With the magnifying glass currently on when students and teachers may return to their classrooms, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to alter the jobs of millions of school classified and support service staff. For vital nutrition services employees, experts say that “prevention is the best medicine” […]
Category: Coronavirus
CDE outlines timeline and stakeholder engagement in Learning Continuity and Attendance Plan
This school year’s Local Control and Accountability Plan has been replaced by the Learning Continuity and Attendance Plan, as outlined in Senate Bill 98, the education funding trailer bill. The California Department of Education is holding a series of webinars to guide local educational agencies […]
New report highlights ways to focus on SEL during tumultuous year
With the dust now settling across California as to how teaching and learning will begin in the 2020–21 school year, guidance from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning provides education leaders with recommendations for how to prioritize safe, supportive, culturally sustaining and equitable […]
Pressure to close digital divide gains urgency; learning loss funds one piece of the puzzle
State officials are calling California’s digital divide an “all-hands-on-deck situation” considering the very short time available to equip 700,000 students with computing devices and another 300,000 with hotspots to connect to the internet. The matter — the focus of the California Department of Education’s Closing […]
Waivers to reopen elementary schools explained, but questions remain
New state guidelines banning in-person instruction in counties on California’s monitoring list for coronavirus infections include a waiver provision that could exempt elementary schools, but little detail was provided by Gov. Gavin Newsom in announcing the regulations. Officials from the administration, the State Board of […]
Disease experts caution that community spread must be addressed before letting students on campus
While laying out a few of the many considerations district officials will need to account for when they reopen schools for in-person instruction, infectious disease experts made one thing abundantly clear: schools cannot safely reopen until their communities reduce the spread of COVID-19 beyond the […]
State introduces school reopening regulations, requires masks for students in grades 3-12
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday, July 17, unveiled new guidelines mandating that all California schools in counties on the state’s COVID-19 monitoring list begin the school year solely with distance learning and must meet strict criteria in order to open campuses. As of today, 32 […]
National nurses group calls on government to prioritize health, delay in-person instruction in schools
One of the largest nurses associations in the country is calling on school district leaders and state policymakers in areas where coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are spiking to postpone returning to in-person instruction. National Nurses United, which represents more than 150,000 registered nurses, said […]
Surge in COVID-19 cases causes superintendents to rethink reopening plans
Just when it looked like a hybrid learning model would best position their districts to strike a balance between educational needs and safety, several Inland Empire superintendents say a continued surge in COVID-19 cases in their communities has them leaning back toward a full distance […]
New report finds U.S. digital divide twice as large as previously thought
A new analysis on the U.S. digital divide finds that it is twice as large as previous estimates, according to Closing the K-12 Digital Divide in the Age of Distance Learning from Common Sense Media and the Boston Consulting Group. While a 2018 U.S. Department […]