Covid-19 – Page 2

Governor to End California Coronavirus Emergency in February

October 19, 2022 By Adam Beam 4 Comments

California’s coronavirus emergency will officially end in February, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday, nearly three years after the state’s first confirmed death from the disease prompted a raft of restrictions that upended public life.

The decision will have little practical impact on most people’s lives, as most of the nearly 600 pandemic-related orders Newsom has issued since the start of the pandemic have already been lifted. And it won’t affect public health orders — including a pending statewide vaccine mandate for schoolchildren that could take effect next summer.

But it does signal a symbolic end for some of the most restrictive elements of the pandemic, as it will dissolve Newsom’s authority to alter or change laws to make it easier for the government to quickly respond to the public health crisis.

“The State of Emergency was an effective and necessary tool that we utilized to protect our state, and we wouldn’t have gotten to this point without it,” Newsom said in a news release, adding that the declaration will formally end on Feb. 28.

Newsom declared a state of emergency for the coronavirus on March 4, 2020, shortly after an elderly patient was the first confirmed death from the disease in California. At the time, there were just 53 cases of COVID-19 in California, and state officials were holding a cruise ship off the coast so it could test passengers before allowing them to disembark in the state.

Since then, Newsom used his authority under the emergency declaration to issue 596 pandemic-related orders. Some were small, like giving people more time to file their taxes or renew their driver’s licenses. But others were life changing, including a statewide stay-at-home order that caused millions of people to lose their jobs.

At first, there seemed to be broad support for Newsom’s actions in the face of a mysterious and frightening new disease. But as the virus lingered, anger and frustration over the restrictions began to build. Two Republican state lawmakers challenged Newsom’s authority to issue pandemic orders — only to lose in court.

“It is past time to end the State of Emergency and focus on the enormous hardships Californians are facing in their daily lives: soaring gas and grocery prices, surging crime, and a homelessness problem that gets worse by the day,” said Republican Assemblymember Kevin Kiley, who was one of the two lawmakers to challenge Newsom in court.

Of the 596 pandemic-related orders Newsom has issued, just 27 are still in effect, according to the governor’s office. All of them will be gone once the emergency declaration is lifted — but Newsom said he will ask the state Legislature to make two of them permanent. One would continue to let nurses order and dispense COVID-19 medication and another would let lab workers solely process coronavirus tests.

The Newsom administration is waiting until February to end the emergency declaration, saying it wants to give state and local officials time to prepare. The administration could reverse itself, should a new variant of the disease emerge or hospitals again become overwhelmed with patients.

Click here to read the full article in AP News

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Covid-19, Gavin Newsom

Don’t bring back COVID mask mandate, business group tells LA County

July 23, 2022 By City News Service 1 Comment

An alliance of Los Angeles County business groups on Thursday, July 21, called on health officials to abandon plans for a universal COVID-19 indoor mask mandate, saying the move would be “heavy-handed” and a burden on businesses that will be forced to enforce the rule.

“This is not a debate about choosing between lives and livelihoods,” Tracy Hernandez, founding CEO of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, or BizFed, said in a statement.

“This is a discussion about educating and empowering Angelenos to make smart choices about protecting their health, our workers and the region’s collective ability to weather this latest wave of infections. We can do better than a heavy-handed mandate at this stage of pandemic recovery and endemic recalibration.”

The county is on track to re-impose an indoor mask-wearing mandate on July 29, based on the current elevated transmission level of the virus and rising hospitalization numbers. The county last week entered the “high” virus activity level as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dozens of counties across the state have also moved into the “high” transmission category, but Los Angeles is the only county that has announced plans to reinstate a mask mandate. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer has repeatedly defended the move, calling it a simple yet effective way of slowing virus transmission and preventing hospitals from becoming overburdened.

Some critics, however, have questioned the need for a mandate, suggesting instead that a voluntary call would raise awareness of virus spread and encourage people to make their own decisions without placing an enforcement burden on small businesses.

In a statement Thursday, BizFed expressed support for a voluntary rule — which is already in effect — but said forcing businesses to enforce a mandate will “stymie economic recovery, confuse COVID-weary residents and further erode public trust in governing bodies.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger last week urged Ferrer to conduct extensive outreach to businesses to discuss plans for the masking rule and the possible impacts of the regulation, particularly since surrounding counties will not be imposing a mandate. Ferrer said such efforts were already underway.

