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COVID-19
01/27/2023

Why N95 Masks Fail to Stop the Spread
By Megan Mansell Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been assured that community...
An incredible weekly report gauging the impact of pandemic policies on our children and their schools.
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I know the good Burbio very well. They produce software for schools helping to organize their calendars. When the pandemic hit it might have meant the end of Burbio itself but they chose to help with the problem and become the go-to resource for tracking information on the pandemic’s impact on schools and children.
I’m including their latest update which you will find extremely detailed and a powerful read.
Here’s one of my favorite charts: the in-person learning index by state:
Note: California is dead last 🙁
This week we saw a slight uptick in school closures versus the last few weeks and some interesting data trends. Some city districts are reporting their vaccination targets, other districts are reporting the percent of quarantined close contacts who test positive for Covid 19, and we saw districts across multiple states remove mask mandates due to improving metrics related to Covid 19 rates.
Burbio School Opening Tracker– With School Disruption Map Added
Burbio’s School Mask Policy Tracker
1. To date we have captured 605 school districts affected by closures (up from 580) involving 2,319 schools. The 25 district increase is a bit higher than last week’s increase (19) and the week of 10/4 (12) and it shows up in our week to week “closure event” summary. Closures are still well below late August and early September:
2. In news from around the country:
3. As the first deadlines approach for vaccine mandates for staff we highlight recent reports:
4. We continue to see adjustments to quarantine regulations. Management of this issue is a major logistical driver behind schools staying open and we wanted to highlight representative changes:
5. With the above reports of mask-mandate districts moving to mask-optional, we wanted to look at swings in policy at the state level in recent months. Below is the map as of July 20th, 2021, just after the June 30th expiration of many state-wide mask mandates and before the school year started. At that time 49.2% of US K-12 students lived in states with district flexibility, 27.7% lived in states with school mask mandates, 19.6% lived in states with a ban on mask mandates, and the balance (3.5%) lived in states gave districts flexibility for vaccinated students and staff:
Today the largest figure is 42.3% of students living in states with mask mandates (from 27.7%), 30.7% with flexibility (from 49.2%) and the balance (27%) in states that have banned mask mandates, almost all of which have been challenged successfully at some court at some point in the last two months. Florida’s was the biggest change in policy towards banning mandates with the balance of the movement towards putting mandates in place.
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