Her project, Rubix, inspired by the Rubik’s Cube and Lego, is a tiny prefabricated home complete with a kitchen, a bathroom and other necessities.

 “It’s intended for independent living with dignity for the homeless population,” Wang said.

Rubix is entirely off-grid, powered by solar energy, and uses bamboo and recycled plastics as its main construction materials.

Unlike any of the other tiny home products that are available on the market, Wang said, “it’s an innovative design that makes manufacturing, transportation and installation cheaper, faster and far more efficient.”

Rubix has an independent plumbing system, so it can also be used in natural disaster relief. 

Wang has been communicating with city council members and nonprofits that are interested in seeing Rubix being implemented in San Diego.

She is also fundraising to create a full-scale prototype. Wang says she’s aiming for a one-time purchase cost of $30,000, compared to the $50,000 per year San Diego shelter beds cost to maintain.

For her work on Rubix, Wang , a nonprofit that provides opportunities for accomplished young people to make a positive difference.

But room rates consume most of the $650 a week her husband earns from construction. The family depends on prepaid grocery cards from the to cover other basic needs.

“Without that, we probably wouldn’t be able to eat some days,” Menkedick said.

Gas station cards allow her to get her 17-year-old daughter to school. A T.J. Maxx gift card purchased a dress for the girl’s first dance. The district, she said, has “gone way above and beyond” to help families in such dire situations.

But those services and others like them could soon be jeopardized. The extra $800 million in federal funding districts across the country have relied on to cover emergency expenses for the nation’s homeless students runs out later this year. 

In , advocates called on lawmakers to extend the spending deadline for another year. Once those funds expire, many will be scrambling to keep serving families in crisis. 

“I don’t think a lot of people realize — especially people in Washington, D.C. — that when they were allocating these funds as a response to COVID, this was money we have actually needed for a really long time,” said Susanne Terry, coordinator of homeless education services for the San Diego County Office Education. “We don’t see it as COVID relief; it’s just relief.”

California’s ‘most vulnerable’

The money came at a critical moment. Since the pandemic, homelessness has continued to rise, with rates hitting last year. Among families with children, there was a over 2022, federal data shows.

The needs are particularly great in California, which has the highest per capita next to Washington, D.C. Last year, the state spent over $7 billion on roughly focused on reducing homelessness, but most of those efforts didn’t reach students. 

Terry’s office used some of its $960,000 from the relief program to create a new position, a specialist who helps shelter staff follow outlining services to  homeless students.

The training came at the right time for Veronica Sandoval, the first-ever education coordinator at Father Joe’s Villages, which runs homeless shelters in San Diego. She was unfamiliar with how to help families, often refugees, who were being turned away from schools because they lacked the required paperwork. The shelter also serves mothers who escaped domestic abuse.

“T���ir priority is surviving and making sure that their kiddos are fed,” Sandoval said.  “Sometimes education is not at the top of the list.” 

With the specialist’s guidance, Sandoval learned how to help parents find transportation, overcome language barriers and navigate the bureaucracy of registering for school. Now, for the first time in the nonprofit’s 70-year history, all of its school-age children — about 180 —  are enrolled.

Sneakers and backpacks 

The pandemic aid legislation, a bipartisan amendment to the 2021 American Rescue Plan, totaled eight times the amount states typically receive from the federal government to who frequently double up with other families or live out of their cars. Many districts received dedicated funding for homeless students for the first time, according to the SchoolHouse Connection report, which was based on a national survey of over 1,400 homeless liaisons.

Some districts used the money for store and gas cards. Others paid for short-term housing, mental health services and technology like laptops and cellphones. 

More than half of the respondents said they plan to use federal Title I funds to continue some of the services, but 35% don’t plan to provide the same level of support.

Like a ‘widget maker’ 

But not all districts have been as efficient as Hacienda La Puente at spending the money. Because the funds will expire later this year, some districts prohibited departments from hiring extra staff that they’d have to let go.

Without extra personnel to purchase supplies and coordinate short-term hotel stays, finding ways to distribute the funds is often viewed “like an added thing on your plate,” said San Diego’s Terry.

Contracting and purchasing rules have also been “roadblocks to quickly and effectively spending” the money, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection. 

