I remember how it was -- JR
CA: State Agency Conducted ‘Mask Raids,’ Interviewed Preschoolers Alone
Several parents at Aspen Leaf Preschool are furious that state child care licensing investigators questioned their children without supervision.
During the investigation, regulators separated children and interviewed them without familiar adults present in isolated rooms. Many Aspen Leaf parents said they believed such severe tactics were only meant to be used in child abuse investigations.
Stephanie and Richard Rosado recently told their 4-year-old son about the importance of not talking to strangers. Only days later, state regulators came to the child’s preschool, isolated him in a room away from his teachers and friends and asked him questions about masking.
His parents, and many others at the preschool, were furious.
Regulators questioned the Rosados’ son as part of an investigation into masking practices at Aspen Leaf Preschool, which operates three locations in San Diego. All three locations were simultaneously “raided,” as some parents have called it, in mid-January. Regulators separated the children and toddlers from familiar adults at each of the centers to ask questions about the preschools’ masking policies.
What’s strange about that decision, parents and teachers say, is that Aspen Leaf officials had already been open with parents and regulators about their decision to not mask children.
Regulators isolated and interviewed children aged one to four, a step many parents say was inappropriate and unnecessary.
“This gross abuse of power is shameful and unacceptable for many reasons,” wrote the Rosados in a complaint. “The people who ordered this to be done and those who participated should be held responsible.”
The California Department of Social Services and its child care licensing program oversee regulatory compliance in preschools. Child care licensing investigators do have the authority to interview children in isolated settings, but many Aspen Leaf parents said they believed such tactics were meant to be used in extreme cases, like alleged child abuse.
Regulators “determined that the interviews were conducted in an appropriate manner and were a necessary component of the required complaint investigation,” Kevin Gaines, deputy director of child care licensing, wrote to one Aspen Leaf parent, who lodged a complaint.
“Staff are trained to conduct interviews with children in a manner that avoids causing undue stress,” Gaines wrote.
An Aspen Leaf adult was in the “line of sight” of each child, who was interviewed, Gaines told the parent.
Child care officials’ reasoning has not soothed parents’ anger.
Connie Wu’s daughter was not yet 2 –years old when she was interviewed by regulators in January. Wu doesn’t know what happened in the room or how her daughter felt – because her daughter is too young to say.
“She’s not developmentally able to tell me,” Wu told me. “She doesn’t have the vocabulary to be able to talk about being interviewed by a stranger.”
Aspen Leaf closed briefly when the pandemic began in March 2020. But when it re-opened in June, it openly did not enforce the state’s mask requirement.
The owners of Aspen Leaf reasoned that children would not be allowed to wear masks while they were sleeping or eating. In other words, they’d give each other COVID-19 no matter what. On top of that, they didn’t believe the masks would be great for children’s development.
Howard Wu, unrelated to Connie Wu, is a part-owner of Aspen Leaf and a lawyer. He believes the state’s child care licensing department doesn’t have the authority to enforce the mask mandate – essentially because of a technicality.
In order to enforce a regulation, the agency must issue a regulation, Wu said. But so far, the child care licensing department has not issued regulations on masks.
Instead, the California Department of Public Health issued a mask requirement. Had the state’s health department tried to enforce the mask mandate, Howard Wu said Aspen Leaf would have either complied or considered whether they had any recourse to fight it.
Child care licensing officials have asserted that they do, in fact, have the authority to enforce the state mask mandate.
The question has not been tested in court.
Howard Wu believes child care licensing officials went after his facilities, because he questioned their authority. Child care licensing officials did not respond to a question about whether they treated Aspen Leaf more severely than other facilities.
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NYC kids see their classmates’ faces for the first time in years
Jubilant city kids were able to behold the full faces of their smiling pals Monday for the first time in years.
“It was surprising to see my classmates without a mask,” said a Stuyvesant High School student named Tasnim. “You see them in a new light. When you see only the top of their face it becomes part of their personality.”
While some students chose to keep their facial coverings, others ripped them off after the city dropped a mask mandate for kindergarten through 12th graders.
Some kids cautiously split the different and tucked their masks under their chins.
“People have been gearing up for this for a while saying ‘What do you look like without your mask?'” said a Stuyvesant freshman. “It’s been a whole thing for the past two weeks.”
