Weekly CA-COVID Update 9/27/22

Federal Update

House and Senate appropriators late yesterday night, 9/26, unveiled a short-term government funding bill to keep federal agencies open until December 16…

California

California’s task force on reparations has begun putting dollar figures to potential compensation for the various forms of racial discrimination, generational pain and suffering Black Americans experienced in the state….

Working with state departments, SEIU Local 1000 has built apprentice programs outside the traditional trades — in nursing, financial services, cybersecurity and maintaining one of the state’s outdated computer systems… 

In a significant departure, the California Department of Education is withholding the release of the results of the Smarter Balanced tests that students took last spring until an undetermined date later this year…

 Some data indicates that older Americans of color wind up in nursing homes at a higher rate than their white counterparts…

Article 34, passed by a statewide ballot initiative in 1950, has blocked affordable housing for decades while creating costly hurdles for developers and local officials who want to build homes for low-income residents…

Almost two million of California’s poorest and most medically fragile residents may have to switch health insurers as a result of a new strategy by the state to improve care in its Medicaid program…

The University of California is going to create a new path for admission to the system. The path is for students who met the 3.0 grade point average in high school but didn’t complete the required 15 college preparatory courses… 

Smoke from wildfires has worsened over the past decade, potentially reversing decades of improvements in Western air quality made under the Clean Air Act, according to research published Thursday, 9/22, from Stanford University…

Despite a tenure that has focused on early education, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Sunday, 9/25, that would have made kindergarten mandatory in California…

California will soon be the only state in the nation to have a governmental office committed to preventing gun violence, state officials said last week…

Coronavirus

The federal government is releasing millions of Moderna booster shots that were delayed by the Food and Drug Administration as a result of a safety inspection at an Indiana packaging plant, even as states report shortages and encourage people to get Pfizer boosters instead…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expects COVID-19 vaccine boosters targeting circulating variants of the virus to be available for children aged 5-11 years by mid-October…

Health authorities encouraging retooled COVID-19 boosters are facing resistance from an unlikely corner: people who had embraced vaccines earlier in the pandemic…

Public Safety Update 9/21/22

 Legislation to increase funding for local police departments has stalled amid deep Democratic divisions over concerns about steering more money to police, while moderates advocate for action that could impact Republicans’ arguments that moderates are soft on crime ahead of the midterm elections…

The prosecutor investigating efforts by former president Donald Trump and his allies to challenge the 2020 election results in Georgia said her team has heard credible allegations that serious crimes committed may lead to jail time…

The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to lift a judge’s order blocking criminal investigators from accessing about 100 documents with national security classification recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound last month…

More subpoenas were issued last week by the Justice Department seeking more information as part of its inquiry into the origins, fundraising, and motives of the effort to block President Biden from being certified as president in January 2021…

More than 30,000 Americans have died from firearms in 2022, and another 27,000 have been wounded. Among developed economies, the US suffers more gun-related deaths per capita than the following eight countries combined…

In a recent report produced jointly by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Institute of Education Sciences, in the Department of Education, over the last decade, several crime and safety issues have become less prevalent at elementary and secondary schools…

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has released two research reports on investigating the effectiveness of school resource officers (SROs)...

Last month, nearly two dozen school leaders released a guide with lessons they wish they had known before their schools became school shooting crime scenes…

Since the Supreme Court ruled that California’s concealed gun laws go against the Second Amendment this summer, lawmakers have tried and failed to pass an alternative. 

California law allows police, family members, housemates, employers, co-workers and school officials to seek a gun violence restraining order for someone they believe poses a danger to themselves or others, but nearly all cases in the state are initiated by law enforcement…

California officials failed in expanding state hospitals or other community-based care options for their communities despite the surging numbers of incompetent criminal detainees, along with a string of court orders mandating the state transfer such defendants out of jails faster…

A Vallejo High School football coach is in stable condition after being shot last week while helping break up a fight outside the school…

New records show officials responsible for safeguarding Sophia Mason repeatedly chose not to intervene…

The documents must be released under a California law to enable public scrutiny of government agencies charged with keeping children safe…

Officials said that a sheriff’s deputy was taken into custody earlier this month after he fatally shot a married couple, prompting a search across suburban Northern California and a nearly hour-long phone conversation ending with his surrender… 

Weekly CA-COVID Update 9/20/22

California

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Court bill into law, a sweeping proposal to order mental health and addiction treatment for thousands of Californians…

Gov. Newsom recently signed six air pollution reduction measures, bringing the total of climate-related bills enacted this legislative session to 40… 

Proposition 27, which offers to both legalize online sports gambling in California and deliver millions of dollars for homeless services, is on life support…

Two years after Gov. Newsom signed into law a ban on the sale of most flavored tobacco products, Californians will get their say in a referendum vote this November…

Coronavirus

A recent study of more than six million people 65 and older found that seniors who had COVID-19 had a substantially higher risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease within a year…