She received one email from a frustrated homeless liaison whose request to purchase a van to get students to school was rejected. A state official responded that “a yellow school bus” was the best way to get students to school. 

The liaison wrote to Duffield: “If we had enough drivers and yellow buses we wouldn’t be asking for a van.”

Such hurdles help explain why a quarter of the homeless liaisons worry the funds will dry up before they have a chance to spend it. Ohio districts, for example, still have not spent almost half of the $18.8 million they received, according to the state’s . And have only spent about 45% of the $9.93 million they received.

Liaisons say they need more time to spend the money. Some received it late, and others proposed ideas that were turned down. One New Hampshire district rejected requests to spend the money on eyeglasses, taxis for students and clothes, according to a liaison quoted in the report. Officials said staff first had to “exhaust all community resources.”

Those findings echo Jennifer Kottke’s experience at the Los Angeles County Office of Education, where she serves as a homeless education project director.  The county received over $3 million from the program. She asked to spend $280,000 on school and hygiene supplies — a request, she said, that should have taken about three months to approve. Instead, it took twice that long. At one point, the paperwork required 12 signatures.

Expected in October, the order arrived just last week. The red tape, she said, hampers her ability to help families in crisis and sometimes makes her feel like another “widget maker in the factory.” 

In July, according to California Department of Education data, the Los Angeles office still had over $2.6 million to spend. Kottke used about $400,000 for a tutoring program that has served 500 students, but will terminate at the end of the school year. 

She said she’s not even sure how much funding is left. Some liaisons across the county’s 80 districts didn’t even know they had received relief funds specifically for homeless students. The same was true for 24% of liaisons nationally, the survey found.

“T���re are days where I just feel like I’m spending so much time generating paperwork, that I’m not getting to the core of what I should be doing,” she said. “We’ve got a very vulnerable population. We’re trying to change the landscape of homelessness.”

That investment seems to have mostly paid off. California election results take weeks to finalize, but union-backed candidates are leading in 35 of the 52 races in which the state union spent the most money.

The biggest winner was Rocio Rivas, running for a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District board. The union contributed more than $330,000 on her behalf.

The union supported Shana Hazan and Cody Petterson with $145,000, and they won seats on the San Diego Unified board.

In Sacramento, $123,000 in state teachers union spending helped Tara Jeane, Jasit Singh and Taylor Kayatta complete a clean sweep of school board races.

The only apparent defeat in the areas where the state union spent six figures was in Long Beach, where Nubia Flores trails by 5 percentage points.

In much smaller school districts, even a little spending had its effects. The union has only 39 members in the Placer Hills Union School District, but a $1,500 infusion helped two candidates to victory. The Big Pine district has only 155 students, but it now has two union-backed school board members.
have focused on the fate of school board candidates supported by national conservative political action committees. It would be educational to compile a similar accounting of those largely financed by teachers unions.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

In what may be a national first, New Mexico issued a requiring that all school staff receive coronavirus booster shots or submit to weekly testing.

The state was already enforcing a vaccinate-or-test rule for K-12 workers and other state employees, but due to concern surrounding the recently identified Omicron variant, the state announced that it will require school staff to up their immunity with an extra shot of the vaccine by Jan. 17, 2022. 

Booster shots, infectious disease specialists believe, are the against the new strain.

“We recognize the gravity of the situation,” Nora Sackett, press secretary for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, told The 74. “For folks who are fully vaccinated, they are now required to get their booster shot, if they’re eligible.”

As of Nov. 29, 85 percent of school staff had been fully vaccinated, according to the state Public Education Department. K-12 employees who are unvaccinated, or who have two doses but choose not to receive a third, must undergo weekly testing for the virus, she explained. If staff are non-compliant with the testing regimen, individual school districts will decide on repercussions. 

Only about 9 percent of school staff reported having received a booster shot as of Dec. 7, meaning the vast majority of vaccinated K-12 employees still must submit documentation of a third dose by Jan. 17 in order to avoid the state’s weekly testing regimen.

Outside of schools, the order requires third doses with no testing opt-out for New Mexico’s health care workers. It’s the first booster mandate in the nation that the data team behind the has identified.

“We haven’t seen it anywhere else,” Burbio co-founder Dennis Roche told The 74. 

