California
California’s statewide indoor mask mandate will vanish one week from today on Tuesday, 2/15…
A new California program to financially reward college students for volunteering has drawn national attention - but less than half of its budgeted money is going to actual student aid…
Two months after four people were killed and seven injured during a Michigan high school shooting, State Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) will introduce a bill that would require school administrators to collect information from parents about guns stored at home and would mandate backpack, locker and car searches if there is a credible threat or danger of mass casualty…
Sharon Henry, a chief deputy in the Solano County District Attorney’s Office who sued the county last year, announced last week that she is challenging her boss, Krishna Abrams, in this June’s election…
Unlike some other states, California law does not require school districts to provide buses even if a student lives far from campus…
Gov. Newsom’s administration has negotiated a deal to give Kaiser Permanente (KP) a special Medicaid contract that would allow the health care behemoth to expand its reach in California and largely continue selecting the enrollees it wants, which other health plans say leaves them with a disproportionate share of the program’s sickest and costliest patients…
Gov. Newsom, who three years ago placed a moratorium on executions, is moving to dismantle the US’ largest death row by moving all condemned inmates to other prisons within two years…
The California Teachers Association was Sacramento’s top spender last year, pouring nearly $4.6 million to sway education policy in the state, according to the final tally of lobbying disclosures for 2021…
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who was appointed as California’s first-ever surgeon general in 2019, has resigned…
Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) supported the leading tech antitrust bill, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, in the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, but demanded significant changes if it is to get their support on the Senate floor…
Coronavirus
An executive order issued by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin on 1/15 that allows parents to opt out of COVID-19 school mask mandates prompted dueling lawsuits last week, one siding with Youngkin and the other challenging his order…
Children under five years old may be eligible for COVID-19 shots as soon as the end of February - much earlier than previously expected…
A new analysis of research across nearly a dozen countries including the U.S. found widespread anxiety and depression among children and teens at the start of the public health crisis…
A new study found that with universal masking, in-person education was associated with low rates of secondary transmission, even with less stringent distancing and bus practices…
A new report suggests that school closures in January 2022 were more common in districts with less in-person school during 2020-21 and in districts with a larger share of students who were Black and Hispanic or eligible for free and reduced-price school lunch…
The American Academy of Pediatrics calls for renewed emphasis and support to keep schools open…
Novavax has applied to the FDA for emergency use authorization of COVID vaccine…
Asked how their communities should respond to a surge in COVID-19 infections, more than 40 percent of likely voters said they want schools to take steps to limit the spread of disease - even if those measures interfere with students’ learning, according to a survey conducted by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy…