A 28-year-old elementary school teacher in Columbia, South Carolina, died this week from complications due to Covid-19, authorities have said.
Demetria “Demi” Bannister, who taught third grade at Windsor elementary school, died on Monday.
Continue reading...Joe Biden has described school closures as a ‘national emergency’ as he sought to put the coronavirus pandemic back at the heart of the US election campaign, after two weeks of Trump seeking to capitalise on sporadic scenes of violence in cities to push a ‘law and order’ theme
Continue reading...Arizona public school district forced to abandon plans after more than 100 teachers and staff members called in sick
An Arizona public school district was forced to cancel its plans to reopen on Monday after more than 100 teachers and other staff members called in sick.
“We have received an overwhelming response from staff indicating that they do not feel safe returning to classrooms with students,” Gregory Wyman, district superintendent, said in a statement on Friday.
Continue reading...Rate of new deaths could rise in California and Colorado over the coming four weeks and decline in Arizona, CDC says
The US death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is set to reach 200,000 by Labor Day as children across the country prepare to return to school, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) forecast.
The rate of new deaths could rise in California and Colorado over the coming four weeks and decline in Arizona, the CDC said. More than 160,000 people have died from Covid-19 in America, although scientists have pointed out the number of excess deaths so far this year exceeds even this toll.
Continue reading...The Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton has called the enslavement of millions of African people “the necessary evil upon which the union was built”.
Related: Trump aims barb at Reagan Foundation in fundraising coin kerfuffle
Continue reading...‘Angry’ AFT president Randi Weingarten tells Guardian proposal from Trump and Betsy DeVos could result in teaching exodus
Plans put forward by Donald Trump and his education secretary to reopen America’s schools in the fall are “reckless” and could result in many teachers leaving the profession, the president of one of the country’s biggest teaching unions has warned.
Related: Betsy DeVos insists all US children should be in school this fall
Continue reading...Harper’s letter asserts way to ‘defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion’, but critics accuse authors of censorious mentality
JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are among the signatories to a controversial open letter warning that the spread of “censoriousness” is leading to “an intolerance of opposing views” and “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism”.
Rowling, whose beliefs on transgender rights have recently seen scores of Harry Potter fans distance themselves from her, said she was “proud to sign this letter in defence of a foundational principle of a liberal society: open debate and freedom of thought and speech”.
Continue reading...Movement to get officers out of schools sees progress even as Chicago and Los Angeles school boards vote to keep them in place
A growing movement to get police officers out of US schools saw a major victory this week when Oakland’s school board voted to eliminate the school district’s dedicated police department.
But in Chicago and Los Angeles, despite protests by youth activists, support from teachers’ unions, and an outpouring of public support, school boards voted to keep police in public schools, at least for now.
Continue reading...Questions continue for Surgisphere and CEO Sapan Desai as universities deny knowledge of links to firm behind Lancet’s now-disputed blockbuster study
Dozens of scientific papers co-authored by the chief executive of the US tech company behind the Lancet hydroxychloroquine study scandal are now being audited, including one that a scientific integrity expert claims contains images that appear to have been digitally manipulated.
The audit follows a Guardian investigation that found the company, Surgisphere, used suspect data in major scientific studies that were published and then retracted by world-leading medical journals, including the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.
Continue reading...People who made less than $50,000 per year were 10 percentage points more concerned about threat posed by infectious disease
Americans with lower incomes and less education were more like to say the spread of infectious disease was a major threat to the US, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Monday.
Nearly all US adults said the spread of infectious disease is a threat to the country, but people who made less than $50,000 per year were 10 percentage points more concerned about the threat posed by infectious disease than those with higher incomes in a survey conducted in March.
Continue reading...FDA ban brings an end to decades-long battle against use of ‘aversive therapy’ at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts
The US government has banned an electric shock machine that is used to zap children and young adults with special needs in a school outside Boston – the only institution in the world known to practice the controversial punishment “treatment”.
Related: Elizabeth Warren drops out of Democratic presidential race – live
Continue reading...Proposal to ease Michelle Obama guidelines would let schools cut the amount of vegetables required
The Trump administration took further steps on Friday towards rolling back healthier standards for school lunches in America championed by Michelle Obama, proposing rules to allow more pizza, meat and potatoes over fresh vegetables, fruits and whole grains.
The new proposals would allow schools more flexibility, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a statement, adding: “Because they know their children best.”
Continue reading...Tens of thousands of teachers walked off the job in Los Angeles, American women gathered for their third annual march in Washington, Iowans protested abortion bans, Texans declared Donald Trump ‘not welcome’ in El Paso and students in New York City rallied around Greta Thunberg in calling for action on climate change
Continue reading...Peter Vlaming lost his job after claiming his religion prohibited him from using male pronouns for a student who transitioned
A Virginia high school teacher who was fired for refusing to use a transgender student’s new pronouns has filed a lawsuit.
The Washington Post reported that Peter Vlaming filed suit on Monday against West Point Public Schools, a system outside Richmond.
Continue reading...The computer scientist Richard Stallman has resigned from MIT and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which he founded and led, after leaked emails appeared to show him downplaying another academic’s alleged participation in the purported sex trafficking of minors by Jeffrey Epstein.
Related: How MIT was complicit in allowing Jeffrey Epstein to launder his reputation | John Naughton
Continue reading...Actor pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy and fraud after admitting to paying $15,000 to boost daughter’s SAT scores
The actor Felicity Huffman was sentenced on Friday to 14 days in prison for paying $15,000 to rig her daughter’s SAT scores in the college admissions scandal that ensnared dozens of wealthy and well-connected parents.
Related: The US college admissions scam toolkit: bribes, fake profiles and playing 'stupid’
Continue reading...‘It would not have happened to a white kid,’ Angela Washington said after staff used a marker pen on Juelz Trice’s banned haircut
Juelz Trice came home from school earlier this year with permanent marker ink scribbled on his scalp, but it was not a prank played by one of his fellow seventh-graders. It was a punishment enacted by some of the staff.
The boy’s parents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit this week and have told the Guardian they believe the act, a hapless attempt to hide a “fade” haircut with a design that violated the school district’s dress code, was rooted in racism and left him humiliated.
Continue reading...The case of George Washington high school in San Francisco is mirrored by the covering of harsh images in Harlem. But such images must be seen
Even urging a “truer history”, Paloma Flores, a member of California’s Pitt River tribe, questions the validity of showing an image of a murdered Native American. She’s disturbed by the message of a mural at George Washington high school in San Francisco, where she works, that has been in place for 84 years.
Related: A school's mural removal: should kids be shielded from brutal US history?
Continue reading...Robert Smith, a billionaire investor, surprises students at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, by using his speech at a commencement ceremony to pledge to wipe the debts of the 2019 class. 'This is my class – 2019 – and my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans. I know my class will make sure they pay this forward,' he said
Continue reading...Robert Smith makes pledge to eliminate students’ debt estimated at $40m at Morehouse, Martin Luther King’s alma mater
Delivering the commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr, the billionaire technology investor and philanthropist Robert F Smith made a surprise announcement: his family would wipe out the student debt of the entire class of 2019.
Related: $1.5tn in debt: student loan crisis shatters a generation's American dream
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