“Our hope is people will go ahead and make every effort to come into compliance,” Ferrer said during a media briefing last week, adding that there will be no exemptions for businesses such as gyms or yoga studios.

“Spread is super high everywhere,” she said. “We have lots and lots of outbreaks, so we are going to ask that everybody go ahead with indoor masking.”

Masks are already still mandated in some indoor spaces — healthcare facilities, transit hubs, on transit vehicles, airports, correctional facilities and shelters. A universal mandate would spread the requirement to all indoor public spaces, including shared office spaces, manufacturing facilities, retail stores, indoor events, indoor restaurants and bars and schools.

Click here to read the full article in the Los Angeles Daily News

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Covid-19, Los Angeles, mask mandates

L.A. County Hits ‘High’ COVID Level; Countdown to Indoor Mask Mandate

July 16, 2022 By Joel B. Pollak 10 Comments

Los Angeles County has reached a “high” level of COVID-19 and has begun a countdown to the re-imposition of indoor mask mandates, according to county health director Barbara Ferrer on Thursday.

As Breitbart News reported earlier in the week, county officials had warned that a mask mandate could be re-imposed by month’s end if the ongoing surge of highly contagious variants of coronavirus continued:

The county’s public health website is registering a dramatic rise in test positivity rate and hospitalization, though deaths remain flat.

According to a briefing Thursday by L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, authorities will reimpose the indoor mask mandate if hospitalizations — currently at 8.4. per 100,000 — reach 10 per 100,000 and stay there for two weeks.

The rise of new and highly contagious variants of COVID-19 is driving the new surge in infections.

On Thursday, Ferrer announced (via KABC-7) that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) standards for community levels of COVID-19, the county had entered the “high” level — driven by data showing 10.5 hospital admissions per 100,000 people — an 88% increase since a month ago.

Ferrer added that if the community level remains high through July 28, the county would immediately begin to reimpose indoor mask mandates on July 29.

Click here to read the full article at Breitbart

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Covid-19, Gavin Newsom

How Did California Schools Spend Billions in COVID Aid?

July 12, 2022 By Robert Lewis and Joe Hong 1 Comment

Imagine your boss giving you a check equal to four months salary and telling you to spend it quickly or risk giving it back. That in essence is what leaders in Sacramento and Washington did for California schools after the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly shutdown classrooms.

The result was a series of stimulus measures that allocated $33.5 billion in state and federal funds, a staggering amount of one-time funding for the state’s cash-strapped schools, equal to a third of all the money they got the year before the pandemic.

So how did they spend it? Billions have gone to things like laptops, air filters and mental health counselors – money to help kids. But much of the funding has come with limited oversight and little transparency, according to an investigation by CalMatters, a nonprofit news organization.

Of the $5.9 billion local education agencies have spent so far from the largest of the stimulus funds, more than a quarter went to a category for “other” expenses, according to the state.

“I’m just not sure anyone has a good handle on how this money was spent,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney at Public Advocates who works on educational equity issues.

CalMatters spent three months examining school COVID relief spending across the state, reviewing thousands of pages of records obtained through more than 45 public records requests.

The records offer a unique glimpse at how school leaders grappled with the generational challenge of COVID in dollars and cents. In the East Bay, for example, Castro Valley Unified spent most of its stimulus money on payroll. On the Peninsula, Burlingame schools spent more than $300,000 on Chromebooks. In Southern California, El Centro Elementary School District spent $3.8 million to install shade structures for outdoor eating, school assemblies and teaching space, and Long Beach Unified spent nearly $13,000 on music recorders.

The records also reveal the other pandemic winners – companies that reaped millions as overwhelmed districts, suddenly flush with cash, started writing checks.

Some are established firms well-positioned to fill massive orders for goods. Others are new ventures launched by savvy entrepreneurs to capture some of the windfall, including a limited liability company headquartered out of a UPS drop box that got a $52 million no-bid COVID testing contract in San Diego.

One chain of virtual charter schools gave $11 million – nearly two-thirds of its stimulus spending last year – to the publicly traded, for-profit company affiliated with the schools. And a Southern California public school district spent $440,000 to hire an evangelical group for a program to help at-risk kids.

Other records reveal clear mistakes or misspending. The state told West Contra Costa Unified School District to shift nearly $800,000 in unrestricted funds to reimburse its stimulus money because the district failed to prove certain payroll costs were tied to the pandemic. Oakland Unified had to reimburse nearly $1 million in stimulus money it apparently misspent on things like commercial trucks and a communication system, records show.