While numerous districts, including Chicago, gave teachers a day off to get their third shots, he said, “we have not seen [boosters] mandated until we saw it in New Mexico.” 

Sackett, also, said she was not aware of any other states having such a policy on the books.

The published by the governor’s office includes multiple paragraphs outlining the threats posed by the Omicron variant, which seem to have motivated the announcement.  The new COVID strain has been detected in at least , with cases continuing to increase, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In late November, the World Health Organization named the Omicron strain a “variant of concern” just days after it was first identified. Its high number of mutations — including more than the Delta strain on the protein used to latch onto cells — raises alarm for officials. But scientists have yet to determine whether the new version of the virus is indeed more transmissible or better able to evade the protections provided by existing vaccines. More clarity will arrive in the , experts say. For now, the Delta variant remains the dominant coronavirus strain in the U.S. and is responsible for the vast majority of cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

The CDC last Monday on booster doses to recommend that all adults “should,” rather than “may,” receive a third shot six months after their second. A day later, Pfizer CEO and Chairman Albert Bourla announced that his pharmaceutical company from the Food and Drug Administration to extend eligibility for third doses to 16- and 17-year olds.

Alarm over possible threats from the Omicron strain may be translating into more demand for coronavirus immunizations. On Thursday, nearly doses were administered, according to CDC data, a level not seen since late May.

It remains unclear, however, who exactly has been rolling up their sleeves. Counts published by the American Academy of Pediatrics indicate that the number of youth getting vaccinated against the coronavirus had in the seven-day period ending Dec. 1, but the nationwide spike in doses has mostly come after that window.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced a spate of new policies designed to enhance school safety and boost youth vaccination rates. He introduced measures including the and a requirement that Medicaid pay health care providers for vaccine consultations with families. 

“​​We’re going to fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion,” said the president.

Biden also indicated that the CDC would soon release updated guidance on “test-to-stay” programs for schools that allow students potentially exposed to the virus to avoid quarantine if they test negative before the school day. This fall, the practice has grown increasingly popular nationwide as schools seek to keep healthy students learning in person. Test-to-stay schemes would likely expand further should the federal government recommend their implementation.

In California, the state that so far has taken the most aggressive approach to vaccinating its public school students, a federal appeals court on Sunday delivered a win to San Diego Unified School District, against the implementation of its student COVID immunization mandate. Students 16 and up in the state’s second-largest school system will have until Dec. 20 to receive their second vaccine doses if they wish to attend school in person after Jan. 24, when the policy is set to take effect. 

“This latest decision recognizes that we have both the responsibility to protect students and the authority to do so by implementing a vaccine mandate, which is really our best hope as a country to get this deadly disease under control,” Board President Richard Barrera said in a statement.

The case, however, may be ongoing according to Paul Jonna, the attorney representing the lawsuit’s plaintiff, a 16-year-old high school junior who sued the district over its mandate in October, citing religious objections.

“We will seek emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as possible,” Jonna said in a statement.

More than eligible San Diego students are fully vaccinated, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. 

Just north in Los Angeles, where a student immunization rule will also soon go into effect, the district published figures Nov. 22 showing that of eligible youth had received at least one coronavirus shot or were medically exempt. L.A. Unified’s mandate applies to all students ages 12 and up.

California is also the only state in the nation to adopt a statewide student COVID mandate, which will likely kick in next school year. But already, a small district in San Diego County has said that it will allow unvaccinated students to continue learning in separate, off-campus buildings, .

“For whatever reason, if the parent chooses not to vaccinate [their child], I still believe that a student deserves every opportunity to reach their potential,” schools Superintendent Rich Newman said.

On the other side of the country, New York City will up the stakes on vaccination even for its youngest residents, requiring restaurants and movie theaters by Dec. 14 to of children ages 5 to 11, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.

Back in New Mexico, bracing for the possible threats of the Omicron variant, acting Health Secretary David Scrase shared his reasoning on the state’s new booster requirement.

“New Mexico isn’t an island,” he said, “and we can’t prevent the new variant from arriving here. So we must defend ourselves with the tools we know to work.”

The cases arrive as schools have become a culture war flashpoint in a nation divided over its pandemic response and reckonings with racism past and present.

Classroom coronavirus safety measures such as masking requirements and teacher vaccine mandates have , and in some cases, even violence — with reports of .

