School nurse Jennifer Comer vividly remembers the number of students she had to exclude from Clark Middle School in Bonner Springs on a single day in 2013: 289.

Why? They weren’t up to date on their state-required immunizations. 

In the past, the Bonner Springs-Edwardsville School District in Wyandotte County technically required vaccines. But if families flouted the rules, their kids could still go to school. 

School nurses had been pushing district leaders to take the requirements more seriously. Twelve years ago, they finally got their wish. 

So when the school’s deadline for vaccinations hit, staff members started calling families to come pick up their kids. 

It wasn’t fun, and it didn’t get better right away. 

“It was painful the first couple years,” said Kimberly Bolewski, the district’s nurse coordinator, stationed at McDanield Preschool. She noted that families weren’t used to the requirements being enforced. “Here we are saying, ‘No, really, you can’t start school.’” 

But that pain has paid off.

 â€” the most recent available — show kindergarteners at Bonner Springs schools had the best , mumps and rubella (MMR)  in Johnson or Wyandotte counties, a rate of nearly 98%. 

Earlier this month — 25 years after the United States declared measles eliminated — nationwide measles cases  annual number . But the district is “in a pretty good spot” to weather a local outbreak without widespread illness and quarantines, Bolewski said. 

“If our vaccination rates weren’t really high, it would be a nightmare,” she said. “The higher the vaccination rate, the less likely of a lot of our students becoming ill.”

Not all districts in the state or county are equally secure. While Kansas’ Department of Health and Environment determines  for school and the state , districts control enforcement. 

That’s partially why neighboring Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools had a kindergarten MMR vaccination rate of about 67% percent in 2023-24, though less than 2% of students had medical or religious exemptions. KCKPS says its overall vaccination rate is now 80% and rising.

KCKPS stopped excluding unvaccinated students when they were learning remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, Director of Health Services Lajasmia Bates said. The district plans to resume enforcing the policy for the 2025-26 school year. 

“We do realize that when those compliance rates are low, that we’re at a higher risk,” Bates said. “We wanted to do something about that to make sure that we can get as close (as possible) to having a herd immunity to be able to stop the spread of those communicable diseases, including measles.” 

State vaccine requirements

Kansas law  to decide which specific vaccines or tests families must obtain before children can attend school. 

The state currently , some of which immunize against multiple illnesses. 

For example, the MMR vaccine protects against measles, mumps and rubella. Kansas says children should have two doses: one at age 12-15 months and another before entering kindergarten. 

There’s a  if children fall behind, and exemptions if a physician certifies that vaccines “seriously endanger” the child or a parent says that the child’s religious denomination opposes vaccines. 

Federal laws also ensure children can enroll without all of their required paperwork, including proof of vaccination, if they’re in the  or . 

Schools must notify parents of vaccine requirements before May 15 each year. And  the school board “may exclude from school attendance” any students who haven’t complied. 

School officials told The Beacon that gives districts leeway to determine exactly when — or even whether — they exclude students who fall behind on required vaccines.

Measles vaccination in Kansas

That’s led to a situation where vaccination rates can range wildly. 

In 2023-24, Riley County schools recorded the state’s lowest kindergarten MMR vaccination rate: 36.67%. The neighboring Manhattan-Ogden district had a rate of 97.27%. Meanwhile, about three dozen districts claim a 100% rate. 

About one-third of the 238 districts with public vaccine data have an MMR kindergarten immunization rate at or above the 95% threshold needed for herd immunity for measles. Herd immunity means that enough people are vaccinated that the disease is unlikely to spread. 

MMR vaccine rates  have followed a similar pattern, falling from about 95% in 2019-20 to about 91% in 2023-24. Missouri does not report individual districts’ data. 

In Johnson and Wyandotte counties, the Bonner Springs, Piper-Kansas City, Blue Valley and Shawnee Mission school districts had kindergarten measles vaccination rates high enough for herd immunity during the 2023-24 school year. 

Olathe is barely below the herd immunity threshold. De Soto, Turner-Kansas City, Spring Hill and Gardner Edgerton range from approximately 1 to 4 percentage points below, and Kansas City, Kansas, is well below. 

Comparing two districts’ policies

KCKPS policy already says that unvaccinated students may be excluded. But it hasn’t actually taken that step in recent years. 

As it moves to enforce its policy again, the plan is to enroll students whether or not they’re vaccinated, Bates said, and give them 30 days to comply. 

In Bonner Springs, vaccine records are required for enrollment. But the rules aren’t one-size-fits-all there, either. 

Nurses are flexible when it’s clear a family is doing their best to get vaccination figured out, said Kristi Flack, the school nurse at Delaware Ridge Elementary. 

Students can start school if they show proof of an upcoming vaccine appointment, she said, or if it’s obvious they had a mix-up about which vaccines they were supposed to get. 