Some districts refused to provide CalMatters records showing where their money is going. That includes San Francisco Unified, which got more than $186 million in federal stimulus funds.

And local educational agencies still have billions of dollars of COVID relief left to spend. If they don’t spend it by various deadlines, they may have to return it.

In a written statement to CalMatters, the state Department of Education said it is “encouraged by the impact that stimulus funding is having on the students and schools of California,” and that overseeing the funds is a top priority.

“The department has a robust monitoring system to ensure that (agencies’) expenditures are in accordance with all applicable federal and state requirements,” according to the statement.

Still, it might not be enough. The state auditor’s office criticized oversight in an October report, saying the state is not using the limited data it receives to identify abnormal spending patterns and scrutinize local educational agencies.

“The state Department of Education has not taken a very active role in managing how the money is being spent,” said Kris Patel, supervising auditor who led the team behind the October report.

Money, money, money

Ultimately, California public schools and charters got almost $29 billion in federal stimulus money. Billions more came from state programs lawmakers in Sacramento created.

To get a cross-section of the stimulus spending, CalMatters asked more than 30 school districts for their accounting ledgers. Those districts included the 20 biggest and 10 random agencies across a geographically and demographically diverse swath of the state.

Castro Valley Unified spent $263,000 in stimulus funds on Freedom Soul Media Education Initiatives, an equity consultant, and $93,000 on restorative justice consultants, records show. Santa Ana Unified gave $393,000 to Angels Baseball LP to rent out the major league baseball stadium for last year’s high school graduation festivities.

“There’s a district in the Central Coast area that bought an ice cream truck with their money” to give away ice cream to kids stuck at home during the early days of the pandemic, said Michael Fine, chief executive officer of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a state-created organization that helps fiscally troubled school districts get their finances in order. “When I was told that I kind of went off.”

One common area of spending was technology. Some districts spent heavily on laptops, hot spots and other hardware, as well as computer programs and support in order to make the switch to virtual schooling when buildings shut down.

Some educators and advocates question the amount of high-tech spending.

“Consulting companies and education service providers have been really aggressive in reaching out to districts to use these funds for new programs that they’re now creating to serve students,” said Amir Whitaker, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Pandemic winners

It wasn’t just technology companies that reaped massive paydays from districts flush with stimulus cash. Personal protective equipment vendors and businesses selling indoor air quality products got lots of deals. Firms touting COVID testing-related services also were in high demand.

In September 2021, San Diego Unified’s board ratified a no-bid contract with a firm called Responsive Partners LLC – which formed during the pandemic in April 2020 and lists a UPS drop box in Orange County as its address – to run a COVID testing program. The district amended the contract a few months later and the agreement – which runs through July 30 – is now worth up to $52 million.

The board ratified the initial agreement at a September board meeting with no discussion, a video of the meeting shows. The board approved the amended agreement in January, again, with no public discussion.

School officials say the contract was worth it for a district that’s had a particularly aggressive testing strategy to keep schools open – offering far more tests and testing sites than many other districts.

Curious spending but little oversight

The California Virtual Academies, a chain of nine charter schools across the state, were probably better positioned than most to weather the pandemic. They didn’t need to worry about social distancing or need to suddenly figure out how to teach remotely. That’s because they were already teaching students exclusively online.

So how did the virtual academies use the $18 million in COVID relief money they spent last year? Nearly two-thirds of it – $11 million – went to K12 Management Inc., a subsidiary of the publicly traded corporation that helps run the schools, according to records the schools provided to CalMatters in response to a records request. And while some of that money is listed as going to pay for computers and peripheral equipment for students, $8.6 million went to “student course materials” or “online curriculum” straight from the corporation, the records show.

The charters and their relationship to the parent corporation – Stride Inc., which was formerly known as K12 Inc. – have been the source of past legal problems. In 2016, following an investigation by the Bay Area News Group, the state attorney general’s office announced a $168.5 million settlement with K12 Inc. over allegations the company and schools misled parents to boost enrollment and inflated attendance numbers.

CalMatters spoke to several current or former staff at the virtual academies who worked during the pandemic. They said teachers and counselors were overwhelmed as enrollment grew and questioned why so much money went to the corporation.

In an email, the company told CalMatters that the state didn’t provide additional funding to cover the increased enrollment and that the corporation provides online curriculum, education materials, a learning management system and “a wealth of other items” for students and teachers.

