CDC changes school guidance, allowing desks to be closer
NEW YORK (AP) — Students can safely sit just 3 feet apart in the classroom as long as they wear masks but should be kept the usual 6 feet away from one another at sporting events, assemblies, lunch or chorus practice, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday in relaxing its COVID-19 guidelines.
The revised recommendations represent a turn away from the 6-foot standard that has sharply limited how many students some schools can accommodate. Some places have had to remove desks, stagger scheduling and take other steps to keep children apart.
Three feet “gives school districts greater flexibility to have more students in for a prolonged period of time,” said Kevin Quinn, director of maintenance and facilities at Mundelein High School in suburban Chicago.
In recent months, schools in some states have been disregarding the CDC guidelines, using 3 feet as their standard. Studies of what happened in some of them helped sway the agency, said Greta Massetti, who leads the
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Legislature voted Friday to shut down for several weeks due to an outbreak of COVID-19. Lawmakers in the House and Senate made the move to recess until April 6 with significant unfinished business, including setting budgets and pushing through a huge income tax cut. At least five of the 70 House members tested positive for the illness in the last week, and there are fears a highly contagious variant of COVID-19 is in the Statehouse. “The House has had several positive tests, so it is probably prudent that the House take a step back for a couple weeks until things calm down and it’s not hot around here for COVID,” House Majority Leader Mike Moyle said pandemics. Legislators have floated several proposals that would restrict Gov. Brad Little’s ability to make sweeping directives in the future. The House has also been advancing a bill that would ban local governments from requiring that people wear masks. Little, who wears a mask in public and encourages others to do so, has never issued a statewide mask mandate, but a handful of counties and about a dozen cities currently have such orders in place. Besides the seven lawmakers known to have contracted COVID-19, about that many House and Senate staffers also are known to have contracted the virus this session. before the votes. Four of those who tested positive are Republicans and one is Democrat. Another Republican lawmaker is self-isolating. The chamber has a supermajority of 58 Republicans, most of whom rarely or never wear masks. All the Democratic lawmakers typically wear masks. The three lawmakers who tested positive this week, two Republicans and one Democrat, had all been participating in debates on the House floor. The House, with the illness spreading, requested the Senate recess as well. Two senators contracted COVID-19 but have recovered and returned to the 35-member Senate. The Senate honored the House request and voted to recess about an hour after the House, with Republican Senate President Pro-tem Chuck Winder calling it “an unusual and kind of historic request that has been made of us.” Republican Sen. Majority Leader Kelly Anthon said senators could use the time to prepare for when the Senate convenes again. “We will use this time productively for the Idaho people so that when we come back together on April 6, we will be ready to work quickly,” he said. Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke said after the votes that the delay could be good because it could give the Legislature time to figure out how to spend the $2.2 billion the state is receiving in the latest round of federal coronavirus relief money. Republican leaders in the House and Senate, who control both chambers, didn’t impose a mask mandate this session. “I think maybe when they come back, maybe it will be different,” Bedke said. “But I have no regrets on the safety protocols here to this point.” Lawmakers will be paid the per diem rates to cover their normal sessionrelated living expenses during the recess, and secretaries and attachés will also be paid during the break. Bedke characterized it as essentially a long weekend that many will use to catch up on paperwork and other business. A major goal of GOP lawmakers in the Legislature this session has been curbing the emergency powers of the Republican governor to respond to things like