Thursday, February 11, 2021



Tragic First-Person Accounts of the Effects of COVID-19 School Closures on Children

For reasons unknown, there are still raging debates over whether or not to reopen schools. Simultaneously, schools in states like Georgia and Florida have been open since the fall and managed to keep the children whose parents want them to attend school in person open most of the time. Where they have not been prohibited, private schools opened nationwide. Multiple studies in the U.S. have shown that transmission of COVID-19 is minimal in the school setting, supported by data across the globe.

Even the CDC has recognized this data, citing “scant” transmission in the classroom. Yet nationwide, children are still learning remotely. Most often, continued closures involve irrational demands from teachers’ unions and teachers’ associations. This debate is raging in several counties in Virginia, where it is up to the individual school districts to decide how to provide instruction. One mother, Yael Levin-Sheldon, has had enough.

She has been coordinating a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to collect data on the negative impact these closures have had on children. Today, she released the data summary for emergency room visits for self-harm and suicide for children between 10 and 19 in her Central Virginia health region. The incidence of emergency room visits in this age group per 100,000 has gone up year-over-year in every single one of the seven counties. Some of the increases are startling.

In Henrico County, Levin-Sheldon’s home county, the rate went from 34.6 per 100,000 in 2019 to 180.8 per 100,000 in 2020. She was motivated to begin collecting data after advocating for schools in her district in June. In the process of her advocacy, she has been called a teacher-killer and a racist in public meetings and online forums. Levin-Sheldon said she is frustrated because all of the private schools in her area are open. Watching her own children’s behavior changes has been devastating.

Her two children were thriving students who loved school and received good grades. Now, she re-teaches them each evening after their remote learning classes to help them to maintain their grades. However, she has needed to seek professional help for both children. Her older child is exhibiting symptoms of OCD and has developed several compulsive habits, including obsessive handwashing. Her younger child has become emotionally labile, showing a wide range of behavior in short periods, from severe anger outbursts to inconsolable tears in minutes.

Levin-Sheldon says there is a school board meeting on Thursday, but the public is not allowed to attend. She expects no progress as the last teachers’ association demand was to fully vaccinate the teachers a month apart and wait the two weeks for effectiveness. The CDC director said today that that was not required. At any rate, it will not happen in Henrico County until the end of March in the best-case scenario. That is right before spring break, and at best, children may get a few weeks of in-person classes before school is out. Levin-Sheldon said:

I know a number of teachers and don’t blame them. Several are ready to return to school and are afraid to speak up. They are being bullied by the Henricho Education Association. I blame a lack of leadership from the school board and by Superintendent Dr. Amy Cashwell.

In Chesterfield County, Kristin Gladstone has similar frustrations. She has a special-needs high school student who is back to school in-person, only because of the small class size. These students are alone in the building, and the student is missing his regular classroom experience outside of the special education program.

Her freshman has attended school for precisely four days since the original shutdown. When they immediately went back to distance learning, her child looked at her and said, “Mom, I’m just losing hope.” This honors student struggled to get average grades last semester and ended up with two Ds. Now, the child is talking about dropping out of school and suffering from decreased appetite, insomnia, and wild mood swings.

Gladstone is functioning as a mother, teacher, and caregiver, taking care of her terminally-ill mother. It is a daily battle to get her freshman to log into remote class and attempt to complete his work — and hers. She is seeking therapy for her child but firmly believes a return to school would have prevented all of this. Just attending for four days in November started to improve her child’s appetite.

School closures have had devastating impacts outside Virginia, as well. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, attorney Laura Grochocki appeared to share the stories she has collected from clients and her community. She represents Lisa Moore, whose son Travis Till committed suicide during the school closure orders from Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. Grochocki is receiving death threats for taking on this case through her small not-for-profit Remember America Action organization. In the interview, she says Moore’s story is just one of the many she has heard, and the foundation cannot take all of the cases her team would like to:

[There is an] outpouring of people calling us and begging us for help. And parents calling us and asking for someone to help them. And the stories of these parents and their kids. Some kids, not just Trevor Till, but at least ten other cases in Illinois that I am aware of , of kids committing suicide. And eating disorders and hospitalizations over depression. And thousands and thousands of kids from low-income, diverse and rural communities not able to go to college because they are not going to be eligible for scholarships because they didn’t get scouted their junior year…….The crisis is out of control and no one wants to talk about it.

Grochocki said Remember America Action would have filed hundreds of lawsuits across the county if her team had the resources to do it. She said this case was a simple Equal Protection case because Governor Pritzker allowed professional and college teams to play but teen athletes have been crushed by the restrictions.

It is long past time for our national and local leaders to end this madness. Not all private schools have invested millions in new ventilation systems and plexiglass. Most of the studies have used commonsense hygiene measures and cloth masks with additional cleaning requirements. The need for more federal spending is a ridiculous excuse at this point.

