Tuesday, July 21, 2020


Orange County Board of Education votes to support return to school without social distancing and masks

On the same day that Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified district administrators announced their schools would start online only in the fall, the Orange County Board of Education went a different way.

The conservative-leaning board voted Monday night on its own guidelines: for students to return to campus, without social distancing or face masks.

The lone dissenting vote was Trustee Beckie Gomez, also the only board member to wear a mask during the meeting.

The board has no power to direct any of Orange County’s 27 school districts to follow its guidelines, which are in direct opposition to those issued by the Orange County Department of Education, state public health officials and others.

Monday night’s meeting struck a similar note to a forum called by the board last month, when most of the health and public policy experts represented one side: against masks and social distancing. During the board meeting in Costa Mesa on Monday night, most of the 22 speakers allowed to address the board said they want schools to return to normal.

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Children, they said, have little to no risk of getting coronavirus and restricting them to distance learning can cause serious consequences to their educational progress and emotional well-being. (Discussion during the June 24 forum led to the report voted on Monday night.)

Meanwhile, thousands of people followed the meeting online. And by 8 p.m., a petition urging the board to follow California guidelines for reopening schools had more than 35,000 signatures and continued to gain momentum. The board, petitioners said, has “a moral imperative and a social duty to prioritize the safety of our schools,” including the use of mandatory masks and social distancing.

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School's Out — Forever?

If the current mindset holds — courtesy of the most successful, media-driven, fear-mongering campaign in the history of the nation — it is likely that going to school will remain off the table for the foreseeable future. And no group is more adamant about maintaining that status quo than one of America's prominent teachers unions.

"We all want to physically open schools and be back with our students, but lives hang in the balance," stated United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) President Cecily Myart-Cruz. "We need to get this right for our communities."

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner concurred. "We made the decision to close school facilities before there was any occurrence of the virus at our schools, and this proved to be the right call," he asserted. "Science was our guide then, and it will continue to be."

Science? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 children under age 15 have died from COVID-19. By contrast, in a typical year, 190 children die of the flu, 436 from suicide, 625 from homicide, and 4,114 from unintentional deaths. Moreover, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a group representing 67,000 pediatricians, issued a release in which it "strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school."

The AAP outlined a number of guidelines that should be followed with regard to minimizing the spread of COVID, but that wasn't the only aspect of science its experts considered. "Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation," the release adds.

Nonetheless, if there is one aspect of this pandemic that has been held hostage by media-driven political considerations, science goes to the top of the list. Thus, when President Donald Trump warned he would pressure governors by withholding federal funds from districts that refused to open, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin accused him of wanting "to kill your kids." When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos stated that CDC guidelines are "meant to be flexible and meant to be applied as appropriate for the situation," and that a hybrid model of virtual and in-person learning is "not a valid choice for families," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi labeled those assertions as "appalling."

That Sweden's schools have remained open throughout the pandemic, and nations like Denmark, Austria, Norway, Finland, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand reopened in April and May, all without significant upticks in virus transmission? That there's an emerging consensus that children are not significant virus spreaders?

"All over the world ... from professors, teachers, mothers, in the United States and elsewhere," people are "stunned that we are willing to just simply destroy our children on some bizarre notion that's completely contrary to the science," asserts Dr. Scott Atlas, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.

Atlas is naive in one respect. The world is not in the midst of a critical election season, one that will literally determine what kind of nation we are going forward. Nor is any other country in the world afflicted with a similar number of opportunistic attorneys looking to turn even a single coronavirus death occurring in a school setting into a cash cow. Nor do other nations endure a wholly unprincipled media looking to inflict as much damage as they possibly can on the current administration.

Which brings us back to the UTLA. It has issued a policy paper in which it asserts school reopenings must be contingent not just on items addressing the pandemic but on a wholly political agenda that includes placing a moratorium on charter schools — and defunding police. "Police violence is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people, and is a serious public health and moral issue," the paper stated, citing assertions made by the American Public Health Association. "We must shift the astronomical amount of money devoted to policing, to education and other essential needs such as housing and public health."

Thus, some public health is "more equal" than other public health. "Everyone who studies mental health in children is sounding the alarm; it's not just the fear, stress, and anxiety, it's the isolation," columnist Jim Geraghty states. "To the extent we can get kids safely interacting with each other again — making each other laugh again — we need to do that. We cannot allow our kids to pay the price for grownups' ideological differences or fears of lawsuits."

Leftists say, "Yes we can." Unions like the UTLA, and the Democrat Party that receives more than 90% of its campaign donations, are essentially a cartel. One so powerful that a child's zip code can literally determine whether that child will receive a decent education or be trapped in one of the many union-run "failure factories" that afflict every Democrat-controlled city in the nation. It is a cartel that also despises competition, which is why the UTLA and other unions seek to undermine charter schools, even though the public favors them by a two-to-one margin — a ratio that increases to three-to-one among the black Americans about whom unions and Democrats purport to care so deeply.

"We are so cowed with fear by the unknown potential of this virus that we are willing to sacrifice everything in service to its eradication, which is not even remotely guaranteed," writes columnist Libby Emmons. "If our nation plunges into chaos at the hands of a generation of people who know nothing about math, science, civics, history, or literature, who get their information from endless YouTube gaming videos, it will not be the fault of the pandemic, but our own."

Emmons is also somewhat naive. Our nation has already been plunged into chaos by progressives who see that chaos as their surest route to permanent power. And just as it has for the better part of 60 years, the education cartel views thousands of students who know nothing about math, science, civics, history, or literature — and the ultimate dependency on big government such cultivated ignorance engenders — as cannon fodder for the cause.