Meanwhile, local school boards have become the of superheated debates over the perceived encroachment of critical race theory into U.S. curricula, spurring conservative takeovers that have led to the departure of .

Tensions have escalated so high that the National School Board Association urged the Biden administration to protect school leaders who faced “an immediate threat” from what they called “domestic terrorism.” The group on Friday for the letter’s strong language, but their initial message was enough to prompt the U.S. Department of Justice to mobilize the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to combat the spike in harassment.

With the politics of school policymaking red hot, here are three key upcoming education cases to watch:

1 ACLU sues Oklahoma over its CRT teaching ban, arguing the law restricts educators’ and students’ free speech

On Oct. 19, a group of educators and civil rights groups — backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Oklahoma — challenging an ​​Oklahoma rule that restricts public school teachings on race and gender issues.

The organizations allege that violates students’ and teachers’ right to free speech, tamping down on classroom discussions of race and gender for political motives. The suit also argues that the state has committed a 14th Amendment violation, because the legislation is so vague that it places teachers’ jobs in jeopardy if they misunderstand its clauses.

The Oklahoma law, which took effect in May, prohibits classroom activities that would make a student feel “by virtue of his or her race or sex, (he or she) bears responsibility for actions committed in the past.” Observers described the rule as an “.”

Though the bill text does not expressly mention critical race theory, the state legislature quickly took up and passed the law while a wave of similar legislation swept through Republican-held statehouses nationwide, some of which did explicitly prohibit CRT.

Critical race theory is not an ideology, experts have previously told The 74, but a scholarly framework that views racism and inequality as ingrained in law and society. However, right-wing politicians and pundits frequently use the phrase as a catch-all term for any classroom content dealing with race.

As a result of the law’s approval, according to the ACLU, school districts in the state have told teachers to avoid using terms such as “diversity” and “white privilege” in their classrooms, and have removed To Kill a Mockingbird, Raisin in the Sun and other seminal books from reading lists.

Because a total of , the Oklahoma lawsuit could prove the first of many challenges to curricular prohibitions, legal experts say, providing a bellwether for future cases.

2 Parent claims discrimination against the unvaccinated as Los Angeles mandates COVID-19 shots for eligible students

On Oct. 8, the Los Angeles Unified School District was for its requirement that students eligible to receive coronavirus shots be vaccinated in order to attend school in person.

The parent, who was not named in the suit, alleged that COVID immunizations are too new to be mandated for young people, and that the district’s policy discriminates against unvaccinated children by denying them the right to an equal education.

Students ages 12 and up in the nation’s second-largest district must be fully immunized by Dec. 19, according to LAUSD policy. Those who fail to comply will need to enroll in an online schooling alternative called independent study to remain in the school system.

Just down the coast in San Diego, a parallel lawsuit with near-identical language and prepared by the same law firm was also against the 121,000-student district, which requires students 16 and up to receive shots by Dec. 20.

Other California school systems and Culver City, as well as Hoboken, New Jersey, have also instituted COVID vaccine mandates for eligible students, and Washington, D.C. is . In early October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that coronavirus vaccines will be required for all eligible students in the state, though the rule will .

The twin cases will provide a litmus test for whether student vaccine mandates, which legal experts have told The 74 may be vulnerable to lawsuits, hold up in court — all while shots for even younger children, ages 5 to 11, are on the verge of authorization.

3 Texas top court halts San Antonio teacher coronavirus vaccine mandate, case moves to Fourth Court of Appeals 

Hours before a teacher COVID vaccine mandate was set to take effect in San Antonio, the Texas Supreme Court issued an opinion Oct. 14 that the district’s policy, delivering a brief win to Gov. Greg Abbott, who has in the state via executive order.

A more final ruling on the state’s request for an injunction against the mandate will soon come from the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio. The Texas Supreme Court , in the words of its authors, was issued only to “preserve the status quo” until the appeals court settles the matter.

School districts across the country have enacted coronavirus vaccine requirements for school staff, including over one-third of the nation’s 500 largest school systems, but San Antonio Independent School District is the only Texas district so far to attempt such a policy in opposition to Abbott’s ban.

