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This is our weekly briefing on how the pandemic is shaping schools and education policy, vetted, as always, by AEI Visiting Fellow John Bailey. Click here to see the full archive. Get this weekly roundup, as well as rolling daily updates, delivered straight to your inbox 鈥� sign up for 麻豆精品 Newsletter.

Hundreds of Suicidal Teens Sleep in Emergency Rooms. Every Night: Via .

• “At the E.R., a doctor examined [an adolescent] and explained to her parents that she was not safe to go home.”
• 鈥� 鈥楤ut I need to be honest with you about what鈥檚 likely to unfold,鈥� the doctor added. The best place for adolescents in distress was not a hospital but an inpatient treatment center, where individual and group therapy would be provided in a calmer, communal setting, to stabilize the teens and ease them back to real life. But there were no openings in any of the treatment centers in the region, the doctor said.”
• “Indeed, 15 other adolescents 鈥� all in precarious mental condition 鈥� were already housed in the hospital鈥檚 emergency department, sleeping in exam rooms night after night, waiting for an opening. The average wait for a spot in a treatment program was 10 days.”
• “The girl 鈥� spent the first week of her wait in a 鈥榩sych-safe鈥� room in the emergency department. She grew 鈥榗atatonic,鈥� her mother recalled. 鈥業n this process of boarding, we broke her worse than ever.鈥� 鈥�
• “Nationally, the number of residential treatment facilities for people under the age of 18 fell to 592 in 2020 from 848 in 2012, a 30% decline.”
• “Absent that option, emergency rooms have taken up the slack. A recent study of 88 pediatric hospitals around the country found that 87 of them regularly board children and adolescents overnight in the E.R. On average, any given hospital saw four boarders per day, with an average stay of 48 hours.”

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The Big Three 鈥� May 13, 2022

FDA Updates Congress on Vaccines for Children Under 5: Frustrated by the lack of information related to vaccines for under-5s, of South Carolina summoned the Food and Drug Administration to Capitol Hill for a briefing and :

• The FDA’s Peter Marks told Congress that although the adult vaccines had to meet a 50% threshold for efficacy against COVID-19 infections, that same standard will not need to be met for the vaccines for the youngest group of children: 鈥淚f these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize.鈥�
• If FDA is able to complete its reviews of the Moderna or Pfizer pediatric vaccines faster than anticipated, the agency would move up the meetings of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, currently scheduled in June.
• FDA won鈥檛 wait for Pfizer before starting to review Moderna.
• “Marks also said that the emergence of new variants 鈥� including Delta and Omicron 鈥� has made the process of reviewing vaccines more complex and time-consuming. He acknowledged that it 鈥榳as a little simpler for the original submissions in late 2020, when we didn鈥檛 have the variants and tons of immunogenicity data to go through,鈥� which has made review and authorization of the vaccines for young kids 鈥榬easonably complicated.鈥� 鈥�
• .

New York: , Chalkbeat reports.

• “City officials told local lawmakers that launching the 鈥榝ull-time鈥� virtual schools will be part of the solution to high rates of chronic absenteeism and re-engaging students in the wake of pandemic disruption.”
• 鈥� ‘I believe that virtual learning is here to stay whether or not we have a pandemic,’ schools Chancellor David Banks said.
• “Creating separate virtual schools may help overcome one of the key problems with virtual learning during the pandemic: The task fell to individual schools to figure out how to simultaneously staff in-person and remote classrooms. Standalone virtual schools that rely on separate teaching staff would ease that burden, though it鈥檚 not clear if that is the model officials are planning.”

Affordable Connectivity Program: The White House said 20 internet service providers have agreed to offer $30 high-speed internet plans to low-income families, effectively giving free service to households that qualify for a federal subsidy under the Affordable Connectivity Program.

• “ on internet service from participating providers for low-income households, such as those that receive federal assistance through SNAP or Medicaid.”
• “, but they are a fraction of the more than 1,000 providers participating” in the program.
• Great to see sign up for the benefit.
• New signup website:

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Federal Updates

Federal Communications Commission: Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel circulates ruling to make .

Institute of Education Sciences: Released .