The disadvantages that children, even in good schools and without learning disabilities, will have compared to their peers in places where schools are open is unconscionable at this point. There is no way to know how long the gap will exist or the long-term effects of the mental health crisis. It is high time someone pulls a Ronald Reagan with the air-traffic controllers and tells these teachers’ unions and associations their members can be replaced in short order or they will start docking their pay. The future of too many children depends on it.

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CDC vs. Biden White House: Again, Teachers Don't Have to Be Vaccinated for Schools to Reopen

After pushback from the Biden White House, Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky is reiterating that schools can safely reopen before teachers are vaccinated for Wuhan coronavirus.

"I want to be clear about what the science shows and what I believe and how we should prioritize. There is accumulating data that suggests that there is not a lot of transmission that is happening is schools when proper mitigation measures are taken. When there is masking, when there is distancing, de-densification of the classroom, ventilation, contract tracing, hand washing. All of those things, when they are done well, the data suggests, the science suggests, that there is not a lot of transmission happening in schools and in fact the case rates in schools are generally lower than they are in the population surrounding it," Walensky said during an interview with MSNBC Wednesday night.

At a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pushed back on Walensky, saying her guidance wasn't an "official" assessment from the CDC, siding with teachers unions refusing to return to work until teachers and students are vaccinated.

"They have not released their official guidance yet from the CDC on the vaccination of teachers and what would be needed to ensure the safe reopening of schools, and so we'd certainly defer to that, which we'd hope to see soon," Psaki said.

The demand for student vaccination is especially excessive, given the vaccine hasn't been approved by the FDA for children under 14-years-old.

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Sen. Rubio amendment would block schools from stimulus funding if they refuse to reopen by April 30

In January, President Joe Biden unveiled his proposed $1.9 trillion Covid relief legislation which would issue yet more checks to American households, this time totaling $1,400 per individual and an additional child tax credit for $3,600 for children under 6 and $3,000 for children over 6.

It would also give $350 billion to states and localities to balance their budgets after record drops in revenue, and $170 billion to schools and universities to supposedly reopen.

The December legislation signed by former President Donald Trump had already put $82 billion towards schools for reopening.

In the meantime, it offers a paltry $15 billion to small businesses that the states are forcing to remain shut down. To be fair, in the December legislation the Paycheck Protection Program was extended by $280 billion. To date it has covered more than 6 million loans at $595 billion combined between the CARES Act and the phase four bill that passed in December, saving as many as 50 million jobs.

The Biden plan would raise the unemployment add-on extension up to $400 a week — this is the additional amount that has been attached to regular unemployment benefits — raising it from the current $300 a week, but still lower than the $600 a week from the CARES Act passed in early 2020.

And, on the virus, it would include another $20 billion for vaccination distribution and $50 billion in testing, coming atop the $20 billion for vaccine purchases, $8 billion for vaccine distribution and another $20 billion for more Covid testing from the December bill.

As it is, Senate Democrats plan on passing the bill using budget reconciliation — averting a Senate filibuster that would normally take 60 votes to overcome — making it a straight up partisan affair. The Senate voted 50-49 to proceed with reconciliation as the vehicle for the legislation.

Meaning, even with just 50 votes in the Senate, if they vote in lockstep, that’s enough for Democrats to pass the bill even if not a single Republican votes for it. They cannot stop it. It is therefore questionable if Republicans will be able to get any provisions into the bill.

But one they should definitely fight for is an amendment by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that would force schools to reopen by April 30 as a condition for receiving funds. The amendment is based on the Put Students First Act.

“If a school continues to cave to the unions at the expense of their students, they should not receive funding. I propose that if a school refuses to offer students an in-person option by April 30, 2021, 100 days into the Biden administration, that funding should be rescinded and directed to school choice and the reopening plans of schools that are prioritizing their students’ needs,” Rubio wrote in a Fox News oped Feb. 2 unveiling the legislation.

Which makes all the sense in the world. After all, does it really cost $1.9 trillion to reopen the Covid economy? No, you just need to get the schools reopen.

More than any other provision offered by the Biden plan, Rubio’s plan could be the key to reopening the economy from the Covid lockdowns. 56.4 million children go to K-12 schools, including 50.7 million who go to public schools.

As millions of children remain home from school, many including special needs children are regressing badly, attending classes from their beds and are generally not being prepared for the rigors of college and being in the workplace. By March, many students will have gone almost a full year without in-person learning.

Under the Biden plan, it is unclear when schools will ever reopen, with the administration proposing to retrofit 130,000 schools across the country with new ventilation. A new 200-page report on Covid response from the Biden administration states, “In the coming weeks, FEMA, in consultation with ED and CDC, will work with states and local governments to utilize disaster relief funds to address barriers to school reopening, including purchase of masks and sanitizing products, as well as necessary emergency changes to school ventilation.”