Thus, it is hardly surprising that a Reuters analysis of 57 school districts reveals that fewer than half take attendance, approximately a third weren't providing required services to special-needs students, and 47 of 57 are providing elementary and middle-school students with half or less than the usual face time with teachers.

The UTLA? As The Wall Street Journal reveals, its "pandemic collective-bargaining agreement prohibited schools from requiring face-to-face online instruction such as Zoom or Skype. Teachers also don't have to work more than four hours per day."

The kids? No classes, no sports, no clubs, no dances, no socialization, no nothing that resembles normalcy. "Keeping schools closed is a way to ensure discord and perpetrate inequity, lawlessness, and stupidity for generations to come," Emmons warns.

Despite all denials, the educational cartel wouldn't have it any other way.

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With no end in sight to the coronavirus, some teachers are retiring rather than go back to school

When Christina Curfman thought about whether she could return to her second-grade classroom in the fall, she struggled to imagine the logistics. How would she make sure her 8-year-old students kept their face masks on all day? How would they do hands-on science experiments that required working in pairs? How would she keep six feet of distance between children accustomed to sharing desks and huddling together on one rug to read books?

“The only way to keep kids six feet apart is to have four or five kids,” says Curfman, a teacher at Catoctin Elementary School in Leesburg, Virginia, who typically has 22 students in a class. Her district shut schools on March 12, and at least 55 staff members have since tested positive for the coronavirus. “Classrooms in general are pretty tight,” she says. “And then how do you teach a reading group, how do you teach someone one-on-one from six feet apart? You can’t.”

So Curfman—who has an autoimmune disease that makes her more vulnerable to COVID-19—consulted her doctor, weighed the risks of returning to school and decided to retire early after 28 years of teaching. At 55, she’s eligible for partial retirement benefits and will take home less pay than if she had worked for a few more years, but the decision gave her peace of mind.

“It’s either that or risk your health,” she says. “It’s kind of a no-brainer.”

Recent surveys suggest she’s not alone. Faced with the risks of an uncertain back-to-school plan, some teachers, who spent the last few months teaching over computers and struggling to reach students who couldn’t access online lessons, are choosing not to return in the fall. The rising number of coronavirus cases in many parts of the country, and recent evidence that suggests the virus can spread indoors via tiny respiratory droplets lingering in the air, have fueled teachers’ safety concerns, even as President Trump demands that schools fully reopen and threatens to cut federal funding from those that don’t. (Trump has said that older teachers, who are more vulnerable to the virus, could “sit it out for a little while, unless we come up with the vaccine sooner.”)

About 20% of teachers said they aren’t likely to return to teaching if schools reopen in the fall, according to a USA Today/Ipsos poll conducted in late May. EdWeek Research Center surveys conducted around the same time found that more than 10% of teachers are more likely to leave the profession now than they were before the pandemic, and 65% of educators said they want school buildings to remain closed to slow the spread of the virus.

But the pressure to reopen schools is strong. Recent studies show that students have likely suffered significant learning loss during this period of remote schooling, worsening the achievement gap between affluent and low-income students.

Meanwhile, research shows that children are much less likely to suffer the most severe health effects of the virus. The American Academy of Pediatrics released guidance on June 25, recommending that all back-to-school policies aim to have “students physically present in school,” citing the importance of in-person learning and raising concerns about social isolation, abuse and food insecurity for children forced to remain at home. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, agrees. “I feel very strongly we need to do whatever we can to get the children back to school,” he said during testimony before the Senate on June 30.

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China rebrands Confucius Institutes in effort to quell global backlash

The South China Morning Post reported that Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes will rebrand amid global backlash.
Multiple U.S. lawmakers as well as U.S. intelligence agencies have said Confucius Institutes are nothing more than propaganda centers.

Chinese media is reporting that China will rebrand its Confucius Institutes amid backlash from critics, including the U.S. intelligence community, which has said the institutes act as international propaganda centers for the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2018, President Donald Trump signed a bill that cuts off some federal funding to U.S. colleges that operate Confucius Institutes. However, Campus Reform has identified more than 75 still active Confucius Institutes on America’s college campuses. American lawmakers have called for the closure of Confucius Institutes across the nation because they say the centers pose a threat to America’s national security.

Some universities have responded to these fears by closing Confucius Institutes on their campuses. Others, meanwhile, have held that while Confucius Institutes on other campuses might pose a threat, that's certainly not the case for their college.

According to the South China Morning Post, Beijing has decided to rename Hanban, the headquarters for its Confucius Institutes, to the "Ministry of Education Centre for Language Education and Cooperation." The SCMP is owned by the Chinese company Alibaba, which has strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

The purpose of the new centre would be to “uphold the concept of openness, inclusiveness, and respect, trust, and strive to provide assistance to people from all over the world in learning Chinese as much as possible” Ma Jianfei, deputy director and Communist Party secretary of the Confucius Institute Headquarters, said during the online National Chinese Language Conference in June.

“The Center for Language Education and Cooperation hopes to continue to increase cooperation with relevant institutions in the United States, jointly build a more focused, pragmatic, and efficient new model of China-US language exchange, and make efforts to promote cultural exchanges between China and the United States and enhance mutual understanding between the two peoples,” Jianfei continued.

Professor at the International School of Tongji University in Shanghai Sun Yixue told the South China Morning Post that the name change was “related to various kinds of pressure, but it is by no means succumbing to them.”

“It is a manifestation of Chinese culture that regards harmony as a precious cultural tradition,” Sun continued.

“It is a timely adjustment made by China to adapt to the new situation of world language and cultural exchanges, but this does not mean that all overseas Confucius Institutes should be renamed accordingly,”  Yixue concluded.

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