BOSTON – Educators’ unions are calling on the state to support their efforts to ensure in-person learning in the fall keeps students, teachers, families and staff safe.
With the Delta variant making its way through the nation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance this week recommending that all teachers, students and staff in K-12 schools wear masks, even if they’ve received a COVID vaccine.
Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said this guidance is welcome. With kids under 12 still not approved to receive the vaccine and the vaccination rate among 12 to 15-year-olds still low, Najimy said she thinks other strategies are needed.
“We can have full, in-person learning as safely as possible this fall,” said Najimy. “Masking was one of three or four critical mitigation strategies that really helped control transmission in the school buildings.”
She added that another critical piece is school buildings’ ventilation systems – she said many districts have schools that need upgrades.
The union is also is urging the Commonwealth to provide continued free and accessible COVID testing.
Najimy noted that while being vaccinated is enough to protect most people, COVID still poses a risk to children under 12 or people whose immune systems don’t respond to the vaccine.
She added communities of color have been hit the hardest by the pandemic, and feels there is a collective responsibility to ensure that everybody is safe.
“We have the right formula to do that in schools,” said Najimy. “It’s ventilation, masking, distancing, hand-washing, and testing. So, there’s no reason why the state can’t step up and provide the leadership that we need at this moment.”
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had been planning to lift all COVID restrictions in schools this fall, and Gov. Charlie Baker said prior to the updated recommendations that he wasn’t considering a mask mandate.
This week, his office said it will review the updated CDC guidance.
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FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — With many Virginians still experiencing pandemic-related unemployment, students at a state community college were able to get certifications for industry jobs despite COVID shutdowns.
Martha O’Keefe, associate vice president of workforce and professional development at Germanna Community College, said a state workforce grant program supported some students at the right time.
When COVID hit, the school got creative and quickly moved classes online. Then, for highway construction courses, instructors and administrators collaborated with the Virginia Department of Transportation to give students the required work-skills assessments by teleconferencing.
“We actually worked with some of the employers where the students were employed, and the employers were willing to do the skill checks at their work sites,” O’Keefe recounted. “So that was a real plus for the students and the programs.”
Some highway construction certifications required pencil- and-paper exams, so Germanna began offering drive-in testing. Some students were able to attend with help from Virginia’s New Economy Workforce Grant Program, which provides partial tuition for short-term training courses.
More than 24,000 Virginians have tapped into the grant program since 2016, according to O’Keefe. It offers help with tuition for non-credit training credentials in a range of high-demand fields, including construction, health-care support and transportation.
She pointed out Germanna focuses on helping students get credentials to make better wages.
“For example, in health care we train individuals to become phlebotomists, clinical medical assistants, nurse aides; we are starting with the EMT certification,” O’Keefe outlined. “And those certifications in and of themselves will help individuals to land jobs.”
The workforce grant program had more than 7,400 students enrolled across the state last year. Germanna had the most, with more than 1,700 enrollments. Of those, about 1,100 students earned credentials for new jobs.
Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.
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LINCOLN, Neb. – Student-loan forgiveness has become an increasingly popular scam targeting young adults, and as an October deadline looms, consumer advocates are warning people to watch their wallets.
Tami Barrett, Lincoln and greater Nebraska branch manager with the Better Business Bureau, said she expects to see an uptick in fraudulent activity this fall as the current COVID-19 pause in federal student-loan payments draws to a close on October 1.
“A lot of people think it’s just older people,” said Barrett. “But actually the (Federal Trade Commission) and the Better Business Bureau reveal that 44% of people who actually get scammed are between the ages of 20 and 29 years old.”
By comparison, just 20% of people between 70 and 79 have lost money to fraud.
People with student loan debt present a giant target for scammers. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 43 million student-loan borrowers in the U.S. owe a total of $1.6 trillion in student loans.
The average U.S. household with student loans owes more than $57,000, with women and people of color holding the most debt.
Barrett said scammers are likely to offer loan holders free extended forbearance and fake “President Biden loan-forgiveness plans.” She said the object of the scams is to steal young adults’ money or their identities.
Still, Barrett said there are ways to avoid falling prey to scammers.
“Never agree to upfront fees,” said Barrett. “It is in fact illegal to charge an upfront fee for the service of lowering federal student-loan payments or reducing student-loan debt.”
President Joe Biden campaigned on canceling student debt, and earlier this month the U.S. Department of Education canceled nearly $56 million in student-loan debt, mostly connected to institutions engaging in misconduct, such as promising jobs or falsely claiming credits would transfer to universities.
If you think you’ve been targeted, the Better Business Bureau offers an interactive scammer tracking tool at ‘BBB.org/ScamTracker.’
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RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Large grants are helping medical schools in Southern California improve diversity, because although Latinos are 39% of the state’s population, they make up only 6% of physicians and 8% of medical-school graduates.
Jeff Kim, program director for the California Wellness Foundation, said his group recently gave $450,000 to support the University of California Riverside School of Medicine’s efforts to enroll and graduate students from communities of color that are historically underrepresented.
“At the current rate of how we recruit and graduate medical students, it would take us five centuries to have enough Latino doctors to match the Latino share of the population,” Kim reported.
The foundation also gave almost twice that amount to the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, to attract more students and retire some of their medical debt. Both schools are currently expanding their programs. Affirmative action in higher education is illegal in California, so schools recruit heavily in high schools and community colleges in low-income communities.
Kim explained doctors who come from the community, speak its languages and understand its culture are able to offer better care.
“Because of historically problematic interactions with health care, certain communities are going to be less trusting,” Kim pointed out. “But if they see people from their own community, I think that drives up quality of care and access to care.”
According to the California Health Care Foundation, the state faces a shortage of physicians overall, a problem that is particularly acute in the Inland Empire and San Joaquin Valley.
Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.
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