What the appeals court decides regarding San Antonio’s rule may prove an arbiter of whether blue cities in hyper-red states will be allowed to follow through on implementing their chosen COVID safety measures amid opposition from state lawmakers.

Districts across the state reported they did not receive nearly as many applicants as anticipated and, as a result, there is some legislative momentum right now to extend the deadline.

School officials attributed the weak response to a number of factors, including summer communication lags and a concern among students that having pass/no pass outcomes on their transcripts would hurt their college prospects.

“Sometimes it feels like our families have some school messenger fatigue, where they don’t always hear them or listen to them,” said Tess Seay, head counselor at Fresno High School in the state’s Central Valley. Of their over 2,000 students, roughly 50 requested grade changes before their district’s Aug. 17 deadline, five days after their first day of school. They expected at least 100.

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The ability to purge a low letter grade from your record has very real consequences. For two students on the cusp of 2.0 GPAs, Seay said the grade change option pushed them over that eligibility threshold for Cal Grants, the state’s loan-free financial aid. Some Cal Grants could provide for college tuition, making a significant financial impact for low-income students.

California legislators in July designed to not penalize students for the challenges that came with remote learning during the pandemic. In addition to the pass/no pass option, families could also request that their child repeat a grade or waive particular high school graduation requirements not mandated by the state.

The law required that districts notify families by Aug. 2 and provide a two-week application period. Many have questioned whether the timeline adequately enabled families — particularly those without regular internet access, or who may have been offline during the summer — to seriously consider their grade change options.

In San Bernardino, students returned to in-person learning Aug. 2 for the first time since March 2020. Anticipating a more hectic than usual back-to-school season as a result, the district opened English and Spanish-language grade-change on Aug. 16 for their 14,911 high schoolers, weeks after many other districts.

By Aug. 31, the district east of Los Angeles received 256 applications — just under 2 percent of those eligible.

“By design, we planned to start [the application window] the third week of school, allowing students, families, and counselors to focus on [the new state policy] and not overlook it in the rush of the start of the school year. This way students were settled into a routine before we brought it to their attention,” Maria Garcia, the district’s communications officer, said in an email to The 74.

Each San Bernardino high school website flags the policy and directs families to . Families were also notified via their district’s phone app [Parent Square], social media and email newsletters.

Nancy Witrado, director of counseling and guidance with Fresno Unified School District, said their application was made available via a fillable PDF, available in Hmong, Spanish and English. While they did not track the demographic details of who applied, she told The 74 that many originated from a high school in northern Fresno county with a history of high parental engagement.

Many Fresno families filled out applications incorrectly, asking to change Bs or Fs to pass; the former would not benefit students and the latter would be impossible. The district is now paying overtime to several registrar and counseling employees to meet about 200 requests.

“We have a lot of follow-up to do, and to try to connect with parents to make sure that they have a full understanding of what it is they’re asking for,” Witrado said.

Fresno Unified stuck to its Aug. 17 cutoff, though Witrado says not many families have reached out after-the-fact. One instance, of an application mistakenly submitted to a student’s teacher, will be honored because it came in before the deadline.

Problems reaching families may not be the only driver behind fewer grade-change requests — some college-bound students were warded off by the worry that a pass/no pass grade carried negative connotations with admissions officers.

Cecilia Roeder Chang, a senior at Gunn High School in affluent Palo Alto, said her district and school did a great job of getting the word out online, and her peers even posted about it on Instagram. Last school year she earned two Cs, in physics and foreign policy, that she considered changing to pass.

“I originally had decided that I was going to. Then I emailed my school counselor, and they replied back that colleges didn’t like that as much. So I decided against [it],” she said.

Roeder Chang, who is applying to both in- and out-of-state schools, was not made aware that all California State Universities and all campuses within the University of California system must grades, or that some Cal Grants require a minimum 2.0 GPA. Her peers did not apply for grade changes, she said, given that they had mostly As and Bs.

The knowledge that some are able to change low grades for the better, after the school year’s end, has garnered mixed feelings.

“I sort of feel conflicted because on one hand, if you do have like lower grades it is helpful, but also on the other hand, if you are one of those people who are getting consistently like higher grades, you can feel like, I don’t want to say annoyance — maybe a little frustration.”