In those cases, she said, “The parents clearly took the time to do it. I’m not going to say, ‘OK, sorry, you didn’t get it. You can’t come back.’ I work with them.”

Nurses also work with families who have special circumstances such as getting medical records from overseas. If proof doesn’t arrive, they can help plan a catch-up schedule. 

Vaccine skepticism

Bolewski said she’s starting to see more vaccine hesitancy at the preschool age. 

“I think that’s from misinformation,” she said. Nurses have to ask: “‘How can I help you understand? Who can I connect you with?’ It doesn’t work to just simply say, ‘Well, you just have to do it.’”

Comer has run into issues as well. 

“I’ve had threats. I’ve had very, very angry parents,” she said. Some will abruptly claim religious exemptions. “But most parents want what’s best for their kids, and they just get busy and time gets away from them.”

Comer said she’s followed news of outbreaks around the U.S. and tracked state and national-level conversations that could complicate efforts to vaccinate kids. She’s worried Kansas could broaden vaccine exemptions and said misinformation, including from the federal level, is “very scary.” 

Doctors and major medical organizations overwhelmingly recommend childhood vaccinations, which have been used for decades to prevent diseases like measles, diphtheria and whooping cough. 

But now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic, leads the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, public health officials worry that vaccine skepticism is growing.

In June, Kennedy dismissed members of an advisory committee that is charged with recommending vaccines and, ultimately, influences which will be covered by insurance. Kennedy’s appointments to fill those vacancies have included vaccine skeptics, fueling fear that long-standing vaccine protocols could be uprooted. 

Kennedy has also  whether vaccines are linked to autism, a debunked claim. And in May he released a  that included calls for increased scrutiny of childhood vaccines. The report was  inaccurate citations and reportedly .

Dr. Christelle Ilboudo, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at Children’s Mercy Hospital, said she often gets referrals to consult with parents who are questioning whether to move forward with recommended childhood vaccinations.

“Oftentimes we spend up to an hour in our clinic 
 going over the different vaccines,” she said. “Ultimately, the decision is up to the parents. But our duty is to make sure that they are truly making an informed decision based on the facts that we’ve discussed and presented to them.”

Overcoming other barriers

In addition to skepticism or health concerns that make some parents hesitant about having their children vaccinated, some families also run into logistical barriers related to language, transportation, cost and scheduling, the school nurses said.

Flack said her district tries to help parents by sending reminders, scheduling appointments and finding interpreters if needed. 

Comer suggests families with insurance try pharmacies like Walgreens, CVS and Walmart that may have longer hours if appointments during the workday are tough. For walk-in appointments, she recommends the , which she said accepts residents of other counties as well. 

In addition to its normal walk-in schedule, the department is offering . Public information officer Ashley Follett said in an email that those clinics are meant to offer a “more convenient and efficient option” for school vaccines specifically.   

The Wyandotte County Health Department also offers low-cost vaccinations to  and plans to offer vaccines at back-to-school events. 

In KCKPS, Bates said the district has been communicating with families and warning them about the upcoming enforcement, which helped increase the K-12 vaccination rate to about 80%.

KCKPS has worked to translate information into languages families understand, direct them to where vaccines are available and give context for requirements, she said. 

“The nurses aren’t just sending out a letter telling them what immunization their student needs,” Bates said. “We’re telling them, OK, if the student doesn’t get the immunization, what could happen? What are the benefits of getting the immunization?”

Preparing for a measles outbreak 

Both districts said they’d heavily rely on the Wyandotte County Health Department for guidance in the case of a measles outbreak. 

Flack got a preview when a student came down with whooping cough, another disease that can be largely prevented with a vaccine. She said the department told her exactly what to do, spoke to the family and gave her information for other families in the class. 

“They handled it really well, and made me feel confident that I could do what I needed to do,” she said.

If a suspected or confirmed measles case were to appear, Flack said the district would have to contact the county and state health departments within hours. 

“​​We would mask them, wear gloves and then keep them separate from the general population until they’re able to be picked up from school,” Bates said. 

The Bonner Springs nurses said a measles outbreak in a district with a low vaccination rate would be very serious. Not only is the disease highly contagious and capable of causing major health complications, but quarantine times are long for unvaccinated students who get exposed. 

An outbreak would mean contact tracing and kids missing lots of school. 

Even if an unvaccinated student were lucky enough not to catch the disease from an exposure, they would have to be out of school for three weeks, Flack said.

If that child still doesn’t get vaccinated and is exposed again, she said, “then they have to start their exclusion all over again.”

In a district with fewer unvaccinated students such as Bonner Springs, the disruption could be much less severe. Most students could stay in school even if exposed. 

And parents shouldn’t forget, Ilboudo of Children’s Mercy said, that vaccines prevent dangerous and sometimes life-threatening diseases.

