Legislature offers cash to get kids back in class
SACRAMENTO » California lawmakers on Thursday approved a $6.6 billion plan aimed at pressuring school districts to return students to the classroom before the end of the school year.
The bill does not order school districts to resume inperson instruction and it does not say parents must send their kids back to the classroom if they don’t want to.
Instead, the state will dangle $2 billion before cash-strapped school boards, offering them a share of that money if they offer in-person instruction by the end of the month.
Districts that resume inperson learning after that date would get a smaller share of the money.
“We need to get the schools reopen. I know it’s hard, but today we are providing powerful tools for schools to move into this direction,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who pleaded with his school district to accept the money and offer inperson instruction.
Most of California’s 6.1 million students in 1,037 public school districts have been learning from home since last March because of the pandemic.
The bill passed both houses of the state Legislature on Thursday by overwhelming margins. But many lawmakers criticized the bill as too weak.
The bill does not say how much time students should spend in the classroom, prompting fears some districts might have students return for just one day per week and still be eligible to get the money.
Republicans in the state Senate tried to amend the bill to require schools to offer at least three days per week of in-person learning, but Democrats in the majority rejected it.
And while the bill requires most elementary school grades to return to the classroom to get the money, it does not require all middle and high school grades to return this year.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he plans to sign the bill into law today. The bill comes as Newsom faces a potential recall election later this year, fueled by anger over his handling of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Newsom has trumpeted the back-to-school proposal as evidence of his commitment to getting students who have studied mostly online into classrooms again.
But Scott Wilk, the Republican leader in the state Senate, said the bill was simply an effort by Democrats to give Newsom political cover so he can “get parents to believe he’s doing everything he possibly can for them.”
“The truth is this bill doesn’t do anything to reopen our schools. I believe with or without this bill, school districts that want to reopen will and school districts that don’t want to reopen won’t,” said Wilk, who voted for the bill along with most other Republicans.
The bill has two sets of rules districts must follow to get the money. The first set applies to school districts in counties where the coronavirus is widespread. The second set of rules applies to districts in counties where the virus is not as widespread.
To get the money, districts governed by the first set of rules must offer in-person learning through at least second grade by the end of March. Districts governed by the second set of rules must offer in-person learning to all elementary grades, plus at least one grade in middle and high school.
However, the Newsom administration late Wednesday changed the standards that dictate which counties must follow which rules. The new standards mean most counties will have to follow the second set of rules requiring districts to offer in-person instruction in all elementary school grades.
“It’s a little dishonest what’s happening,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat from San Diego, who voted in favor of the bill.
The bill also includes $4.6 billion aimed at helping students catch up after a year of learning from home. Districts could use this money to extend the school year into the summer or they could spend it on counseling and tutoring.
All districts would get this money regardless of whether they offer in-person instruction. But the bill said districts must use at least 85% of that money for expenses related to in-person instruction.
Nation deals with a senior problem
Older adults have top priority in COVID-19 immunization drives the world over right now and hundreds of thousands of them are spending hours online, enlisting their children’s help and traveling hours to farflung pharmacies in a desperate bid to secure a COVID-19 vaccine. But an untold number are getting left behind, unseen, because they are too overwhelmed, too frail or too poor to fend for themselves.
The urgency of reaching this vulnerable population before the nation’s focus turns elsewhere is growing as more Americans in other age and priority groups become eligible for vaccines. With the clock ticking and many states extending shots to people as young as 55, nonprofits, churches and advocacy groups are scrambling to find isolated elders and get them inoculated before they have to compete with an even bigger pool — and are potentially forgotten about as vaccination campaigns move on.
An extreme imbalance between vaccine supply and demand in almost every part of the United States makes securing a shot a gamble.
Amid such frenzy, the vaccine rollout has strongly favored healthier seniors with resources “who are able to jump in their car at a moment’s notice and drive two hours” while more vulnerable older adults are overlooked, said James Stowe, the director of aging and adult services for an association of city and county governments in the bistate Kansas City area.
“Why weren’t they the thrust of our efforts, the very core of what we wanted to do? Why didn’t it include this group from the very outset?” he said of the most vulnerable seniors.
Some of the older adults who have not received vaccines yet are so disconnected they don’t even know they are eligible. Others realize they qualify, but without internet service and often email accounts, they don’t know how to make an appointment and can’t get to one anyway — so they haven’t tried.
Still others have debilitating health issues that make leaving home an insurmountable task, or they are so terrified of exposure to COVID-19 that they’d rather go unvaccinated than risk venturing out in public to get a shot.
In Kansas City, Missouri, 75-year-old Pat Brown knows she needs the vaccine because her asthma and diabetes put her at higher risk of serious COVID-19 complications. But Brown hasn’t attempted to schedule an appointment and didn’t even know if they were being offered in her area yet; she says she is too overwhelmed.
“I don’t have no car, and it’s hard for me to get around places. I just don’t like to go to clinics and have to wait because you have to wait so long,” Brown said, adding that she is in constant pain because of spinal arthritis. “I couldn’t do it. My back would give out ... and I don’t have the money to take a cab.”
The pandemic also has closed senior centers, libraries and churches — all places where older Americans might remain visible in their communities and get information about the vaccine. Some public health departments at first relied on mass emails and text messages to alert residents they were eligible, thereby missing huge chunks of the senior population.
To counter access disparities, the Biden administration said Wednesday that it will partner with health insurance companies to help vulnerable older people get vaccinated for COVID-19. The goal is to get 2 million of the most at-risk seniors vaccinated soon, White House coronavirus special adviser Andy Slavitt said.
Slavitt said insurers will use their networks to contact Medicare recipients with information about COVID-19 vaccines, answer questions, find and schedule appointments for first and second doses and coordinate transportation. The focus will be on reaching people in medically underserved areas.
Nonprofits, churches and advocates for older people have already spent weeks figuring out how to reach disadvantaged Americans over age 65 through a patchwork and grassroots effort that varies widely by location.
Some are partnering with charities like Meals on Wheels to distribute vaccine information or grocery-delivery programs like the one which alerted Andrade. Others are mining library card rosters, senior center membership lists and voter registration databases to find disconnected older people.