North of Roeder Chang’s Palo Alto, Oakland Unified School District received 660 applications in Chinese, Arabic, English, Spanish and Vietnamese. All of the district’s 13 high schools were represented, and the highest volume of applications were submitted by students at Skyline, Oakland Tech and Oakland High, the largest schools. Only two families have reached out after the district’s Aug. 16 deadline.

“Given this was the first legislation of its kind, we didn’t anticipate a certain number of requests and made sure we were prepared to handle a large number,” John Sasaki, the district’s communications director, told The 74 by email.

From a policy standpoint, advocates caution against permanent alternative grading. The , a national nonprofit that aims to make students prepared for post-secondary education, expressed concern for pass/no pass policies over longer periods, saying they may lead to decreased expectations for students and less accurate student data.

Short-term adjustments to grading policies can be beneficial for students who may need to heal from collective trauma, said one former high school math teacher who now works with the Collaborative. Recalling how his Las Vegas school let up on requirements after a mass shooting in October 2017, he said changing grading policies provided students with needed flexibility.

He said that other supports — like removing deadlines or penalties for late work — may adequately support students without overhauling A-F grading, which feeds into many other systems like financial aid, school report cards and state reporting.

San Diego Unified — the state’s second-largest district — during the pandemic. Only 290 of their 36,000 high schoolers applied for grade changes. The in its communications — recommending instead that the grade be “suppressed” by repeating the class.

Because of low application rates and school capacity to process applications at the start of the school year, San Diego state Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who authored the state law, is now recommending districts extend deadlines voluntarily and is pursuing legislation to formally extend the deadline to October.

“I will say we’re a little disappointed with the lack of flexibility with some of the districts,” . “If you feel like you missed [the deadline], contact the school district. Really push.”

But on Aug. 30, the 2,800-student district began requiring students to wear masks outside as well as in the building — and hasn’t had to send a whole classroom home since. The new policy was prompted by the state’s revised for unvaccinated students, which allow asymptomatic students to stay in school if they meet several conditions, including wearing masks both inside and outside.

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“We are optimistic it is working,” said Kristie Towne, manager of board and superintendent operations for the Solana district, part of San Diego County. “T��� policy is meant to keep as many children in school [and] in class as much as possible.”

With the recent rise in positive cases due to the more transmissible Delta variant, districts like Solana Beach are now enforcing additional measures — policies that go beyond recommendations from most state health departments and the which says masks aren’t needed during recess. The Los Angeles Unified School District was among the first to institute the practice and several other California districts have followed suit. Others as far as Vermont and North Carolina have instituted similar measures but are targeting them to younger students or athletes. One problem: The research behind such moves is pretty thin.

“Outside, there’s an infinite volume of air to dilute the virus,” said Dr. Dean Blumberg, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of California, Davis.

Dr. Benjamin Linas, a Boston University epidemiologist, warns that outdoor masking could even be counterproductive.

“If there is any hope of successfully implementing masks when we need them — indoors during Delta surge — then we cannot insist on masks when we do not need them, and we should not routinely ‘round up’ when not certain,” he said. “Too much masking is real.”

Advocacy groups that were already fighting the state’s mandate that students wear masks indoors argue that requiring them outdoors further hinders children’s social development.

“Outdoors our kids need to be breathing fresh air. They need to have social interaction and share smiles,” said Sharon McKeeman, who founded and in July filed , with Reopen California Schools, against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state health department and other officials. “T���se restrictions are arbitrary, and they are infringing our kids’ rights.”

The measures came as some districts faced criticism for quarantining too many students without symptoms.

In August, in Los Angeles and other districts missed class and did not always have access to remote learning. Other California districts requiring masks outside include the 12,000-student Palo Alto Unified School District, where the most shows two cases districtwide, and the 9,600-student , which had 27 cases in August and seven so far in September.

‘The benefits are uncertain’

Some opponents of mask requirements note that the , which President Joe Biden as soon as he became president, doesn’t recommend masks at all for children 5 and under.

A growing body of research on transmission of the virus shows that the proportion of cases originating outside are well below 10 percent and could be even less than 1 percent, according to a in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

International studies provide further evidence of significantly low risk. A found that out of 7,300 cases, one outbreak resulting in two cases was linked to an outdoor conversation between two people. An showed that about one in 1,000 cases was due to outdoor transmission.

