Wednesday, October 07, 2020


DeSantis: Closing schools in spring might have been one of nation’s “biggest public health mistakes”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that closing down school campuses in the spring as the coronavirus pandemic began to surge across the country might have been one of the nation’s biggest “public health mistakes.”

“In March we may not have had all the information, but in hindsight, knowing what we know now, the closure of schools was one of the biggest public health mistakes in modern American history,” DeSantis said during an appearance on the Drew Steele radio show. “And I think even Europe has said we shouldn’t have closed up.”

DeSantis, who has been pushing hard for students’ return to classrooms in the state, called critics of the effort the “flat earthers of our day.”

“So, now we’re at the point where the people who advocate school closures are really the flat earthers of our day,” DeSantis said. “They’re not doing it based on data. They’re not doing it based on evidence. They’re doing it based on either politics or emotion. And so, the harm of school closures, I think, is really considerable.”

Despite coronavirus cases spiking in the state in July, DeSantis said he has pushed back against keeping schools closed because he expected the outbreak to die down and because children “are not vectors” for spreading the virus.

The Florida Department of Education issued an emergency order in July that would force public schools to reopen or risk losing state funding.

However, Leon County Judge Charles Dodson halted the order, ruling that it violates the state’s constitution. Dodson argued DeSantis and top education officials’ move “arbitrarily disregards safety” and takes away control from school districts deciding for themselves whether it was safe to return.

The judge’s temporary injunction was immediately put on hold when the state appealed the ruling.

The governor noted that more than 1 million students have returned to classrooms across the state as schools have begun to stagger their reopenings, which will begin as early as this week.

“I’m a big supporter of homeschooling for those who want to do it. But you know, we’ve got a lot of blue-collar families and working mothers who have to go to work,” DeSantis added. “They just don’t have the luxury of being able to do that. Taking away face-to-face instruction means their kids fall behind tremendously.”

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NYC: de Blasio seeks to reinstate virus restrictions in some spots

New York City’s mayor said Sunday that he has asked the state for permission to close schools and reinstate restrictions on nonessential businesses in several neighborhoods because of a resurgence of the coronavirus.

The action, if approved, would mark a disheartening retreat for a city that enjoyed a summer with less spread of the virus than most other parts of the country, and had only recently celebrated the return of students citywide to in-person learning in classrooms.

Shutdowns would happen starting Wednesday in nine ZIP codes in the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

About 100 public schools and 200 private schools would have to close. Indoor dining, which just resumed a few days ago, would be suspended. Outdoor restaurant dining would shut down in the affected neighborhoods as well, and gyms would close.

Houses of worship would be allowed to remain open with existing restrictions in place, de Blasio said.

The mayor, a Democrat, said he was taking the action in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading deeper into the city and becoming a “second wave,” like the one that killed more than 24,000 New Yorkers in the spring.

“We’ve learned over and over from this disease that it is important to act aggressively, and when the data tells us it’s time for even the toughest and most rigorous actions we follow the data, we follow the science,” de Blasio said.

Over the past two weeks, the number of new cases of the virus has been rising in pockets of the city, predominantly in neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens that are home to the city’s large Orthodox Jewish population.

Nearly 1,100 people have tested positive in Brooklyn in just the last four days, according to state figures.

De Blasio made the announcement shortly after Gov. Andrew Cuomo complained that local governments with coronavirus hot spots had “not done an effective job” of enforcing social distancing rules.

“If a local jurisdiction cannot or will not perform effective enforcement of violating entities, notify the state and we will close all business activity in the hot spots where the local governments cannot do compliance,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo did not immediately comment on de Blasio’s proposed shutdown in the areas where the virus is spiking.

As many as 500,000 people live in the neighborhoods affected by the proposed shutdown, de Blasio said. He said the lockdown could be lifted in 14 days or 28 days if the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 declines.

De Blasio had said in the past that public schools were largely unaffected by the rise in virus infections in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, but he said Sunday that public schools in the hot spot neighborhoods would be closed “out of an abundance of caution.”

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew praised the decision. “This is the right decision, one that helps protect our schools, our neighborhoods, and ultimately our city,” Mulgrew said Sunday.

The staff at Public School 164 in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, one of the affected neighborhoods, sent a letter to de Blasio on Thursday demanding that the school be closed.

Teacher Frances Hidalgo said it was unrealistic to think the school would be immune from infection when students and staff interact with people in the neighborhood daily.

Hidalgo, a fourth grade teacher, pointed to the high positivity rate in Borough Park. “We don’t live in a bubble. We’re part of the neighborhood,” she said in a phone interview Saturday.

SOURCE

Australia: University funding reforms set to pass Senate after Centre Alliance confirms support

The new funding will prioritize STEM courses

An overhaul of university funding that will see fees for humanities courses more than double will soon become law, after minor party Centre Alliance threw its support behind the changes.

Centre Alliance MP Rebekha Sharkie confirmed on Tuesday morning the party would support the reforms, handing the federal government the crucial vote it needs to pass its Job-Ready Graduates bill through the Senate.

Ms Sharkie, the party’s education spokeswoman, said Centre Alliance had negotiated a deal with the Morrison government that would secure more places for South Australian students and more protections for students who failed first-year subjects in exchange for its support.

“These legislative reforms are by no means perfect but overall Centre Alliance recognises what the government is trying to achieve and what the university sector is calling for, which is funding certainty following the 2017 indexation cuts,” Ms Sharkie said in a statement. “Without change, many universities were at risk of significant job losses and campus closures going into next year.”

The government needed one extra vote to pass its reforms, which will be debated in the Senate on Tuesday, after striking a deal last week to secure One Nation’s two votes.

Centre Alliance senator Stirling Griff emerged as the make-or-break vote last week, after Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie ruled out her support, saying the reforms would “makes university life harder for poor kids and poor parents”.

Labor, the Greens and Independent senator Rex Patrick also oppose the bill.

With Centre Alliance’s support, the Job-Ready Graduates bill could pass the Senate as early as this week. The changes will cement a major restructuring of university funding by hiking fees for some courses, including by 113 per cent for humanities, to pay for fee cuts for STEM, nursing and teaching courses.

The government says the reforms will create 30,000 new places next year, while cheaper fees in certain fields will deliver more graduates in areas of expected job growth.

Under the amendments negotiated by Centre Alliance, South Australia’s three public universities – Adelaide University, the University of South Australia and Flinders University – will be given up to 3.5 per cent extra funding to grow the number of student places at their institutions.

The minor party said it had also secured more protections for students who, under the reforms, would be cut off from accessing HELP loans if they failed 50 per cent of their first-year subjects, through an amendment that would legislate the criteria for exemptions for “special circumstances”.

Senator Griff said the deal was “an excellent outcome for South Australia”.

“This means substantial extra funding for our three universities over four years, over [and] above current funding allocations, and an additional 12,000 students will have access to a university education over a four-year period,” Senator Griff said.

Greens education spokeswoman Senator Mehreen Faruqi slammed the deal, saying Centre Alliance had “chosen to sell out students, young people and our universities”.

“They’ve bought the government spin hook, line and sinker. They should be ashamed of condemning generations of young people to decades of debt,” Senator Faruqi said.

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