Districts in cities including Newark, N.J., Atlanta, Ga., and Cleveland, Ohio, have decided to start the learning remotely amid a nationwide surge in COVID cases prompted by the Omicron variant. Newark schools will be closed until January 14.
“The lives of all of our students mean more to me than anything else, especially since three of them are actually mine,” Newark School Board president Dawn Haynes said in a statement. “We will do everything to protect our children in this fight against this horrible virus and we will get back to in-person instruction as soon as possible.”
The school district of New Rochelle, N.Y., announced a week of remote learning at the beginning of January to wait for an envisioned delivery of rapid COVID tests. The district is trying to execute a test-to-stay program in which students exposed to someone with COVID can go back to in-person learning so long as they take regular Covid tests.
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"If your child does test positive for COVID-19 via a laboratory-conducted or at-home, over-the-counter test, please notify the nurse’s office at your child’s school. Your child will be excluded from attending school in person for 10 days following the first symptom (if symptomatic) or the test date (if asymptomatic)," the New Rochelle school wrote.
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Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union is expected to vote Tuesday on whether teachers would decline to come to work. The union demands that every student in the district—over 340,600 as of last school year—be tested for COVID.
Teachers in New York City have also called for greater COVID testing efforts, with nearly all city schools opened for in-person learning. Despite the district-wide reopening, however, roughly a third of students didn’t return to class, according to the Times.
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Teachers’ requests for more tests for students in Chicago as well as in New York City come amid a nationwide increased demand for COVID tests that began before Christmas, leading to long lines at testing sites in major cities. President Biden confessed last month that his Administration was caught off guard by the quick spread of the Omicron variant and following demand for tests.
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The 2020-2021 school year saw harsh attempts to reopen districts after months of remote learning, often with opposition from teachers’ unions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for schools to stay open in July 2021, and most districts managed to keep up in-person learning throughout the fall.
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