“Our biggest challenge is that vaccines have worked too well,” Ilboudo said. “When you talk to people who have seen their classmates or their neighbors go through polio, they remember. They remember their neighbor who died from measles. They remember their neighbor who was paralyzed because of polio. 

“Nowadays parents truly don’t know the risks that these infections will present because we haven’t seen them. We haven’t seen them for years and years and years.”

Suzanne King contributed to this story. 

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

OKLAHOMA CITY — By the summer of 2021, Phil Maytubby, deputy CEO of the health department here, was concerned to see the numbers of people getting vaccinated against covid-19 slipping after an initially robust response. With doubt, fear, and misinformation running rampant nationwide — both online and offline — he knew the agency needed to rethink its messaging strategy.

So, the health department conducted something called an online “sentiment search,” which gauges how certain words are perceived on social media. The tool found that many people in Oklahoma City didn’t like the word “vaccinate” — a term featured prominently in the health department’s marketing campaign.

“If you don’t know how your message is resonating with the public,” Maytubby said, “you’re shooting in the dark.”

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Newsletter

Across the country, health officials have been trying to combat misinformation and restore trust within their communities these past few years, a period when many people in their state and local health departments. Agencies are using Twitter, for example, to appeal to niche audiences, such as and . They’re collaborating with influencers and celebrities such as and to extend their reach.

Some of these efforts have paid off. By now, of U.S. residents have received at least one shot of a covid vaccine.

But data suggests that the skepticism and misinformation surrounding covid vaccines now threatens other public health priorities. Flu vaccine coverage among children in mid-December was about the same as December 2021, but it was 3.7 percentage points lower compared with late 2020, according to the . The decrease in flu vaccination coverage among pregnant women was even more dramatic over the last two years: 18 percentage points lower.

Other common childhood vaccination rates are down, too, compared with . Nationally, 35% of all American parents oppose requiring children to be vaccinated for measles, mumps, and rubella before entering school, up from 23% in 2019, according to a released Dec. 16. Suspicion swirling around once-trusted vaccines, as well as fatigue from so many shots, is likely to blame.

Part of the problem comes down to a lack of investment that eroded the public health system before the pandemic began. An found local health department spending dropped by 18% per capita between 2010 and 2020. State and local health agencies also lost nearly 40,000 jobs between the 2008 recession and the emergence of the pandemic.

This made their response to a once-in-a-century public health crisis challenging and often inadequate. For example, during covid’s early days, many local health departments to report covid case counts.

“We were not as flexible as we are now,” said , director of public health at the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.

At the start of the pandemic, Traxler said, only two people worked on the media relations and public outreach team at South Carolina’s health department. Now, the team has eight.

The agency has changed its communication strategies in other ways, too. Last year was the first year, for example, that South Carolina published data on flu vaccinations every two weeks, with the goal of raising awareness about the effectiveness of the shots. In South Carolina, of adults and children eligible for a flu shot had been vaccinated by early December, even as flu cases and hospitalizations climbed. The flu vaccine rate across all age groups in the U.S. was 51.4% last season.

Those who have opted out of both the covid and flu shots seem to be correlated, Traxler said.

“We’re really just trying to dispel misinformation that’s out there,” Traxler said. To that end, the health department has partnered with local leaders and groups to encourage vaccinations. Agency staffers have also become more comfortable talking to the press, she said, to better communicate with the public.

But some that agencies are still failing on messaging. Scientific words such as “mRNA technology,” “bivalent vaccine,” and “monoclonal antibodies” are used a lot in public health even though many people find them difficult to understand.

A study published by found that covid-related language used by state-level agencies was often more complex than an eighth-grade reading level and harder to understand than the language commonly used by the CDC.

“We have to communicate complex ideas to the public, and this is where we fail,” said , CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, a charitable group focused on strengthening public health. “We have to own the fact that our communication missteps created the environment where disinformation flourished.”

Most Americans support public health, Castrucci said. At the same time, a small but vocal minority pushes an anti-science agenda and has been effective in sowing seeds of distrust, he said.

The more than 3,000 public health departments nationwide stand to benefit from a unified message, he said. In late 2020, the foundation, working with other public health groups, established the to amplify easy-to-understand information about vaccines.

“The good guys need to be just as well organized as those who seek to do harm to the nation,” he said. “One would think we would learn from this.”

Meanwhile, published in October by the Pew Research Center found 57% of U.S. adults believe “false and misleading information about the coronavirus and vaccines has contributed a lot to problems the country” has faced amid the pandemic.

“I was leery like everyone else,” said Davie Baker, 61, an Oklahoma City woman who owns a business that sells window treatments. When the shots became widely available in 2021, she thought they had been developed too quickly, and she worried about some of the things she’d read online about side effects. A pharmacist at Sam’s Club changed her mind.

