Emergency physician and leading epidemiologist inBrazil, Dr Fatima Marinho, is seeing symptoms of Covid-19 in children that starkly contrast with the message that has been relayed globally throughout the pandemic that children do not appear to suffer severely from the virus.
Severe muscle aches, diarrhoea, coughing, abdominal pain and hospitalisation – all of these are happening to children with Covid-19 in Brazil, Marinho says.
The latest available data extracted by Marinho on 15 April showed 2,216 children aged between zero and nine had died from Covid-19. This includes 1,397 babies under one year old. Meanwhile, more than 67,000 children in the zero-to-nine years old age group have been hospitalised in Brazil.
Marinho, a senior adviser to the global public health organisation Vital Strategies, tells Guardian Australia: “The epidemic in Brazil is changing the profile of severe cases.”..
The Maryland State Education Department’s digital best practices plan was created to stem the physical, academic and mental sinkholes associated with excessive screen time. It is the result of a 2018 bill, favored by the Montgomery County Board of Education, that recommended offline alternatives and screen breaks every 20 minutes.
There is no evidence that offline alternatives and screen breaks are available to Montgomery County Public School children, not pre-pandemic and not now — despite many parents requesting books and paper assignments to break up the screen time...
...Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said providing virtual offerings to families is a no-brainer. “Good communities provide educational opportunities for all, not just some,” he said...
In The New Yorker, author: Casey Parks. To read the whole story go here.
When Victoria Bradley was in fifth grade, she started asking her mother, Bernita, to homeschool her. Bernita wasn’t sure where the idea came from—they never saw homeschooling on TV. But something always seemed to be going wrong at school for Victoria. In second grade, a teacher lost track of her during parent pickup, and she wandered off school grounds. Bernita went to see the principal, intent on getting the teacher fired. The principal asked if she would consider taking an AmeriCorps position at the school. Bernita cut back her hours at the hair salon she owned and started doing community outreach, assisting teachers and hosting parent meetings.
In 2011, Bernita moved her family—which also included her older son, Carlos—to Detroit’s East English neighborhood, where she bought a three-story, yellow brick house for twelve thousand dollars. Victoria, then in fourth grade, transferred to Brenda Scott Academy, where two girls began bullying her. One wrote “I’m fat” in black pen on the back of Victoria’s shirt. On another occasion, one of the girls spit at Victoria. She screamed at them, and was suspended. (That year, administrators suspended three hundred and forty Black students, or forty-two per cent of the school’s Black population, and another sixteen Black girls were arrested there.)
And:
Early one evening last July, before Victoria’s senior year, Bernita and Victoria pulled into their driveway and found that a container of dish soap they’d bought at Sam’s Club had spilled in the trunk. While Bernita bailed out the soap using a three-ring binder and some old rags, Victoria looked down the cracked driveway and pointed at a swarm of fireflies. “What makes them glow?” she asked.
Bernita watched Victoria chase the fireflies around the yard for a few minutes. This, she thought, was what a Black kid’s life should feel like—happy and unencumbered. She told Victoria to find a Mason jar. They ran through the grass until Victoria had trapped a single glowing insect. Afterward, they sat on their stoop, researching the specimen on Victoria’s phone. They learned that the bugs belong to the family Lampyridae, and that a bioluminescent enzyme makes them glow.
As Victoria scrolled, Bernita laughed. “You do know this is homeschooling, right?” she asked.
Victoria looked up from her phone. The fireflies lit up around them. “Really?” she asked.
“Yep,” Bernita said. “This is homeschooling. This is science. We about to do this for real.”
Black families have only recently turned to homeschooling in significant numbers. The Census Bureau found that, by October, 2020, the nationwide proportion of homeschoolers—parents who had withdrawn their children from public or private schools and taken full control of their education—had risen to more than eleven per cent, from five per cent at the start of the pandemic. For Black families, the growth has been sharper. Around three per cent of Black students were homeschooled before the pandemic; by October, the number had risen to sixteen per cent.
...Montgomery County Public Schools’ interim leader will receive a one-year salary of $295,000, a monthly travel stipend and police protection if needed...
McKnight will receive $33,500 in deferred compensation, and a $1,000 monthly travel stipend.
McKnight will also be entitled to 30 days of annual leave and 25 days of sick leave. She can cash in up to half of those days if they are not used by the end of her term...
...In a separate court filing, the Montgomery County Board of Education asked that allegations that school staff members were negligent and violated the boy’s rights be dismissed.
The board argues that, although the child exited the school, he was in the presence of the assistant principal and was supervised.
The lawsuit alleges that Pfeiffer, the assistant principal, was within feet of the boy when police arrived...
ROCKVILLE, Md. - Some parents inMontgomery Countyare sounding off about why their kids in someelementary schools, may not be able to attend summer school this year.
"Basically I have gotten a ‘Too bad, so sad, none of us can help you,’ and you know that MCPS committed to offering in person summer school for every MCPS student," said Betty Ball, who has two sons, one of whom is a rising Kindergartner...
At 14 years old, Kate Dardis knows what pain feels like and how to work through it. An accomplished gymnast accustomed to training four hours a day, she has met a competitor this year that she can’t beat with exercise or sheer willpower — yet.
