California
California’s case rate has surged in the past two weeks as the Omicron variant has taken hold…
California finalized its redistricting maps on 12/20…
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond has announced a plan to recruit 10,000 new clinicians to provide for the mental health needs of California students…
A new California law, which took effect 1/1/22, requires the state’s public institutions to update records for students who have legally changed their names and allows graduates to request an updated copy of their diploma at no cost…
The rapid change of fortunes for the state, which has seen increasing weather extremes due to climate change, is only a first step toward shaking off a grueling drought that’s entering a third year…
PFAS
Industries are advised to brace for more federal moves next year to reduce and control “forever chemicals,” including plans by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to propose water and waste regulations for two PFAS…
Coronavirus
A series of business events, company holiday parties and family gatherings have fueled a 4,600 percent increase in cases in Puerto Rico, a surge that public health officials worry could linger into the New Year…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the use of a Pfizer-BioNTech booster in adolescents 12 to 15 years old…
On 12/27, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cut isolation restrictions for asymptomatic Americans who catch COVID-19 from 10 to five days, and similarly shortened the time that close contacts need to quarantine…
Test-to-stay is a “another valuable tool” that can keep students from missing school and learning due to quarantine, the CDC announced on 12/17…
On 12/21, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urged school leaders not to retreat from in-person learning…
The White House is pledging to purchase 500 million rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests with the aim of beginning delivery of the tests for free directly to the homes of Americans during this month…
More than 167,000 children are believed to have lost parents or caregivers to COVID-19 during the pandemic - roughly one in every 450 young people in the U.S. under age 18…
Just like COVID-19 testing sites and vaccines, COVID-19 treatment pills will be in short supply for months until production can increase…
Continuing gaps in the CDC’s data collection program, which almost two years into the pandemic still relies on state health departments who use a mix of often incompatible and outdated state systems to identify cases, impedes the nation’s understanding of where and how fast COVID-19 is spreading…
The Supreme Court said it would hear arguments on an expedited basis on Biden’s COVID-19 shot-or-test rule for large employers and his separate vaccine mandate for health-care workers…
President and Administration
The Biden administration announced on 12/22 that it would extend the pause on federal student loan payments through May 1 amid a surge in COVID-19 cases fueled by the Omicron variant…
On 12/21, U.S. officials announced approval of two large-scale solar projects in Riverside, California and moved to open up public lands in other Western states to potential solar power development, as part of the Biden administration’s effort to counter climate change by shifting from fossil fuels…
Biden has put more people into lifetime federal judgeships than decades of past presidents by this point in their terms…
Under intense pressure from criminal justice reform advocates, the Justice Department has reversed a Trump-era legal opinion that could have required several thousand federal convicts to return to prison from home confinement if the Biden administration declares an end to the pandemic-related national emergency…
Congress
The REMOTE Act (H.R. 5545) was signed into law on Tuesday, 12/21/21…
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has announced that he plans to hold a floor vote on Biden's Build Back Better bill in January, even as the legislation's fate remains uncertain…
The current continuing resolution keeping government agencies open runs out in 47 days, and there has been zero progress on an omnibus funding package so far…
Senate Majority Leader Schumer has announced that if Republicans block elections reform legislation in January when given another chance to take up that legislation - which Manchin backs - the Senate will hold a vote on rules changes designed to weaken the filibuster…
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Schumer announced that the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will lie in state on 1/12 in the Rotunda…
Education
Due to an increase in requests for training, the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) will host an encore presentation of its latest study, Averting Targeted School Violence: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Plots Against Schoolsb on 1/12/2022…
The Education Department is seeking comments on its draft guidance, "Impact of COVID-19 on 2021-2022 Accountability Systems”…
A new resource from CCSSO and the National Center for School Mental Health outlines five key steps state education agencies can take to support a comprehensive approach to school mental health, alongside state examples and relevant resources…
The Education Department recently launched two communities of practice to support states and school districts in addressing the impact of lost instructional time from the pandemic on students’ social, emotional, and mental health and academic well-being…
The nonprofit testing company NWEA has reported that the median student in grades 3 to 8 returned to school this fall nine to 11 percentile points behind in math and three to seven percentile points behind in reading…