Most districts and schools are facing little scrutiny for their pandemic spending decisions, outside local administrative offices and boardrooms. Last fiscal year, the state Education Department reviewed stimulus spending at 15 local educational agencies – less than a percent of the roughly 1,700 agencies that got stimulus funds. This year the department is reviewing 50.

Those reviews turned up numerous red flags, ranging from poor recordkeeping to outdated conflict-of-interest policies to outright misspending.

Hayward Unified, dinged by state monitors over stimulus spending in a review last year – has been able to resolve most of its findings without losing money. State reviewers identified six issues at the school in fiscal year 2020-21.

Still, it’s taken a long time for the district to prove to the state it didn’t mishandle money. Districts are supposed to resolve findings within 45 days. As of this month, it’s been more than a year, and one finding remains outstanding.

Hayward’s assistant superintendent of Business Services, Allan Garde, wrote in an email to CalMatters that the district has been busy trying to keep schools open and running, and expected to resolve the last of the outstanding issues by the end of this month.

The slow pace of resolution hints at the limits of state authority.

Click here to read the full article in the Mercury News

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Covid-19, Gavin Newsom, Schools

Could Rising COVID-19 Case Rates Prompt Mask Mandate?

July 9, 2022 By Paul Sisson 2 Comments

Local coronavirus-related hospitalizations have continued to rise in San Diego County, though not quite quickly enough to push the region into the federal government’s highest tier of COVID-19 activity.

Such a move would have been a significant development because the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal indoor masking if the number of recent hospital admissions reaches 10 or more per 100,000 residents. As of Thursday evening, San Diego’s County’s rate stood at 8.9 per 100,000.

While San Francisco and Sacramento counties have already arrived at the highest level — color coded orange — with rates of 10.2 and 15.4 respectively, Southern California’s most populous areas are all still floating just below the threshold. Los Angeles and Orange counties are listed at 9.7 per 100,000, and Riverside County sits slightly below San Diego at 7.2.

Thus far, the California Department of Public Health has not moved to take the CDC’s recommendation and re-institute indoor masking statewide, but local health departments seemed to be keenly interested in seeing what might happen if those currently teetering on the edge were to turn from yellow to the most severe orange level on the federal agency’s color-coded threat map.

According to the county health department’s weekly update, total confirmed and suspected hospitalizations reported in all of San Diego County’s non-military hospitals hit 361 Wednesday, 26 more than were collectively hospitalized one week ago. New cases reported, however, appeared to be falling a bit, decreasing 281 in a week’s time to 1,767 Wednesday.

Those numbers, experts caution, are not the whole picture. They include only “PCR” results performed by health care providers and testing centers but generally exclude positives from home testing kits, which are not reported to county health departments.

Wastewater sampling, which can detect tiny fragments of coronavirus genetic code, has recently been seen as a better way of gauging the true prevalence of coronavirus in the community.

The most recent wastewater data posted by SEARCH, a collaborative analysis group led by scientists at UC San Diego and Scripps Research, show that the virus’s presence declined in late June, falling from about 7 million copies of the coronavirus on June 12 to 6 million on June 29. Levels have remained far below the all-time peak of 46.5 million on January 10.

Despite producing significantly more infections than previous waves, Omicron proved to be far less likely to cause hospitalization and death than its predecessors. Currently, BA.4 and BA.5, the original Omicron’s descendants, make up a significant proportion of new cases, mirroring trends seen nationwide.

There is evidence, noted Dr. Seema Shah, medical director of the county health department’s epidemiology and immunization branch, that 4 and 5 have a more significant ability to put infected people in hospitals. That has seemed to be the case, she noted, in Portugal, a country with a similarly vaccinated population that saw these two subvariants arrive earlier than they have in the United States. Given that 4 and 5 really began to hold sway in mid-to-late January, she said, there is no reason to expect hospitalizations to slow soon. It often takes weeks, after all, for infected people to get sick enough to need significant medical attention.

“The forecasting is telling us that there is a very good chance that this is going to continue, and that we haven’t seen a peak in hospitalizations yet,” she said.

While the state has not yet broached the possibility of re-instituting its previous indoor masking requirements, some are unequivocal about face coverings’ abilities to slow the spread of even the highly infectious 4 and 5 subvariants that have spread so quickly.