Most outdoor cases are linked to lengthy interactions between people or crowded events, studies show.

“I am having a very hard time thinking of when a school would generate such an opportunity for transmission,” Linas said. “It is not recess or outdoor classwork. Perhaps if a school had an outdoor pep rally in a relatively small stadium with full bleachers and kids on the field, too. I am struggling to come up with a realistic scenario.”

Experts stress that with the Delta variant, local vaccination rates of those 12 and above should guide decisions about whether additional caution is needed.

That’s why Andrew Hayes, a school board member in the Lakeside Union Elementary School District in San Diego County, questions the governor’s inside mask mandate to begin with.

“T��� about being at an 80 percent vaccination rate, but we are still having all these mitigation strategies everywhere,” Hayes said. “I understand that people want to follow the experts, but they aren’t allowing the experts in education to make decisions.”

His district has not yet required masks outside, but surrounding districts have.

Hayes is among in California who want to loosen local mask requirements in violation of the statewide mandate requiring students to wear them indoors. The California Department of Public Health on Aug. 23 sent districts stating they could face fines and civil lawsuits if they don’t enforce masking.

The dynamic is the opposite of that in Florida, where districts mandating masks are locked in a protracted legal battle with a Republican governor who says parents should choose.

California isn’t the only state where some districts are going above and beyond CDC guidelines, which state: “In general, people do not need to wear masks when outdoors” for play, recess and physical education. But other examples are more targeted.

The , near Burlington, Vermont, requires masks outdoors for students in K-5 if they can’t socially distance. The district is requiring masks outside for elementary and middle school students, and the district in North Carolina requires athletes to wear masks outside when they’re not actively participating in a game or practice.

In California, McKeeman, with Let Them Breathe, said even in districts that don’t require students to wear masks outside, “there’s still a lot of enforcement to keep it on anyway.”

Some experts recognize the challenges teachers and other school staff members face when children are constantly taking masks on and off. Blumberg, who said he still wears a mask when he goes to the farmer’s market, noted that many classroom buildings in the state’s schools are connected by outside hallways.

For the sake of consistency, he said, “It’s easier to just say, ‘Mask while at school and don’t think about it.’”

Thanks to a surprisingly strong and courtesy of the federal government, school districts across California are now flush with cash. But if district leaders aren’t careful now, they could trigger a round of painful cuts in the very near future.

Consider the case of San Diego Unified (SDU). Student enrollment has been for years, and it suffered a in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In December, the district and, as one cost-cutting measure, spent millions on early retirement buyouts for highly-paid veteran employees.

One contributing factor to SDU’s budget crunch was its history of awarding out-sized raises to teachers. Next year, for example, a ten-year veteran in the district will earn $33,000 more than when she started out. That’s an 85% increase over ten years, in a period when inflation rose only 17%.

Temporary Funds, New Permanent Commitments

The latest infusion of state and federal relief dollars have bought the district a temporary reprieve. But rather than using the opportunity to re-evaluate its past decisions, the district is making big new commitments that could bring more financial troubles down the road. Last month it to hire more full-time workers and again boost teacher salaries.

The pay increase makes for a particularly abrupt swing once you consider how it will affect individual workers. News reports have it as a “4 percent raise for educators,” but that doesn’t do it justice. Most SDU teachers will actually get 7-8% raises next year.

Take a beginning teacher who was new to the district last fall. She earned the minimum annual salary of $48,792. If she returns next year, she’ll get the 4% raise and also advance a “step” along the new schedule and be paid as a second-year teacher earning $52,648. That’s a raise of $4,007, or an increase of 7.9%. Similarly, a 10-year veteran with a Master’s degree will get a raise of $5,557 by collecting both the 4% raise and the step increment, an increase of 7.8% year-over-year.

There’s more. Teachers can boost their pay even further if they enhance their academic credentials. While researchers have found in effectiveness between teachers with only a bachelor’s versus those with a Master’s degree, in San Diego, a teacher with only a bachelor’s degree tops out at $80,000, whereas a teacher with more college credits can earn up to $105,000.

In addition to the pay increases, SDU is also making an abrupt turn on staffing. Back in December, when the district was looking to cut its higher-paid veterans, it paid 370 employees up to $15,000 to leave mid-year. Six months later, the district’s with the union calls for hiring more of the same types of employees—teachers, nurses, and counselors—that were paid to walk away just a few months ago.