“She just kind of educated me on what the shot was really about,” Baker said. “She cleared up some things for me.”

Baker signed up for her first covid shot in May 2021, around the same time the health department in Oklahoma City noticed the number of vaccines administered daily was starting to decline.

The department updated its marketing campaign in early 2022. Instead of using the word “vaccinate” to encourage more people to get their covid shots — the term the agency’s social media analytics revealed people didn’t like — the new campaign urged people to “Choose Today!”

“People don’t trust like they used to,” Maytubby said. “They want to make up their own minds and make their own decisions.” The word “choose” acknowledged this preference, he said.

Maytubby thinks the “Choose Today!” campaign worked. A survey of 502 adults in Oklahoma City conducted during the first half of 2022 found fewer than 20% of respondents reacted negatively or very negatively to a sample of “Choose Today!” advertisements. And an estimated have received at least one dose of a covid vaccine — a rate higher than the state average of about 73%.

Other factors are likely at play that have helped bolster Oklahoma City’s vaccine numbers. In the same survey of Oklahoma City adults, some people who were recently vaccinated said family members or church leaders urged them to get the vaccine, or they knew someone who had died from covid. One person said money was the motivation — they received $900 from their employer for getting the covid vaccine.

Meanwhile, the war against misinformation and disinformation wages on. Childhood vaccination rates for the immunizations students typically need to enter kindergarten are down 4.5% in Oklahoma County since the 2017-18 academic year as parents increasingly seek exemptions to the requirements.

That worries Maytubby. He said the primary tactic among those trying to sow distrust about vaccinations has been to cast doubt — about everything from the science to their safety.

“In that aspect, they’ve been pretty successful,” Maytubby said. “Misinformation has changed everything.”

(Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

In early November 2020, she attended an outdoor concert with her mother and younger daughter in Dallas, a couple of days after begrudgingly attending a mandatory in-person meeting at work.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Newsletter

“When I got home I was like, ‘[The cough] is probably because I was around all the plants and being outside. That probably aggravated my sinuses,’” said Lewis, 33, who lives in Dallas. “Didn’t think much of it, just went to bed. But the next morning I woke up and I felt like a train hit me.”

After being told that some co-workers also felt sick, Lewis decided to get tested for COVID-19 and her results came back positive. But her situation was more complex than most people who have contracted the virus because she was three months pregnant at the time.

Nights were the worst, she said, with the difficulty breathing making it feel like “a weight was on your chest.” Even getting up to go to the bathroom was a chore that required help from her husband and, at one point, her daily diet mainly consisted of just chicken broth and Pedialyte.

Although Lewis was never hospitalized with COVID-19 and later recovered, the experience still sticks with her, and when the coronavirus vaccine became available to high-risk Texans at the start of the year, Lewis jumped at the chance to get vaccinated. On April 23, she delivered a baby boy, Langston, with no major complications.

Not all pregnant women are as eager as Lewis about getting vaccinated, however.

Pregnant women have one of the lowest vaccination rates in the United States: As of Sept. 4, about 25% of pregnant women ages 18 to 49 have received at least one vaccine dose nationally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s significantly less than the most recent national average for that age group, which is about 61%.

The Texas Department of State Health Services currently does not collect vaccination data on pregnant women, said Lara Anton, an agency spokesperson, and also does not track cases, hospitalizations or deaths among this group.

Doctors said there’s no single reason for the low vaccination numbers, although vaccine hesitancy and misinformation have played a role.

Recently, pregnant patients with COVID-19 have come in to Texas hospitals at levels not seen earlier in the pandemic, according to some doctors, illustrating the severity and contagiousness of the delta variant amid the state’s most recent COVID-19 surge.

“We’re just seeing a lot more of them progress [to serious illness] very quickly,” said Dr. Manisha Gandhi, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Last August, more than 15 pregnant women were hospitalized with COVID-19 at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. This August, the number nearly doubled, according to Texas Children’s.

“This variant is much more aggressive, [and] pregnant women are getting sicker much faster,” Gandhi said.

Combating misinformation

The that pregnant people get the vaccine has given medical professionals hope that more will do so. But they know it will still be a battle to overcome some of the hesitancy that has set in since the start of the pandemic.

“Women want to make the best decision for them and their unborn child, and it’s a really difficult position when they don’t include pregnant or lactating women in the [vaccine clinical] trial,” said Dr. Teresa Baker, professor and regional chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Amarillo.

Pregnant and lactating women have long been excluded from initial clinical trials due to the possibility of putting an unborn fetus at risk, Baker said, so it wasn’t a surprise that the same thing happened during the development of COVID-19 vaccines. But with the lack of initial information about how COVID-19 affects pregnant people and mixed guidance by CDC and leading medical organizations, many pregnant people felt left in the dark about the best way to protect themselves.