Click here to read the full article in the San Diego Union Tribune

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Covid-19, Mandates

What Will It Take For S.F. Public Schools To Drop The Mask Mandate? Officials Won’t Say

March 5, 2022 By Jill Tucker , Annie Vainshtein 2 Comments

San Francisco private schools and many Bay Area districts expect to abandon mask mandates later this month, but the city’s public school district has decided against the change and declined to provide details or dates for when their 49,000 students will be able to drop face coverings.

District officials say they will continue to require masks indoors, noting that county and state health officials “strongly recommend” students and staff continue to use them.

But require and recommend are not the same, and many families and health experts are asking for clarity on what criteria the district is using to decide when it will lift the mandate.

The district said masking is part of the current discussions with the union.

The San Francisco Unified’s stance will leave its public school students following a different set of rules than many if not most private school students in the city, as well thousands of other students across the Bay Area, where officials in most counties have already announced they will lift the mask requirement as of March 12.

While some families felt relief that masks would stay on in San Francisco public schools, others expressed frustration at the lack of clarity and metrics.

Districts in Contra Costa, San Mateo, Solano, Marin, Santa Clara counties as well as many others across the state announced this week they would follow the state’s lead and leave mask use up to individuals, including Santa Clara Unified, San Ramon Unified, Mill Valley Elementary and Mt. Diablo Unified.

Alameda County and Berkeley health officials announced Thursday they would also lift the mandate, which would likely mean some districts there would also make masks optional, although Oakland and other districts had not yet said what they will do.

In San Francisco, at least a handful of private schools have also said they will stop requiring masks, including Sacred Heart Cathedral, Adda Clevenger School and all of the city’s Archdiocese schools, which serve 23,000 students.

In addition, city health officials announced public buildings will no longer require masks either, except during public meetings.

That means public school students can go into city libraries, City Hall, boba shops, malls, restaurants and virtually any other venue or retail establishment without a mask. Classrooms will be virtually the only place they will have to wear one.

Bay Area infectious disease experts say that while SFUSD’s decision to maintain the mask mandate is not in lockstep with many other districts, it has both positives and negatives — and overall, is a complicated issue.

“I see both sides,” said UCSF infectious disease Peter Chin-Hong, saying the current “gray zone” of the pandemic has led to a lot of confusion and frustration, especially as it relates to schools.

Click here to read the full article at the San Francisco Chronicle

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Covid-19, masks, san francisco

As LA Schools Backtrack On COVID Vaccine, Dozens More Districts Push To Mandate It

January 21, 2022 By Jennah Haque, Melissa Newcomb and Caroline Ghisolfi 1 Comment

At least 40 California schools have tried to implement their own vaccine mandate ahead of the state mandate that will take effect next fall.

As omicron rages throughout California, some schools have already added another layer of defense: At least 40 California districts are or soon will require vaccinations for staff or students, or both.

Some of these policies are stricter than Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plans to require vaccination for all K-12 staff and students before the next school year, according to a CalMatters investigation. While large districts like San Diego Unified and Los Angeles Unified have garnered national attention for their independent mandates, several dozen have gone largely unnoticed by state and national media.

Neither the California Department of Education nor any other agency is keeping track of all individual district policies. CalMatters contacted all 940 public school districts to create the first living database recording the state patchwork of COVID-19 vaccination requirements for schools.

County education offices must follow local health guidelines, which the state Department of Public Health ultimately oversees, state education department information officer Scott Roark wrote in an email to CalMatters.

But public health officials aren’t tracking this information either. The California Department of Public Health “does not maintain official records about the actions of local school districts for which there is no formal requirement to report to the state,” the office of communications said in an email to CalMatters.

“I am surprised that there is no central body that regulates school districts,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of pediatrics and of epidemiology at Stanford University. “This clearly isn’t good public health policy.”

Information collected from over 630 school districts reveals that over 1 million students are already affected by some kind of mandate, independent of the upcoming statewide rule. Just about 300 districts’ administrators didn’t respond to several attempts to contact them; 10 refused to comment.

Uneven vaccine mandates

The scope of the mandates varies: Some apply only to new employees, athletes or children attending overnight school trips. Others affect the entire school population.

The uneven requirements across districts are a product of legal concerns, minimal state guidance and local politics.

“There is no way you can come up with an argument where a patchwork approach to anything is going to be helpful for public health,” Maldonado said. “Viruses don’t look at borders…You can have a massive outbreak triggered in a small district that can cross borders.”