Of course, SDU is by no means unique in facing pressure to boost salaries and hire more full-time staff. But using temporary funds to hire more workers and raise base salaries across the board will ultimately worsen the district’s long-term financial problems.

Non-Traditional Compensation Strategies to Solve District Challenges

There are other ways to both raise pay and build capacity that don’t set up districts for financial stress down the road.

In contrast to SDU, are offering one-time, flat-dollar bonuses that don’t affect base pay. Those are more in line with the temporary nature of the federal infusion, and they don’t disproportionately drive money on the basis of seniority.

Some districts are going even further by using their state and federal windfalls to more directly address specific recruitment and retention challenges. is offering a $4,000 signing bonus to bilingual teachers, and is offering $15,000 bonuses to special education teachers. To combat higher turnover among junior teachers, in Michigan is offering an incentive package worth $10,000 to cover moving expenses plus retention bonuses after one, two, and three years in the district.

Some are tying pay to other district priorities. in North Carolina is offering $20,000 to recruit highly effective teachers who agree to teach in the district’s highest-needs schools for three years. And Austin ISD made a 2% bonus contingent on whether the district meets its student enrollment target or not.

Next to these initiatives, San Diego Unified’s recent agreement looks like a lost opportunity. Rather than using its windfall to tackle persistent challenges, it has added to its long-term financial commitments. And when the federal money runs out, will it have the operating funds to pay for all the new employees it’s planning to hire?

That will depend on what comes next. But by adding more full-time employees and giving existing staff large base raises tied only to seniority and master’s degrees, SDU increased its chances of another abrupt budget reversal in the years to come.

Correction: Jackson Public Schools is in Michigan.

This article was written and published while the author was with Edunomics Lab at McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

As parents, we send our children to school every weekday trusting that they will be provided not only with a quality education but also with a safe, supportive learning environment. Nothing prepares you for that moment when that trust is broken, and you watch your child struggle every day as the school allows him or her to be bullied.

Parents deserve a choice to protect our children and save them from emotional and physical anguish. As a parent, I had this choice. And I chose Thrive.

Thrive Public Schools opened their doors five years ago. In just a short time, they have grown to serve nearly 1,000 students in San Diego, many of them, like my son, having the highest needs. But after all the heartache we went through to find this school, it is now in jeopardy of closing. The San Diego Unified School District’s decision not to renew its charter was based on testing data that do not account for Thrive’s unique student population.

Students come to the school behind academically, and after three years, these same students have drastically improved their scores. But despite statistics that prove this academic growth, the data reviewed in the renewal process are being ignored. Now, the only opportunity to save Thrive, and my son’s future, is with the California State Board of Education in mid-March.

Throughout his life, my son was bullied because of his learning disabilities. I had to pull him out of class for speech therapy and counseling, and as he grew up he began to fight back against the bullies, further endangering himself. Fortunately, we were presented with an opportunity to choose a new school, and we took it.

Thrive has provided my son with not only a quality education but also the learning environment that no other school could. He went from being a shy, solemn kid who was never invested in school to an involved, active participant in the school community. He has not missed a single day of class and even joined the glee club.

The school’s personalized instruction has helped him grow academically and socially, and the diverse student population, with nearly double the state average of special education students, has made him feel more accepted than anywhere else. He is included in 98 percent of general classroom activities, which exceeds the average 58 percent inclusion that other special needs students receive.

The staff are always available and have been there to support him with any issues he might have. They create a wonderful learning environment that makes the students want to learn. We have never experienced an issue with bullying at Thrive, and he has grown more social and involved. As a parent, I could not imagine ever putting him through the pain that he has suffered again.

Without this school, we are left with very limited choices. I would never allow him to return to the trauma he faced at San Diego Unified, and homeschooling would restrict his growth and future. As a parent, I just want what is best for my child, and that is Thrive.

I am mother of a child who has been bullied, requires special education and support, and has struggled to find success. My son deserves the opportunity to continue to grow at the only school that has made him feel safe, supported, and accepted.

Wilhelmina Bradley is a San Diego mother of four. Her son is in fifth grade at Thrive Public Schools’ Mid-City campus.