FRIDAY 8/7
FEDERAL
Phase 4:
- Negotiations appear to have stalled. According to the Hill, Democratic leaders offered to reduce their $3.4 trillion package tag by $1 trillion if Republicans would agree to raise their roughly $1 trillion package by the same amount. The effort was an attempt to split the difference between the two sides but was rejected by the White House.
- Friday evening, President Trump said he was preparing to sign executive orders that would defer payroll taxes, pay unemployment benefits through the end of the year, offer eviction protections, and also provide student loan relief.
- Our government affairs partners still believe there will be a deal sometime within the next two weeks as pressure mounts due to pain felt from the expired UI benefits and eviction moratorium as well as the costs with reopening schools.
- From our partners at EdCounsel: Overview of the Negotiations Process and Comparison the federal bills.
Fauci: Cautiously supports sending kids back to school
- “The default principle should be to try as best you can to get the children back to school. The big, however, and qualifier in there is that you have to have a degree of flexibility. The flexibility means if you look at the map of our country, we are not unidimensional with regard to the level of infection.”
- “The bottom line is everybody should try within the context of the level of infection that you have to get the kids back to school, but the primary consideration … should be the safety, health and the welfare of the children, as well as the teachers and the potential secondary effects on parents and family members."
Jobs Report: The economy added 1.8 million jobs during the month of July and the unemployment rate fell to 10.2%. While the numbers edge out economic forecasts, they also suggest a possible slowing down of the recovery. More than 30 million people are currently receiving some form of unemployment insurance.
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STATE
Arizona: Governor Ducey, ADE, Helios Education Foundation, and ASU launch virtual teacher training institute to support Arizona teachers and students run by ASU Prep Digital Prep.
Illinois: School district has a dress code for remote learners: no PJs.
Kentucky: Kentucky Education Association urges schools not to reopen for in-person classes
New York: The Governor announced that all schools can reopen. Schools can decide to open as long as they are in a region where the average rate of positive coronavirus tests is below 5 percent over a two- week period.
Pennsylvania: Schools are facing bus driver shortages.
INTERNATIONAL
Italy: Schools begin to reopen. Where possible, classes will be moved outdoors, or to theaters, parks and museums.
Germany: Two schools close due to outbreaks.
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Middle Class Prosperity: Good piece from the NYT's economics reporter Jim Tankersley: How expanding opportunity for women, immigrants and nonwhite workers helped everyone — and why we need to do so again. "The hopeful truth is that when Americans band together to force open the gates of opportunity for women, for Black men, for the groups that have long been oppressed in our economy, everyone gets ahead."
LEARNING PODS
Once Marginalized, Homeschooling Hits the Mainstream: Homeschool filings in Nebraska were up 20 percent as of late July, and in Vermont they increased by about 75 percent over the same time in 2019.
Businesses and Nonprofits Open Space for Learning Pods: Article about how businesses and nonprofits in Lafayette, LA are providing space and wifi for students during remote learning.
Pods In Boston: How families are using Thepodsquad.com or kidzpodz.com to find other parents for pods.
Crossroads Learning Pods: An initiative in Indiana consisting of a small group of students who meet in-person to complete e-learning assignments with the help of a Learning Pod Director.
YMCA: In Columbus, Ohio the YMCA is offering learning pods for students ages five to 16 who are attending school virtually. Students can be dropped off as early as 6 a.m., and the learning sessions will begin at 8 a.m. All students are required to bring their Chromebooks to complete their assignments, and staff will be ready to assist them
Children's Discovery Museum: Will introduce Learning Pods to give children an opportunity to learn through play, all while maintaining a similar structure to a regular school day. They are offering half-day and full-day options for older children, ages 5 to 10. Tuition for the older children, ages 5-10, will be $250 per week for the full-day pod or $150 per week for the half-day pod. The Little Pod tuition will be $40 per week for Tuesdays and Thursdays, or $25 per day. Learning Pods and Little Pods are both drop-off programs.
Pod School Prep: “Our program is designed to support virtual school programs that public schools are working very hard to put out. Don’t leave your public school. Keep your funding in the public school. Find a way to fill in the support piece, the child care piece, the tutoring piece,” said Sarah Kurtz McKinnon, Founder of Pod School Prep.
Boston Public Schools: Will support some pods.
RESOURCES
Your School District's Reopening Survey: Funny, because...
How would you describe this spring’s remote learning experience for your family?
1. Streamlined and efficient — a welcome break!
2. Reminiscent of scenes from Home Alone
3. Reminiscent of scenes from Contagion
4. A hotbed of despair and criminal activity
The Hybrid Model will combine the key elements of in-person instruction with remote learning, which we hopefully perfected this spring. Your child will be divided into a cohort (A, B, AB, BC, CC, XVY, MCXLVII, and Depeche Mode) based on careful consideration of his or her learning style, social-emotional needs, friendships, and an algorithm our intern designed this summer.
Half of Districts to Reopen: The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) released data from a sample of 477 districts and found that as of the end of July, 40% of districts that have announced reopening plans favor full in-person instruction this fall, and 51% of school districts with announced plans will provide in-person learning at least partially through a hybrid model.
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Proof-of-Work Mechanisms: Super fascinating essay exploring the signaling underlying so many Instagram, TikTok posts and how it might apply to learning.
Why It’s (Mostly) Safe to Reopen the Schools: Great long essay covering the tensions and challenges.
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NWEA Releases Guidance on Remote Testing: New report on lessons learned from administering 400,000 remote tests. Helpful for state and district leaders thinking about 2020-2021 assessments.
OpEds:
Portraits of Immigrants: President George W. Bush announced his new book entitled Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants, which features the portraits and stories forty-three individuals who exemplify our proud history as a nation of immigrants.
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It's The Weekend: Go find a puddle.
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