“We just were working with a lot of unknowns for a long time and that made it uncomfortable for everyone, but I think we’re catching up slowly,” Baker said.

A recent study in the found that the vaccines offer similar protection for both pregnant and nonpregnant women.

Dr. Jerald Goldstein, founder and medical director of the Fertility Specialists of Texas, said false claims circulating on social media that women will become infertile or sterile from being vaccinated have contributed to some of the hesitancy.

The online misinformation has “definitely created a lot of work for doctors in terms of talking to patients who really, really believe that,” Goldstein said.

According to a recent study in the journal, F&S Reports, “neither previous illness with COVID-19 nor antibodies produced from vaccination to COVID-19 will cause sterility.”

Studies have also shown that receiving the vaccine does not lead to an or .

Gandhi, the maternal-fetal specialist at Texas Children’s, said the most important part of her day now is making sure patients realize the benefits of getting vaccinated and how much it reduces the risk of getting sick with COVID-19 and having to be intubated or enduring a premature delivery.

She has also urged people who are pregnant to not wait until they deliver their baby to get vaccinated.

“The highest risk time is while they’re pregnant,” Gandhi said. “… Getting vaccines [generate] antibodies that can cross the placenta and potentially protect the baby so there’s actually a bonus: You’re also adding to the protection of your baby who may get exposed after delivery.”

Making the choice

Austin resident Brittany Clay has never really seen herself as an early adopter to much in life. However, things changed once she learned she was pregnant in October 2020.

By then, she had already lost a family member to the virus. In July, her uncle, who had colon cancer, died from complications of COVID-19. Then, in October, her grandfather also died from complications of the virus and her parents landed in the hospital with pneumonia after contracting COVID-19.

“We said our goodbyes to my uncle over the phone, we said our goodbyes to my grandfather over the phone, and when I knew things were not going well for my parents was when they stopped answering their phones,” said Clay, 33. “They couldn’t speak on the phone anymore. It was too difficult for them with breathing. And it was like, ‘Wow, we’re literally saying goodbye to our loved ones, we’re telling them it’s OK to go over the phone — on speakerphone. It was the most horrible thing.

“It was such a scary time for our family, and when you go through circumstances like that, it’s just not that difficult of a decision to get the vaccine,” Clay said.

But the vaccine wasn’t available to high-risk people until December, and Clay still wanted to do her homework first. In January, about six months before the CDC recommended pregnant people get the coronavirus vaccine, Clay and her husband started collecting reports and studies about pregnant women and COVID-19.

Clay said she also gravitated to reading about experiences shared on social media by doctors who were pregnant themselves and got the vaccine.

“Being pregnant in a pandemic has so many added stressors and so many additional layers of fear and unpredictability, so much of it can be out of your control,” Clay said. “So then to add this additional unknown of this vaccine that, you know, has been around for nine months is a really scary decision, and I just try to honor and respect the fact that this is a decision that people have to make on their own.”

During her research, she also reconnected with Lewis, an old classmate from Texas Christian University, through social media. Clay was curious to hear about Lewis’ experience with COVID-19 during pregnancy.

Since reconnecting, they have bonded over motherhood and the shared experience of getting vaccinated while pregnant. Clay was fully vaccinated by February and delivered a baby girl named Navy on June 22.

“I later went back to [Lauren] after I had Navy, and I was like, ‘You might have saved my life. Thank you so much for sharing your COVID experience with me,’” Clay said.

For both women, the importance of getting vaccinated was underscored by the news that one of their TCU classmates who was unvaccinated had died from complications of the virus after delivering her baby.

“That has felt so haunting and so sad,” Clay said. “She was just so young and her family is now really trying to get the word out about the vaccines, and I recognize the severity of the cases are just getting more and more severe for pregnant women.”

Lewis has made it a personal mission to encourage pregnant women to get vaccinated and posted videos of herself being vaccinated on social media.

“If you have any questions, please reach out to me,” Lewis said on video in February after receiving her second dose. “I’m very pregnant, so I have a different perspective because I’ve had COVID.”

Lewis said she hopes other expectant mothers will heed her advice.

“I mean, [COVID-19] really sucked the life out of me,” Lewis said. “… Honestly, I’m waiting to go get my third shot. I want to get it because I don’t ever want to feel the way I felt with COVID, and I don’t want anybody to ever feel that way when they don’t have to.”

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

Disclosure: Texas Christian University has been a financial supporter 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 .

Disparities in Learning by Region and Race:

• “Reduced access to in-person learning is associated with poorer learning outcomes and adverse mental health and behavioral effects in children.”
• “Disparities in full-time in-person learning by race/ethnicity existed across school levels and by geographic region and state. These disparities underscore the importance of prioritizing equitable access to this learning mode for the 2021-22 school year.”
• Massive differences in different parts of the country. More students (including students of color) were in-person in the South than in the West and Northeast.
• .
• Really good .