National Telecommunications and Information Administration: Released from its 2021 Internet Use Survey showing “that historically less-connected communities used the Internet and connected devices in greater numbers than they did two years ago. Despite that progress, the substantial disparities that [the administration] has tracked for decades continued to be evident, highlighting the urgent need to work toward digital equity in the United States.” More via .

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City & State News

Arizona: New and from A for Arizona, “” which touches on everything from policy flexibility to “micro transit needs” to grants for families.

California:

• The Los Angeles Board of Education unanimously that had been scheduled to take effect next fall, under a recommendation from Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.
• released its for a proposed statewide broadband middle mile network. The map outlines nearly 9,000 miles of infrastructure intended to serve as a backbone for connection projects to underserved and unserved communities throughout the state.

Colorado: with eye on mental health efforts.

Massachusetts: .

New Hampshire: “ is designed to help families and residents whose education was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic by awarding $1,000 tutoring scholarships to New Hampshire students, which includes public, non-public, home education and Education Freedom Account students. It is the second year in a row the Department of Education has offered the scholarships.”

Tennessee:

• After an extensive battle, despite a state law trying to prohibit their use.
• Nearly from school this year 鈥� a jump of almost 10 percentage points over pre-pandemic years.

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COVID-19 Research

Moderna:

• Said it has of its COVID-19 vaccine in adolescents and children.
  • “The company is seeking approval for the use of its vaccines in three distinct age groups 鈥� adolescents aged 12 to 17 years, children aged 6 to 11 and those between 6 years and 6 months.”
  • “Submissions for all three groups were made May 9.”
• :
  • “Estimated vaccine efficacy was 88% against COVID-19 occurring 14 days or more after the first injection, at a time when B.1.617.2 (Delta) was the dominant circulating variant.”
  • “The effectiveness of the mRNA-1273 vaccine in the trial shown during the Delta variant outbreak in the United States and preliminary results that show neutralization of the Delta variant suggest that the vaccine can provide a protective benefit in children against variants, findings that are consistent with those of other studies. However, the trial was conducted before the surge of the Omicron variant, and assessment of the benefit of the vaccine against this variant is ongoing in the trial.”

As Absenteeism Skyrockets, Schools Get Creative About Luring Back Lost Students: Via 麻豆精品.

• “Chronic absenteeism has hit 40% in the nation鈥檚 two largest districts, New York City and Los Angeles, and is reaching dangerously high numbers in many districts in between.”
• “The issue has fueled creative approaches to reminding parents of the importance of keeping their children in school. Staff members recently gathered at a local Baptist church as part of their newest strategy 鈥� offering information on COVID vaccines, housing and transportation assistance in hopes of pinpointing the reasons children miss school. Families whose children have at least half a dozen absences were more likely to get an invitation or a knock on the door, urging them to attend the event.”

Freshmen, Held Back During Pandemic, Fuel 鈥楤ulge鈥� in 9th Grade Enrollment: Via 麻豆精品.

• “With many young children who delayed pre-K and kindergarten during school closures now flooding back into the education system, an enrollment surge in the early grades was expected. But 15 states and D.C. saw growth in ninth grade of at least 5% compared to 2020-21, and in a few states, including New Mexico and North Carolina, the increase in freshmen far outpaced that of kindergartners.”
• “Retention data in some states and districts back that up. Figures from last fall show that 18% of ninth graders in the Houston Independent School District repeated the year, significantly higher than the district鈥檚 pre-pandemic rate of 10%. And in North Carolina, more than 16% of last year鈥檚 freshman class was retained 鈥� roughly double the rate of past years.”

Routine Saliva Testing for SARS-CoV-2 in Children: .

• “At-home saliva collection in young children is a less invasive option than nasal/nasopharyngeal swabs, especially when accompanied by written instructions for parents/guardians. The completion of the collection by parents/guardians and their children reduces the requirement for interaction with health care workers, lowering the danger of nosocomial infection and eliminating a primary cause of testing bottlenecks. It also eliminates the requirement for supplies like nasal swabs and personal protective equipment.”

Lessons Not Learned: The Disaster of COVID-19 School Closures: Via , senior clinical research fellow in pediatric infectious diseases at University Hospital Southampton.

