White House to Provide 10 Million Tests Per Month to Keep Schools Open
Latest US Education News: White House to Provide 10 Million Tests Per Month to Keep Schools Open.
The new effort comes amid mounting criticism of the Biden administration from both Democrats and Republicans over the lack of COVID-19 tests and effective masks.
The White House announced Wednesday that it would provide 10 million additional coronavirus tests per month to help keep schools open for in-person learning as K-12 leaders across the country fend off mounting challenges due to the highly transmissible omicron variant.
The new effort comes as criticism piles on the Biden administration from both Democrats and Republicans over the lack of availability and distribution of COVID-19 tests and effective masks, both of which school leaders have been scrambling to procure amid a surge in COVID-19 infections.
“I’ve spoken with teachers and families across the country & want you to know that I have been listening and acting on what you’ve told me,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Wednesday morning on Twitter. “Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is doubling down on our commitment to keeping all schools safely open for full-time in-person learning.”
The government plans to provide 5 million rapid tests and 5 million PCR tests per month, which will be available to states that request them, with priority given to the highest need school districts. The additional tests stand to more than double the volume of testing that took place in schools across the nation in November 2021, according to administration officials.
The White House announcement also includes a directive to Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to consider how to prioritize school communities among the federal surge testing sites they operate, including the possibility of locating the testing units on school grounds or establishing specific testing hours for students and staff.
The announcement is just the latest in a long line of efforts by the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep students learning in person, full time, including asking states and school districts to direct their federal coronavirus aid to bolster staff shortages, adopt test-to-stay policies that allow exposed students and staff to remain in school and shorten periods of isolation and quarantine from 10 to five days.
While the vast majority of schools are operating in person, five days a week, an increasing number of schools are challenged by mounting COVID-19 infections, staff shortages and student absences. According to Burbio, which has been tracking school responses to the pandemic, 5,376 schools were not offering in-person learning for one or more days during the week beginning Jan. 3.
Big-city school systems have been having the most difficulty, with about one-third of the country’s 100 largest and urban school districts pivoting to remote learning last week, according to the Center for Reinventing Public Education.
While the Biden administration has overseen a country-wide reopening of schools, it continues to be handicapped by the pandemic in ways that are unique to the U.S. The federal government can make available testing and other types of aid to keep schools open – and it has, to the tune of $130 billion in emergency coronavirus funding – but it cannot compel schools to adopt specific risk-mitigation strategies since the U.S. public school system is governed by states and local school districts. As a result, school districts are tackling the pandemic in myriad ways – some adopting robust and layered safety protocols, including masking, testing and vaccination requirements, and others following few, if any, of the CDC’s recommendations.
Yet members of Congress on both sides of the aisle became increasingly vocal this week about their frustration over what they characterized as a failure of the administration to strategically think ahead about how new variants will continue challenging daily life, to communicate clearly about best practices and to effectively use federal aid to provide testing to communities where omicron is causing the most interruptions.
During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Tuesday, both Chairwoman Patty Murray, Washington Democrat, and ranking member Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican, slammed the government’s top infectious disease experts, including CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci.
“People back in Washington state and across the country are frustrated and worried about the course of this pandemic and its persistent challenges, like how hard it is to get a test,” Murray said during the hearing. “These are not new challenges – I have been raising many of these concerns since the earliest days of this pandemic. So I’m frustrated we are still behind on issues as important to families as testing and supporting schools. That’s not to say we haven’t made progress – it’s just clear we haven’t made enough.”
Meanwhile, Republicans were focused on tracking how the administration was distributing the emergency money Congress allocated for it to fight the virus and why, for example, it is taking so long to allocate the 500 million tests Biden announced over the summer that the White House would make available.
“I don’t understand why, after tens of billions of federal dollars were given to you, this administration has failed to ensure that Americans have the tests they need,” Burr said.
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“This administration has time and again squandered its opportunities and made things worse in the decisions you’ve made on testing and treatments and, most crucially, in communicating with the American people,” he said. “The American people are right to be confused when it seems like you all don’t even talk amongst yourselves.”
Source: usnews.com
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