July 9, 2021 — The Big Three

COVID-19 and Schools — The Evidence for Reopening Safely: Via

• “A growing body of evidence suggests that schools can be opened safely. But that hasn’t quelled debate over whether they should be open and, if so, what steps should be taken to limit the spread of the virus.”
• “Equity also became a flashpoint in the debate. Researchers argued that remote learning would widen disparities between white students and students of color in many countries.”
• “One of the largest studies on COVID-19 in schools in the United States looked at more than 90,000 pupils and teachers in North Carolina over nine weeks last autumn. Given the rate of transmission in the community, ‘we would have expected to see about 900 cases’ in the schools, says Daniel Benjamin, a pediatrician at Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina, and co-lead author on the study. But when the researchers conducted contact tracing to identify school-related transmissions, they identified only 32 cases.”
• “The bulk of the literature on transmission in schools 
 suggests that kids aren’t driving viral spread. Investigations in Germany, France, Ireland, Australia, Singapore and the United States show no, or very low, secondary attack rates within school settings.”

Vaccine Mandates at Colleges: A Washington Post report shows the percentage of two- and four-year colleges and universities that are

• “More than 500 colleges and universities plan to require coronavirus vaccination for at least some of their students and employees, according to data as of Tuesday from .”

Texas state test results reveal dramatic drop in the number of students on grade level: .

• “, and the number of students who met reading expectations dropped by 9 percentage points compared to 2019, the last time the test was administered.”
• “In districts with more than three-quarters in-person instruction, the number of students meeting math expectations only dropped by 9 percentage points and those who met reading expectations by 1 percentage point. Students of color and lower-income students saw greater gaps as well, although those gaps were smaller than the one between remote and in-person instruction.”
• “, from 50 percent of students meeting their grade level in 2019 to only 35 percent this year.”
• “This is probably this year as a result of COVID than in normal years,” Education Commissioner Mike Morath said. “It is important to remember that these are not numbers. These are children.”

Federal Updates

Infrastructure deal: .

• A Punchbowl News survey of senior Capitol Hill staffers finds that , and the American Families Plan and the full American Jobs Plan will be left by the wayside.
• “The White House’s long sought-after bipartisan infrastructure deal could ,” Politico reports.

Education Department:

• for South Dakota, Texas, Massachusetts, Utah, Arkansas, Rhode Island and Washington D.C.
• Is inviting states to complete the application for their share of the second disbursement of
• • Katy Neas, deputy assistant secretary, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
  • Toby Merrill, deputy general counsel, Office of the General Counsel
  • Hayley Matz Meadvin, senior adviser, Office of the Secretary
  • Chris Soto, senior adviser, Office of the Secretary
  • Antoinette Flores, senior adviser for American Rescue Plan implementation, Office of Postsecondary Education
  • Deven Comen, chief of staff, Office of Communications and Outreach
  • Abel McDaniels, special assistant, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education

Emergency Connectivity Fund: The Federal Communications Commission officially opened the application window for schools and libraries to file Education Superhighway

National Center for Education Statistics: Total K-12 enrollment in 2020-21 compared with the previous school year. More via ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

City & State News

Illinois: for reopening schools. The union is asking for:

• 80 percent of students 12 and older to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by October and 80 percent of younger students within 60 days after FDA emergency use authorization for their age group.
• Ventilation system upgrades at school buildings.
• A 10 percent increase in special education teachers, bilingual teachers, English language program teachers, teacher assistants and arts educators by Jan. 27 to support community recovery.
• The union also wants members who are medically unable to return in-person to fill positions at the district’s new remote-learning Virtual Academy for students with qualifying health conditions.

Florida: was up between July and September by 5,644 – a 98 percent increase – while the flexible virtual program saw course requests increase by 231,128, or 57 percent, from the same time in 2019.

Maryland: , writes Margery Smelkinson, an immunology and infectious-disease scientist.

Michigan: Health department which mostly points to CDC guidance.

New Jersey: “Nearly 80 percent of third-graders and almost 90 percent of fourth-graders would ‘not meet the passing score’ on the state math exams, according to a district analysis that was not made public,” .

COVID-19 Research

Delta Variant:

• In Los Angeles County, the pace of Delta’s spread has
• In the UK, due to Delta cases at the end of June — the highest number since children returned to school in March. That number jumped

Damage to Children’s Education — and Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime: Via . Long, but worth reading the whole piece.

Masks Can Prevent COVID-19 Transmission in Schools: (and an ): “Proper masking is the most effective mitigation strategy to prevent secondary transmission in schools when COVID-19 is circulating and when vaccination is unavailable, or there is insufficient uptake.”

