Guidelines include social distancing, required wearing of masks for all students and adults inside school buildings, wearing masks outdoors when social distancing is not possible, and the daily taking of temperatures.
A growing number of young Americans are not only ambivalent, but are outright hostile, toward America’s national origin.
Lack of staff will render many if not most Vermont school districts unable to open as scheduled by the last week of August, a Washington County school superintendent predicts. Teachers and staff are applying to opt out of in-person instruction, she said.
National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers union officials in state after state and school district after school district are making it clear they will do everything in their ample power to keep school buildings from reopening.
As Laura Meckler and Hannah Natanson of The Washington Post observe, pandemic pods are “a 2020 version of the one-room schoolhouse, privately funded.”
Home schooling has long been popular among parents whose educational, societal or religious views make them wary of public schools. However, stringent new Covid-19 guidelines apparently have pushed hundreds more Vermont parents to consider the home schooling option.
The problem is that federal policymakers often believe that their one-size-fits-all solution works best and try to dangle funding in front of desperate school districts.
One of the largest teachers unions in the state of California, the United Teachers Los Angeles with 35,000 members, says public schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District should not reopen if certain policies are not implemented on the state and national level, including defunding the police.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of private religious schools in a Montana case that challenged the government’s right to deny a state benefit only to sectarian institutions. The decision in Espinoza v. Montana was celebrated as a monumental win for school choice.
A top school safety official says recent proposals to get rid of school resource officers could lengthen the response time for an armed officer to prevent tragedies such as a school shooting.
The Mount Ascutney School Board seems to be moving slowly on deciding how — or even whether — to further discipline Windsor School Principal Tiffany Riley for expressing some skepticism about Black Lives Matter.
Mandatory masks for students and teachers, health screenings at the bus stop, assigned seats on the bus and plenty of cleaning and disinfecting are all part of the plan to bring students back to school buildings for the start of the 2020-21 school year, according to guidance issued by the state Agency of Education.