Noah Vera, 8, marveled at his unobscured friends. “It was nice to see each other’s faces again,” he said.
Another student said the mask removals vastly improved communication across the board.
“You can actually breathe when you’re playing in the playground and it’s much easier to talk to your friends and teachers,” observed Meison Horie, 8. “I started wearing a mask in first grade and I have been waiting for the rule to change ever since.”
Classmate Kalei Olaes, 9, said he was surprised how accustomed he had gotten to covering his face. “Every now and then I’d think ‘Oh no, where’s my mask,'” he said. “But then I remembered I didn’t care because we don’t have to wear masks anymore.”
A survey of the PS 165 playground found that roughly 1 in 10 kids opted to keep their masks on.
Olaes said about three out of 12 kids kept their masks on in his class and that their choices were respected.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/07/kids-celebrate-as-nyc-drops-school-mask-mandate/
****************************************************‘Master teachers’ on $180k could help boost education standards, say Australian campaigners
Education campaigners want public schools to get a fair go and for “master teachers” – on wages of up to $180,000 to lift standards as Australia’s performance in the global education rankings continues to slide.
That slide has come despite billions of extra dollars going into schools in the last decade.
And despite a push to remove the inequities in the education sector by giving more funding to those who are disadvantaged, unions say it is private students that have benefited the most from federal funding, receiving three times the amount going to public students.
The Australian Education Union (AEU) said the Productivity Commission had found private school students received $10,211 each from the federal government, while public school students got just a fraction of that – $2760.
The bulk of public education funding actually comes from the states and territories – 80 per cent compared to the federal government’s 20 per cent.
So overall, the government said, public schools received the highest level of support, with average per student public funding in 2019-20 reaching $20,181, compared with $13,189 for non-government school students.
The union countered that argument by saying private school fees paid by parents ensured private students were far better off than their poorer cousins in the public sector.
Australian Education Union federal president, Correna Haythorpe said the recommendations of the 2012 Gonski report, which was about finding a way to financially support disadvantaged students, had been ignored by successive Coalition governments.
Figures showed that public schools were only funded, by both levels of government, to the tune of around 90 per cent of what Gonski recommended, according to McKell Institute chief executive Michael Buckland.
The McKell Institute looked across the whole of the sector from early-childhood to primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational education, and concluded reform was necessary, if Australia wanted to compete on the world stage with the likes of China.
The slow running down of TAFE and the flawed funding model for universities, which heavily relied on overseas students, were also problems, Mr Buckland said.
“Australia’s fall in education rankings, underfunded public schools and the long running down of investment in TAFE are shortsighted public policy decisions that hurt us all,” he said.
“We also risk damaging universities for good if we don’t come up with another way to fund it.”
The results of a survey by the AEU released this week revealed that 83 per cent of TAFE teachers reported that their institution had closed courses in the past three years, with lack of funding the most commonly cited reason.
It also found 80 per cent of teachers did not believe TAFE students studying today were receiving the same quality of education as they did two years go.
Meanwhile, Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said the sector took a $1.8 billion hit during the pandemic, when international students were unable to get into the country. In order to mitigate those financial losses, 17,300 full-time, part-time and casual jobs had been slashed.
“The way we fund universities is not sustainable,” she said.
Ms Jackson said the group would be calling on the federal government to invest more and encourage industry with incentives to back university research programs.
Mr Buckland said free TAFE courses in identified areas of skill shortages was an economic reform that would help Australia build back stronger after Covid, while good quality, childhood education from birth to primary school would also benefit kids and the economy.
He said that the Federal Government also needed to do more to combat the shortage of teachers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects by introducing incentives.
Grattan Institute’s Jordana Hunter said a top priority for new education spending was to restructure the teacher career path to encourage high achievers to pursue the profession.
“We should be paying our expert teachers much more and giving them more responsibility for building the quality of teaching in our schools,” she said.
Ms Hunter said the institute, a public policy think tank, recommended two new roles. ‘instructional specialists’ would be paid around $140,000 – about $40,000 more than the top pay for classroom teachers – to work with teachers in their schools. ‘Master teachers’ would be paid around $180,000 to work with several schools to improve practices.
Meanwhile, early childhood education campaigners said one in five kids from disadvantaged backgrounds were already behind their peers when they started primary school – and they were never able to catch up.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
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://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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