Doctors Are Puzzled by Heart Inflammation in the Young and Vaccinated: Via

• “These events are, so far, not matching the most terrifying versions of the condition, which have been observed with coronavirus infections.”
• “Rather, compared with more typical cases of myocarditis, the ones linked to the vaccines, on average, involve briefer symptoms and speedier recoveries, even with less invasive treatments. Still, the incidents are showing up in the few days that follow each vaccine’s second dose at higher-than-expected rates, especially in boys and young men, and no one is yet sure why.”
• “All of these factors make the risk of this complication tough to quantify, and several researchers have criticized the CDC’s recent evaluation. But most of the experts I spoke with said that the calculations still come out strongly in favor of vaccination, in part because of another set of disconcerting ambiguities, this time on the side of the virus.”

What Parents With Unvaccinated Kids Need to Know About the Delta Variant This Summer: Via

Vaccinating Teens: , CNN reports.

• “It takes five weeks to be fully vaccinated with Pfizer’s vaccine, the only one authorized for adolescents ages 12 to 17. That means, for example, Atlanta students need to get their first shot by July 1 to be fully immunized by the first day of school on Aug. 5.”

Viewpoints

How COVID-19 is Inspiring Education Reform: Via

• “Big shocks have sometimes changed schooling for the better. The Second World War midwifed the Butler Act in Britain, which increased years of compulsory schooling and abolished the fees still charged by many state schools. After Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans, officials there embarked on sweeping school reforms. Nine years later graduation rates had increased by 9-13 percentage points.”
• “Struggling learners would benefit enormously if expanded tutoring schemes become core parts of education systems. A long-running tutoring programme at Match Charter Public School in Boston provides one model. Before the pandemic it offered all children in four grades daily tutoring in maths. It operates a longer school day than is common in its neighbourhood, so Match manages to slot these sessions into students’ timetables without them having to give up anything else.”

Make Telemedicine Services for Children Permanent: Kelly Wolfe, a former educator and advocacy leader for children’s health in Minnesota and vice president of strategic partnerships and regulatory compliance at PresenceLearning, writes at ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ: During COVID, states let students get speech therapy, mental health counseling and other services online. Make those changes permanent.

Survey of Black Parents:

• Black parents remain less likely than white and Hispanic parents to vaccinate themselves or their children.
• Roughly half of Black parents believe it will be safe to send children back to school for in-person classes by September. But 31 percent said it will take longer.
• and .

How the Pandemic Helped Fuel the Private School Choice Movement: Via :

• “Six states had enacted new programs by July 1, and a bill to create a new program in Missouri awaited Gov. Mike Parson’s signature. Governors also approved expansions of 14 existing voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs by loosening eligibility restrictions or expanding their budgets.”
• “Among the biggest moves in states’ 2021 legislative sessions: West Virginia created the most-expansive education savings account program in the country, making most of the state’s students eligible for the Hope Scholarship Program, which will provide up to $4,600 in state funds per student. New Hampshire’s budget includes a new educational savings account program available to families with incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty line.”

The Pandemic Will Worsen Illiteracy. Another Outcome Is Possible:

Some Students Thrived Learning From Home — They Deserve a Permanent Model: Via

Ìę#°ŐłÜ°ùČÔ°Őłó±đ±ÊČčČ”±đ±Ê°ùŽÇÂá±đłŠłÙ: The Walton Family Foundation and COVID Collaborative launched a that includes unique perspectives from parents, practitioners and thought leaders on what they believe the future of learning looks like.

• The project includes Common, Drew Furedi, Eddie Koen, Elmo, Emily Oster, Jessica Hamilton, Kaya Henderson, Maria Hinojosa, Mikala Streeter, Nekima Levy Armstrong, Shalinee Sharma, Sharon McMahon, Tim Shriver, Tom Frieden, Viridiana Carrizales, Zahir Mbengue and Ze Min Xiao.

…And on a Lighter Note

This Dad:

ICYMI @The74

Weekend Reads: In case you missed them, our top five stories of the week:

• Critical Race Theory: Chaos Theory — Amid Pandemic Recovery Efforts, School Leaders Fear Critical Race Furor Will ‘Paralyze’ Teachers
• Student Health: Spread of Delta Variant Marks ‘Most Dangerous’ Time in Pandemic for Kids, May Force Schools to Re-Up Safety Measures, Experts Say
• Looking Ahead: 12 Big Challenges From Last School Year That Could Now Define the Fall of 2021 — From Learning Loss to Restoring Trust, Closing Achievement Gaps & More
• Pandemic Recovery: Analysis: Most Students in Urban Districts Will Have Summer Learning Options, But Schools’ Plans May Miss the Mark
• Federal Data: Almost All Schools Offered In-Person Learning by Spring, But Attendance Varied Widely By Race

Disclosure: John Bailey is an adviser to the Walton Family Foundation, which provides financial support to .