• “It became apparent surprisingly quickly that children had not played a key role in the initial transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and were not superspreaders in the way they are thought to be with influenza. By the spring of 2020 many European countries had prioritized the reopening of schools, and none of them experienced an early resurgence in cases of COVID-19 nor a rise [in] severe illness.”
• “There is no question that prolonged school closures are one of, if not the single most, harmful non-pharmaceutical intervention at a population level.”
• “It is vital that schools are considered essential infrastructure for any future pandemic planning.”

FDA Limits Use of Johnson & Johnson鈥檚 COVID-19 Vaccine: Citing clotting risk. .

• “Going forward, the single-dose vaccine will only be available to people 18 and older who cannot take one of the other available vaccines for medical reasons, or who simply will not agree to be vaccinated with one of the messenger RNA vaccines made by Moderna and by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech.”

Mix-and-Match mRNA Vaccines May Offer More Omicron Protection: .

Kids’ Odds of Spreading COVID-19 in Households Rising With New Variants: .

Evidence Mounts for Need to Study Pfizer’s Paxlovid for Long COVID: to test the medicine for the debilitating condition, Reuters reports.

Bill Gates on School Closures: “It’s pretty clear, because young people don’t get sick from the disease very often, that we probably, .”

Remembering the 1 Million Lives Lost: who have died from COVID-19.

• Related: The children left behind by 1 million U.S. COVID deaths

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Viewpoints

Teens, High School Parents and Their Perspectives on the Pandemic: Via EdChoice. / /

• 鈥�. Parents are more optimistic about their child鈥檚 future, while teens are more likely to feel neutral, potentially indicating either uncertainty or indifference. High school parents are more likely to believe that their child is ready for life after high school than teens feel they are 鈥� especially those planning on attending college.鈥�
• 鈥淎bout half of teens still plan on attending college after high school, despite the pandemic鈥檚 influence. However, many teens stated they are a little less inclined to do so now compared to their pre-pandemic plans. One out of five high school parents said their child鈥檚 post-high school plans have changed during the pandemic.鈥�
• Related: ? Via Brookings

As Students Struggled to Learn, Teachers Reported Few Strategies as Particularly Helpful to Mitigate Learning Loss:

• 60% of virtual learning teachers said their students had more difficulty understanding lessons;
• 61% of teachers had more students who experienced emotional distress;
• 85% of in-person teachers said live instruction 鈥� either fully or partially in person 鈥� helped students;
• Fewer than 40% of teachers thought asynchronous learning helped a majority of their students.

We Parents of Unvaccinated Children Need More Guidance: Via .

• “We parents of young children who can鈥檛 be vaccinated feel abandoned at this late stage of the pandemic. Federal officials, it seems, have decided to leave it up to us to figure out how to navigate coronavirus risks for our children. This lack of information has bred distrust in parents while putting public health agencies in an unenviable Catch-22 as they prepare to 鈥� finally, hopefully 鈥� vaccinate children under 5.”

New Education Policy Roadmap Aims to Ensure High School Graduates in Every State are 鈥楩uture-Ready鈥�: Civic, CASEL and the Coalition for Career Development Center share recommendations for policymakers.

Not Good for Learning: “New research is showing the high costs of long school closures in some communities,” reports.

Teachers Believe Whole-Child Learning Gives Students the Skills Needed to Succeed: Gradient Learning has released from a , indicating 91% of teachers believe students perform better when schools prioritize whole-child learning.

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…And on a Reflective Note

• Beating the Odds: Rich Strike, in the Kentucky Derby’s 148-year history. is even more impressive.
• Never Give Up: This has to be the comeback of the century.

She lost her shoe coming out of the starting blocks.

Wait for it鈥�

鈥� Rex Chapman?? (@RexChapman)

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ICYMI @The74

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

• Weaving a Stronger Society: Helping First-Generation Students Reach College 鈥� and Build Community on the Way
• Minneapolis: The Teacher Strike Lasted 3 Weeks. The Fallout Will Be Felt for Years
• 74 Interview: David Brooks Talks Education, Cultural Divides and How the Weavers in our Schools Will Help Heal America

For even more COVID policy and education news, .

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

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