The importance of reopening schools cannot be overstated. Millions of working parents are being forced to cut back hours or quit their jobs to take care of their kids who would normally be in school.

As a result, females have been disproportionately displaced from the labor force. In fact, females have the lowest labor participation now than at any time since 1987.

Overall, 25 million jobs were lost when labor markets bottomed last April. So far, just 16 million of those have been recovered. How long will it take to recover the 9 million other jobs lost to Covid if schools remain closed after April? If the Rubio amendment is not adopted by the Senate, President Biden and the rest of the country will find out.

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Erasing Classic Literature for Kids

When I was a boy about 11, I committed a crime that changed my life. I stole a book. I was a book thief. I found it in another kid's desk and began reading, hiding it behind some boring textbook, and couldn't give it up.

And when the last bell rang, I hid it furtively under my jacket as if it were some rare, precious and struggling bird, and walked home. It's still with me. I'll never give it up.

That book that opened up the world to me. What was it?

"Odysseus the Wanderer," written for children by the classicist Aubrey de Selincourt. It is a version of the "Odyssey" of Homer, the greatest adventure story ever told. I've since read several translations of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey."

The crafty Odysseus, the man of wrath, was an expert trickster. He duped the Trojans with his Trojan horse, befuddled the man-eating Cyclops and withstood the deadly song of the sirens.

Though he was clearly pre-Christian, I considered the wandering King of Ithaca as a patron saint. There was no trap he couldn't escape with his wits. His story has shaped Western literature -- as well as "Star Trek" -- for some 3,000 years.

But there is one thing Odysseus may not be able to withstand: The woke culture.

The political left and the growing #disrupttexts movement -- fueled by critical race theory -- in American public schools wants him gone.

Classic Western literature, from Homer to Shakespeare, Mark Twain and even Harper Lee, is now being canceled, much in the same way that the Islamic State group and early Christians destroyed ancient statues that offended them.

There is something quite barbarous about it all.

Just a few days ago, zealots in San Francisco began stripping "offensive names" from public schools. Names such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and even Democratic U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, who is a living witness to her own cancellation.

The stripping of names are public events. They pit aging, worried traditional liberals against a radical leftist movement that will devour them as surely as the relentless Bolsheviks devoured the more moderate Mensheviks.

But the purging of great literature often takes place quietly, among woke teachers and librarians. If the classics aren't exactly banned outright or burned, they have another way: To place offending literature on the back shelf, out of the reach of the young, where they're lost to gather dust in the shadows.

Author Padma Venkatraman wrote an essay titled "Weeding Out Racism's Invisible Roots: Rethinking Children's Classics" in the School Library Journal. She supports this purge. "Challenging old classics is the literary equivalent of replacing statues of racist figures," she writes.

"... exposing young people to stories in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm may sow seeds of bias that can grow into indifference or prejudice."

And so, the astounding complexity of great literature and great writers is now reduced, as are so many things these days, to angry zealotry and political correctness.

Shakespeare's glaring sin is his anti-Semitic treatment of Jews in the "Merchant of Venice." But isn't there value in his other works? Do I really have to ask that?

Harper Lee's sin is creating hero Atticus Finch, the white liberal savior of a Black man wrongly accused. And what is the blind poet Homer's outrage? He didn't think of himself as belonging to the West, the way we think of the West.

But when Odysseus enters the underworld and meets the vain and deadly killer Achilles, Odysseus is told this: "I would rather be a slave of a landless barbarian than king of all the dead."

A #disrupttexts leader, Lorena German, author of "The Anti-Racist Teacher," explains her purge this way:

"So, let us be honest, the conversation really isn't about universality ... This is about an ingrained and internalized elevation of Shakespeare in a way that excludes other voices. This is about white supremacy and colonization."

If the new test for all literature, movies, statues -- anything of historic value we consume -- is 100 percent purity, all will fail. And who would grade the test?

When I was young, there were no books that couldn't be read. To deny classic literature was to brand yourself a barbarian.

But now those narrow minds deciding what books children will read are the dictators of the new "tolerant" culture. There is nothing delicious in the irony.

There is great value in diverse characters the young can identify with. I'm not arguing with that. Even Homer understood the multicultural world.

What's irksome is the way offered, as ideological catechism to politically shape the minds of the young. If it meant more kids picking up books and reading, I might understand.

But kids aren't stupid. They're not easily led farm animals, despite what the new Napoleons believe.

If children associate literature with didactic political indoctrination, whether from right or left, the smart ones will put up a wall and shut down. And they won't develop the necessary skills of logic and critical thinking needed to grasp and wrestle with the great conflicting ideas offered in classic Western literature.

Perhaps that's the real plan. Who needs to develop critical thinking when the great books are gone?

Politics is always downstream of culture. And I'm just glad I stole that book when I could. When books weren't placed on the back shelf, out of the reach of a child.

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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