the latest on the district’s legal showdown over masks.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

����Ӱ��: It’s 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’m attending a meeting of some superintendents … and we heard from a very prominent attorney that maybe the governor can’t 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, “I’m with you.” 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’s 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’ll win there. But we think eventually we’re going to lose at the (Texas) Supreme Court … because they’re 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’re 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’ve 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’t 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 entrée, 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? 

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

And for staff vaccine mandates, they’re 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’re 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 — we have 60 that we call “high-priority campuses” — 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’s 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 ‘90s and they’ve had good academic results where they bring in the students that are behind during the week that they’re 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. … 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’re 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’ll 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’s commitment to social-emotional learning changing in response to COVID-19 traumas? 

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. … We just went all in, as many as we could afford.

Last question, what’s 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.

In the wake of new mask guidance from the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci surrounding COVID-19 vaccinations and what Americans can expect as society attempts a partial return to normal.

CNN’s Jake Tapper concluded his interview Thursday with specific questions about the nation’s students and schools: “Both CDC Director Walensky and the president of the American Federation of Teachers are now saying that schools in the fall should be 100 percent open and in-person, five days a week. Do you agree — and if that’s the plan should it be formalized so schools and parents should start preparing?”

“Yeah I agree with that,” Fauci replied. “I believe the schools should be open five days, full blast, just the way it was before — that we really have to do that by the time we get to the fall.”

Tapper also asked about specific safety policies and procedures for reopened schools, including whether vaccinated students should be allowed to remove their masks while in class.

Fauci said he would defer to the CDC on specific school safety guidance, but that that “would certainly be an option, if the children are vaccinated, not to have a mask.”

Fauci , noting that children who are not vaccinated would need to continue wearing masks. Given that vaccines are currently approved only for students 12 and up, this means all elementary school students should likely begin the next school year with masks.

As we’ve previously reported, widespread rollout of vaccines for children younger than 12 is not expected to happen until 2022. Some of our other recent coverage of schools, vaccinations and student safety:

—Accelerating Vaccinations: As FDA approves shots for youth 12 and up, school districts get creative promoting vaccine to teens (Read the full story)

—Mask Policies: One Texas town, two school districts, clashing mask policies: How science and politics collided in New Braunfels’ classrooms (Read the full story)

—L���ɲ��ܾ��ٲ�: Parents sue to halt school face mask mandates as districts impose health rules to slow pandemic (Read the full story)

—Health Studies: Inside the Massachusetts study that helped change the CDC’s stance on classroom distancing to 3 feet (Read the full story)