BBC: US teen’s Snapchat rant reaches Supreme Court in free speech case. “A teenager’s rant that led to her getting kicked off her cheerleading team has reached the US Supreme Court. Brandi Levy sent a profanity-laden post to her friends on Snapchat in 2017, venting her frustrations with cheerleading and her school. But when coaches at the Pennsylvania school discovered the post, she was barred from the squad for a year.”
University of Massachusetts Amherst: UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute Launches New Tool to Track Air Pollution at Every U.S. School. “Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) today unveiled a new interactive, web-based tool for tracking industrial toxic air pollution at every school in the United States. The tool, Air Toxics at School, reports toxicity-weighted concentrations of pollutants to show individual chronic human health risk from industrial toxic air pollutants at the schools’ locations.”
NPR: Should Masking Last Beyond The Pandemic? Flu And Colds Are Down, Spurring A Debate. “A study released this month in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, led by researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, found that across 44 children’s hospitals, the number of pediatric patients hospitalized for respiratory illnesses is down 62%. Deaths have dropped dramatically too, compared with the last 10 years: The number of flu deaths among children is usually between 100 and 200 per year, but so far only one child has died from the disease in the U.S. during the 2020-2021 flu season.”
Wanted in Milan: Italian schoolgirl takes online lessons in mountains surrounded by goats. “Schools in Italy’s ‘red zones’ are closed under the nation’s covid-19 restrictions, meaning millions of children of all ages are taking lessons online from home. Not so in the case of 10-year-old Fiammetta, in the northern Trentino province, who is connecting with her fourth-grade teachers and classmates from high up in the mountains, surrounded by goats.”
The Guardian: Work pressure in Covid lockdown was shattering, say teachers. “One in four teachers who answered questions about their mental wellbeing told the NASUWT union that they had needed to see a doctor or other medical professional because of the pandemic’s impact, with many undergoing counselling or taking antidepressants. A small number of the 4,700 members who replied said they had self-harmed within the last 12 months as a result of their work. Others reported that their relationships had broken down during the pandemic, and nearly one in three said they had increased their alcohol consumption as a means to cope with their job.”
ProPublica: My Kids’ School Closed Again. So I Started Calling Experts.. “Here is the minute I finally lost it: Sunday, March 21, at 9:34 p.m. That’s when my wife and I got an email saying our kids’ New York City public elementary school would be closed yet again. Testing had found two positive COVID-19 cases among nearly 700 students and staff.”
New York Times: Why Virus Tests at One Elite School Ran Afoul of Regulators. “It was supposed to be a pandemic triumph, a way for a prestigious school to keep its doors open when many others could not. Instead, the coronavirus testing program at New Trier High School, outside Chicago, offers a cautionary lesson about what happens when educators are asked to take on public health responsibilities.”
Reuters: Another danger for kids in the age of COVID: Failing grades. ” Like millions of American children, Brody Cotton has not seen the inside of a classroom in more than a year. As the COVID-19 pandemic left him navigating 7th grade from his couch in Carlsbad, California, Brody’s grades dropped from As and Bs to a D and two Fs last semester.”
CBS Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Launches New Tool To Track COVID Pandemic’s Impact On Education. “The Global Education Recovery Tracker — which was a collaborative effort between the Baltimore-based university, The World Banka and UNICEF — will help assist countries’ decisions on their reopening and recovery efforts. The tool captures information on the status of schooling, modalities of learning, availability of remedial education support and status of vaccines for teachers.”
Canada NewsWire: New Interactive Tool Helps Users Better Understand Impacts of COVID-19 School Closures on Young Canadians (PRESS RELEASE). “The School Closures and COVID-19: Interactive tool brings together existing information about children and youth who were already known to be vulnerable before the pandemic, as well as available data on the impacts of temporary school closures on young Canadians. The tool, which includes interactive maps that identify the location of vulnerable communities, provides policy makers, industry leaders, teachers and parents with a single point of access to Statistics Canada data about this topic.”
AP: AP-NORC poll: Learning setbacks a top concern for parents. “Parents across the U.S. are conflicted about reopening schools. Most are at least somewhat worried that a return to the classroom will lead to more coronavirus cases, but there’s an even deeper fear that their children are falling behind in school while at home.”
Washington Post: The missing students of the pandemic. “Rich Pimentel had already tried searching in a trailer park and a migrant camp when he started driving toward the third and final address listed in the student’s school file. He followed his GPS to a neighborhood on the edge of the desert, an oasis of palm trees and swimming pools protected by a steel gate. “Wow,” Pimentel said, as he rolled down his window and pulled up to a call box. ‘Finally a happy ending. Maybe this kid’s actually okay.’ He punched in an access code, but the gate wouldn’t open. He pressed a call button to ask for help, but nobody answered. He waited for another minute, parked his truck, and started to climb the fence.”
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis: COVID-19 transmission rare in schools with masking, distancing, contact tracing. “In-school COVID-19 transmission is rare – even among close school contacts of those who test positive for the virus – when schools heed public health precautions such as mandatory masking, social distancing and frequent hand-washing, according to results of a pilot study in Missouri aimed at identifying ways to keep elementary and secondary schools open and safe during the pandemic. A close contact is anyone who has been within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes in a 24-hour period with someone infected with COVID-19.”
New York Times: Children in elementary schools don’t need to be kept six feet apart, the C.D.C. said.. “The three-foot rule also now applies to students in middle schools and high schools, as long as community transmission is not high, officials said. When transmission is high, however, these students must be at least six feet apart, unless they are taught in cohorts, or small groups that are kept separate from others, and the cohorts are kept six feet apart.”
The Guardian: Covid: viral shedding is greatest in afternoon, study suggests. “The phased return of children to classrooms across the UK has prompted widespread concern that this could lead to an increase in infections. Because of this, college and secondary schoolchildren are required to take twice weekly lateral flow tests, to monitor rates of infection in the community. However, new research, which has not yet been peer reviewed, suggests Covid-19 tests may be less likely to give false negative results if taken during the early afternoon, compared with other times of day.”
