An Insider investigation found that some of California's highest-ranking education officials and leading public universities helped an elite private school in China seek preferential treatment for its students.
Inland Empire schools reopen as infection rates remain high in Southern California
The West Coast Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committees are organizing the enormous opposition among educators, parents and students to the homicidal reopening of schools throughout the region.
Elementary schools in the Inland Empire a region inland of Los Angeles which is home to some four million people began opening to in-person instruction last week. This reckless move takes place even though the region remains in the state’s most dangerous “purple tier” classification, which designates infection rates higher than seven per 100,000.
Students return to class. (Image credit: AP/Emilio Morenatti)
California counties move to reopen schools and businesses despite pandemic risks
Despite having the most COVID-19 infections and deaths of any state in the US, a growing number of counties in California are beginning to reopen businesses, schools and other public venues like theme parks and museums.
On Tuesday, seven more counties were lowered from the most restrictive “purple tier” to the “red tier” on the state’s “Blueprint for a Safer Economy.” The “red tier” entails a “substantial” level of risk, with 4–7 new cases per 100,000 people and a 5–8 percent test positivity rate, both of which indicate high levels of community transmission of the virus. The counties which have entered the red tier include San Francisco, Santa Clara, Napa, San Luis Obispo, Lassen, Modoc and El Dorado.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday morning a new incentive plan he hopes will spur public schools, even those in the purple tier, to return to at least some form of in-person instruction by March 31.
The agreement sets aside $2 billion for schools that return to on-campus schooling for at least grades kindergarten through second grade by the end of the month. California can’t order schools to return to in-person instruction, but state officials can offer a lot of money to those that do.
What Monday s proclamation by Newsom means to the school districts in the desert depends on the school district.