Rarely sick before a stomachache kept her home from school for three days in October, the Bloomington, Ill., eighth-grader was hit by a headache in January that still hasn’t loosened its grip. Her heart races. Her body aches. She gets winded climbing stairs and feels dizzy when she changes position. Concentrating on schoolwork is difficult remotely and exhausting in person.
Kate learned last month from a team of doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital that she is suffering from the post-Covid syndrome better known as long Covid. Her Covid-19 test was negative last fall after some teammates and coaches at her gym tested positive, but in February an antibody test ordered by her pediatrician confirmed she had been infected with Covid-19...
Some parents of Black Los Angeles school students opted to keep their children in distance learning after schools reopened in April because they wanted to shield them from inequitable and sometimes harsh treatment on campus, according to a report from a local advocacy group.
Among Black parents surveyed, 82% cited COVID-19 as one factor for keeping their children home and 43% said they were concerned about bullying, racism and low academic standards, according to the report by Speak Up, which conducted focus groups, analyzed district data and conducted its own survey.
The survey of 500 L.A. Unified parents — 96 of whom were black — asked parents about their children’s academic experiences during the pandemic. The opinions expressed by Black parents added new insights into the low return-to-school rates this spring in the nation’s second-largest school district...
...Overall, 12% of LAUSD high school students, 20% of middle school students and 36% of elementary school children returned to L.A. Unified campuses, where the majority of pupils are Latino. Among Black students, 15% returned to high school and 22% to middle school, 36% to elementary school...
Parent preferences for how their children attended school throughout the pandemic have been disparate. Many polls and media reports have tracked the differences in parent preference for in-person versus remote learning, including USC Dornsife’s
Our most recent UAS data, collected from 1,510 K-12 parents between mid-April and the end of May, shows sizable gaps along racial and ethnic lines, with 19% of white parents currently preferring fully remote instruction compared to 43% of Black and 42% of Hispanic families. Similarly large gaps by household income are also evident. Despite progress on vaccines and rapidly diminishing case rates, stark differences by race and income in preference for remote versus in-person attendance persist...
When I came back from lunch, I worked on my creative writing assignment, AirPods on high. As a substitute teacher and a student began arguing behind me, I lowered the volume and turned my head slightly — I did not want it to be too obvious I was listening in. The student, mask down, wanted to eat a sandwich while the substitute pleaded for him to pull his mask up.
Eating in class is typically allowed in my school. However, due to the pandemic, some teachers have limited snacking to the cafeteria so students can remain masked in the classroom.
The student refused to stop eating. The cycle of chewing, pleading and refusal repeated about five times.
The family of a special-needs student is suing Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland for negligence, alleging the county should have provided better oversight of a bus driver who sexually assaulted their daughter.
The complaint says Etienne Kabongo, 65, was caught on camera assaulting the girl, known in the filing as Jane Doe, three times in 2018, but that the footage was never reviewed. They note the cameras on board the bus also caught Kabongo assaulting other students...
A Gaithersburg man was sentenced in U.S. District Court on Thursday to 10 years in federal prison for downloading, viewing and sharing child pornography.
Bruce Ralph Sturtz, now 75, downloaded and viewed more than 1,300 videos and 16 images of babies, toddlers and pre-teens in 2017, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
A Maryland State Police investigator determined in February 2017 that Sturtz had downloaded and viewed a pornographic video of a pre-teen, and that he had software on his electronic device that allowed others to see it, according to the plea agreement. The next month, investigators found more images of pre-teens “engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” on the same device...
Twice a day, a group of adults with disabilities can be seen walking nearGilliam Place, an affordable housing building where they live.
On a Tuesday morning in May, they showed ARLnow their stomping grounds. A recent rain turned everything a bright green, and cicadas droned in the background.
This little community on Columbia Pike was the first to be established by the volunteer-run nonprofit Our Stomping Ground, which connects adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to independent living opportunities and helps them build communities in Northern Virginia.
On the walk, resident Max Loftis, who has autism, said living at Gilliam Place is a great experience.
“I get a lot of opportunities to cook and I’ve made great meals,” he said. “I like the feeling of independence.”
In a different decade, Loftis could have been placed in a state-run institution where he may have been deprived of the ability to cook for himself...
Applications are open for Montgomery Virtual, Montgomery County Public Schools’ (MCPS) virtual learning academy for the 2021-2022 school year.
In order to be eligible for the K-12 online academy, the MCPS student or student’s family must be experiencing extenuating health circumstances that could be helped through virtual learning, according to the application form. Families must provide documentation of the circumstances. If there is no documentation, “evidence of such extenuating circumstances may be obtained through consultation with school staff,” MCPS says. For high school students, other circumstances like work, an internship or dual enrollment at Montgomery College may be qualifying circumstances...
Krista Karch, an Essex resident with ties to the community as an educational consultant, was arrested on July 28 as an alleged co-conspirator in a fraudulent scheme producing counterfeit documents.
The charges brought against Karch, 48, were second-degree forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery in the second degree, telephone fraud in the third degree, and money laundering in the fourth degree.
Karch has an extensive professional career in education, working as an educational consultant in Essex from 2001 to 2008 for Smarty Pants Learning Center and as an educational technology consultant for the Essex Technology Institute from 2001 to 2009...
Karch is currently listed as the director of Thrive Solutions, LLC, in Essex. This organization provides academic support, college and career planning and educational advocacy for students of all ages, according to the organization’s website...