Click here to read the full article at CalMatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Covid-19, Legislature, Vaccines

California Throws More Money at COVID-19 Contact Tracing, But Is It Too Late?

January 19, 2022 By Teri Sforza 4 Comments

One expert says that because omicron spreads so quickly, the millions spent on contact tracing could be better spent on more effective masks and more testing

Intensive contact tracing has helped contain COVID-19 outbreaks in some Asian countries. People test positive, they quarantine, and the folks they’ve had contact with are tracked down and asked to — or, in some nations, forced to — quarantine as well.

The U.S. has spent billions on contact tracing, and California alone will have spent $300 million on it through the next fiscal year. But researchers have found that 2 of 3 people with confirmed COVID-19 in the U.S. were either not reached or wouldn’t name contacts when interviewed, and public health authorities haven’t been able to monitor enough cases to stem the tide.

Now, as the pandemic enters its third year, the highly contagious omicron variant spreads like fire through dry grass. The incubation period can be as short as two days. The Centers for Disease Control recommends isolation for as little as five days. More people are testing at home — cases authorities don’t even count in their tallies — and some officials are throwing their hands up and suspending contact tracing.

“(T)he sheer speed of omicron’s transmission means people are exposed, infected and then contagious before the local health department can even identify an outbreak, much less get word to those who are exposed,” said officials in Oregon’s Multnomah County. “Because of that dynamic, contact tracing has become much less effective at lowering COVID-19’s risk, especially when cases are surging so high and when spending time in any indoor public space is essentially considered an exposure for anyone who isn’t up-to-date on their vaccines.”

Financial commitment waning

The financial commitment to contact tracing in California appears to be waning, but remains. The governor’s proposed budget shows that $258.3 million was spent on contact tracing over the first two years of the pandemic, with another $38.9 million going forward through the end of the next fiscal year.

The current and future spending breaks down to a projected $20.6 million this fiscal year, and $18.3 million next fiscal year, said Sonja Petek, principal fiscal and policy analyst for the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

“Contact tracing remains one of our many key tools in responding to the spread of COVID-19,” said a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office. “It’s also an important measure utilized in high-risk and congregate settings. Contact tracing assists with notifying exposed people for possible post-exposure treatment, testing, and quarantine in a timely manner.”

Overall, Newsom’s budget proposes $110 million to increase public health and humanitarian efforts at the California-Mexico border — including vaccinations, testing, isolation and quarantine services — “and expanded statewide contact tracing activities to help keep Californians safe and slow the spread.”

Currently, 268 state employees have been redirected to contact tracing efforts, the governor’s press office said. But experts aren’t sure the investment will bring great returns — at least not right now.

Click here to read the full article at the OC Register

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: budget, contact tracing, Covid-19, Newsom

McCarthy, Foxx Demand Biden Ed Boss Cardona Turn Over Teacher Union Emails

January 13, 2022 By Jesse O'Neill 1 Comment

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Education Committee ranking member Virginia Foxx sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona Wednesday demanding copies of emails between his DOE, the White House and the teachers’ unions.

In the letter, obtained by Fox News, the Congressional Republican leaders blasted federal education officials for “radical spending” during the pandemic and accused them of mishandling school closures and billions of dollars of COVID-19 education relief.

“We noted Congress had already appropriated nearly three times the funding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said was needed to operate schools successfully,” the Republicans wrote.

“Unfortunately, rather than continuing Congress’s bipartisan approach to addressing COVID-19, Democrats advanced their partisan agenda, approving more than $120 billion in additional funding for schools” in last year’s $1.9 billion American Rescue Plan COVID-19 relief bill.

McCarthy and Foxx wrote that Democrats argued “radical spending was necessary for schools to reopen safely for in-person instruction,” but said the claims were proven false by data that showed only 4 percent of the relief funds were used as the vast majority of US schools reopened in the fall, according to the report.

“Despite Democrats’ claims to the contrary, these funds were not needed to reopen schools,” the lawmakers reportedly wrote. “Because of this, some schools are grasping at any project they can find on which to waste these taxpayer funds, including indoctrinating students and staff with racist and divisive ideologies.”

As they accused the Education Department of misappropriating funds, McCarthy and Foxx also called the Biden administration’s handling of academic disruptions “appalling,” as “one million public school students across the country were impacted by district-wide school closures” as 2022 began.

Click here to read the full article at the NY Post

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Covid-19, Democrats, Schools