A new survey conducted by the American College Health Association found that students were far more likely than the general adult population to get vaccinated against COVID-19…

President Biden's declaration that "the pandemic is over" could complicate the administration's effort to battle COVID-19, public health experts say…

Weekly Federal Update 9/19/22

President and Administration

On 9/13, the Department of Education announced an additional $2.5 million investment to centers that serve a critical role for parents and families of students with disabilities across the nation…

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) intends to scrap an unenforced Head Start face mask requirement for children and adults “in the near future,” the agency’s children and families administration announced Friday, 9/16…

The Biden administration on Wednesday, 9/14, announced more than two-thirds of Electric Vehicle (EV) Infrastructure Deployment Plans from states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have been approved ahead of schedule under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program… 

President Joe Biden’s popularity improved substantially from his lowest point this summer, but concerns about his handling of the economy persist, according to a poll…

President Biden gathered with top Democrats at the White House last week to celebrate their inflation fight at an inopportune moment, as a sobering new report showed just how far the economy still has to go to bring soaring consumer prices under control… 

The American Rescue Plan expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) from $2,000 per child to $3,600 for children under age six and $3,000 for children ages six to 17…

Mortgage rates topped six percent this week, their highest level since 2008, giving a jolt to home buyers who last year were paying less than half that…

President Biden said Thursday, 9/15, a tentative railway labor agreement has been reached… 

Congress

In July, the House passed Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) telehealth bill to extend eased pandemic rules for Medicare patients through 2024…

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) signaled Wednesday, 9/14, that she could back a side deal between Democratic leaders and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)... 

In a letter, eight House Democrats urged Biden on Friday, 9/16, to immediately scrap his current plan to halt releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve next month and keep releasing oil from America's emergency stockpile through at least the end of the year…

In a joint opinion piece released in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, 9/18, Congresswomen Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) argued that it is past time to reform the Electoral Count Act to make clear Congress can’t overturn an election result…

Senate Republicans led by Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced federal anti-abortion legislation on Tuesday, 9/13…

Education

The Education Department has released new information about how targeted student debt relief will work…

New polling released today, 9/19, from the Illinois-based EveryLibrary Institute found that 56 percent of voters said they’ve heard “a great deal” about attempts to restrict or remove access to certain books in school and public libraries… 

A new report details the benefits of work-based learning opportunities at community colleges and some of the ways these programs could improve…

Higher education associations generally like Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s new regulations for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 but want more clarity about how the changes would be carried out, as well as more time to put policies in place… 

More higher education employees in their 50s and 60s lack the financial confidence that they have enough money “to live comfortably throughout retirement” than was the case in 2019…

A preprint study on the link between scholarly performance and compensation finds that cumulative research productivity was more strongly related to compensation for men versus women—but only in STEM fields, not in the social and behavioral sciences…

This report draws on data the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has collected and synthesized over the course of the pandemic…

Test scores released Wednesday, 9/14, from almost two million students offer a glimmer of hope for parents anxious about learning loss: The percentage of older elementary and middle school students reading on grade level is nearing what it was before COVID-19…

The Education Department’s charter school funding rule is facing some tough days…

A checklist of nine strategies and guidance for state Medicaid agencies assisting school systems with Medicaid reimbursements for students’ school-based health services is now available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services…

For all the headlines proclaiming and debunking reports of a national teacher shortage, few have picked up on the issue’s third rail: Educators qualified to teach students with disabilities have been in short supply for half a century — since, essentially, the creation of special education…

Everywhere, it seems, back-to-school has been shadowed by worries of a teacher shortage…

Weekly CA-COVID Update 9/14/2022

California

The leaders of California’s legislature said on Friday, 9/9, that they would make sure that the state does not tax the federal student loan debt forgiven under the Biden administration’s relief program… 

The Supreme Court on Friday, 9/9, approved the Biden administration’s request to present oral arguments in the anti-affirmative action challenges against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill… 

Experts say factors to blame for the high cost of gas in California — now more than $5 a gallon — include problems at refineries that supply the state as well as higher taxes, more regulations and the same global issues driving the overall U.S. market… 

The massive blaze fueled by shifting wind patterns and extraordinarily dry brush began during last week’s heat wave, and it continues to create enough smoke to affect air quality up to 100 miles away…

Kern County has one of the highest infant mortality rates in California and mothers die during pregnancy and childbirth in the San Joaquin Valley at a higher rate than in any other region of the state…

Coronavirus

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters this month, after the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) authorization… 

The world has never been in a better position to end the COVID-19 pandemic, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said last week, urging nations to keep up their efforts against the virus that has killed over six million people…

Senate Republicans are signaling early resistance to attaching billions of dollars for COVID-19 and monkeypox aid in a must-pass government funding bill, a troublesome sign for a White House that says vaccine money is rapidly running out…