The coronavirus pandemic turned Julie Welch’s work life upside down, forcing her to teach her 6th grade class online for the first time in her 30-year career.

But losing time with her loved ones was among the biggest hurdles she faced over the past year.

“Not being able to touch and hug and be with my daughters, and my mother-in-law and father-in-law — and just the people that you just kind of take for granted sometimes, that you can hug and kiss when you see them,” Welch said. “That was a big challenge for me to miss out on those times, just like it is for most people.”

Welch said her family was limited to just a few outdoor get-togethers last summer. But she was especially grateful for those moments when her father-in-law unexpectedly died from a stroke in March.

“Trying to say those final goodbyes during COVID was really, really tough,” Welch said. “We were able to still see a few extended family members who had already been vaccinated but we haven’t yet been able to have his memorial service. So that was really a great loss this year for us.”

But the vaccinations of Welch’s immediate family members have offered her fresh freedoms, she said.

“It’s like we’re starting to be able to feel safe being together and it’s just this incredible wonderful feeling,” Welch said. “I’m really looking forward to actually being with my children, maybe being able to safely get on an airplane and fly out to visit my one daughter who lives in New York City and actually enjoy time physically with her rather than just on Zoom.”

Those joys are returning as Welch reflects on one positive from the pandemic: She has struck a new work-life balance while teaching from home through the La Crosse School District’s Coulee Region Virtual Academy.

In past years, Welch ended each long day in her classroom feeling like she ran out of time — failing to reach each student who needed her. She is now making those connections online during school hours with time to spare for herself.

“I’ve spent so much more time this year being reflective, being alone, being quiet and it’s been good,” Welch said. “I have missed friends and I have missed a lot of that socialization. But I’ve also realized how important the quiet is, and I’m hoping that this is a permanent change in my life.”

Welch and her husband have spent some of that extra time with new canine companions. First, they met Mabel, a Cane Corso mastiff mix. The couple adopted her in March 2020 just as COVID-19 began upending society. Welch walked her daily, and Mabel watched the couple as they gardened.

“She was just a constant presence in my life,” Welch said.

But their time was short.

“Sadly, she died in December. We know she was an older dog and she had a pretty rough life before she came to us so she didn’t live through the year,” Welch said.

Losing Mabel left a void in the home, Welch said. She initially tried to fill it by occasionally caring for friends’ dogs over several weeks. This spring, however, the couple started fostering another dog: Zara.

“She immediately adopted my husband as her person, and it was right after my husband had lost his dad,” Welch said. “She crawled right up in his lap and would hug him and just gave him that outlet of comfort.”

The couple quickly decided they couldn’t let go of Zara. They adopted her in April.

Listen to Julie Welch’s audio diary, produced by Hope Kirwan for Wisconsin Public Radio: 

is collaborative series, produced in partnership with , that chronicles as they navigate life during the coronavirus pandemic.

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

The effort will begin Friday with four schools in the Bronx and will expand to schools in all five boroughs over the next several weeks, de Blasio said. As students , officials are ramping up efforts to make it easier for them to get their jabs. So far, about 23% of city residents in that age range have been vaccinated.

De Blasio indicated the program would focus on middle schools and would extend into the summer, but did not immediately say how many schools would participate.

“It’s going to be a way to reach a lot of young people quickly,” de Blasio said. “We’re going to get the most done we can between now and the end of school later this month.”

Ensuring eligible students are vaccinated is one piece of the reopening puzzle for September, as the shots have been shown to be extremely effective at curbing the coronavirus. Some details about how schools will operate this fall , including whether students would be sent home if positive cases emerge. Widespread vaccination would likely limit the number of those disruptions.

Private Precedent

Using schools as vaccination sites : A Bronx nonprofit held a pop-up vaccination site at Mott Haven Academy Charter School, and some private schools have hosted vaccine clinics as well. By expanding to traditional public schools, city officials are hoping to reach families who may be hesitant to get the vaccine. (Parent consent is required for children to get vaccinated and city officials are not currently mandating the vaccines for students or staff.)

Although officials said the program would continue during summer school, the timing of the program’s rollout could be logistically tricky. The Pfizer vaccine comes in two-doses, with a recommended gap of . There are 21 days between the start of the school-based vaccine program and the last day of school. Officials did not immediately say whether students would have to return to their school buildings, or a different site, to receive their second dose.

City officials said the program is being launched as a partnership between the education and health departments and the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teacher union. They did not immediately provide a list of schools with on-site vaccinations.

“We want to make the vaccine available and to make it as easy as possible for our families and students to get it,” Michael Mulgrew, the teachers union chief, said in a statement. “Schools are a logical place.”

THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.