The state leaders of Oklahoma banned any mask mandates by school districts, showing their contempt for local control. But Oklahoma City, the state’s largest district, declared that it would defy the state and require all students and staff to wear masks. The district cares more about students than the Governor and Legislature.
Other districts in the state are following Oklahoma City’s lead.
The Tulsa school board is planning to sue the state to invalidate the masking ban.
It’s wonderful to see school districts fighting an irrational ban that endangers the lives of students and staff!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“This is the mailer going from the Koch group Americans for Prosperity to 30,000 New Hampshire families, encouraging them to pull their kids out of public schools”
Ed reform lobby putting a lot of money into promoting universal vouchers.
$4600 a year is obviously a lot less than a comprehensive public school costs per student, so the low value vouchers they’re all pushing are a massive cut in public education funding if they can get people to make this trade.
Average private school tuition in New Hampshire is 19,000 annually, so obviously the voucher doesn’t mean these students can “choose any school”- that’s just false although it’s used in all the ed reform marketing and promotion materials.
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SICKening. The deformers are always pulling *^%$,
They have to for they have NOTHING else to offer … just more REPRESSION and AWFULness.
So glad many are defying the notion that kids should NOT wear masks. Wonder what they will say when kids get sick and die because the numb nuts.
Who will these deformers blame next?
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If they can get people to accept a low value voucher as “providing public education” they’ll ramp up the campaign and compare public school costs to the low value voucher.
The public will be told they can dispatch their obligation to fund public education at half the cost they’re currently paying, so financial support for public schools will dry up.
Purely ideological. Provides absolutely no benefit to students who attend public schools and comes with substantial downside for them.
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Good for Oklahoma!
While they’re at it, they might design a full-face
FERPA mask. When testing time comes, the mask
could mask the personally identifiable information about students, that must be kept confidential by the school district.
“I have no idea who took that test, so I don’t know
who to standardize…”
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Given the circumstances, masking up is the wise choice. Meanwhile in NJ: Joined by educators, medical professionals, parents, and school administrators, Governor Phil Murphy today announced that all students, educators, staff, and visitors will be required to wear face masks indoors for the start of the 2021-2022 school year. The Governor signed Executive Order (EO) 251, which will mandate masking in the indoor premises of all public, private, and parochial preschool, elementary, and secondary school buildings, with limited exceptions. The EO is effective on Monday, August 9, 2021. end quote
From njdotgov
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NYTimes story about public schools covid mitigation where zero public schools are contacted and an ed reform org is permitted to interpret what the schools are doing with no response by the schools at all:
Why are members of the ed reform echo chamber the only people permitted to weigh in on public schools? Shouldn’t public school leaders get a chance to speak for themselves?
Why must all public school news be filtered through ed reform organizations and layered over with the ed reform agenda? We have tens of thousands of people who actually work in public schools. Can NONE of them ever be interviewed or must this “movement” entirely control how public schools are perceived?
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the billion dollar question: “Why must all public school news be filtered through ed reform organizations and layered over with the ed reform agenda?”
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😦
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“We know they need to be back in school, but we also know that districts are not all creating conditions where families feel safe sending their kids back in person.”
Shouldn’t public schools be given a chance to respond to this assertion? After all, they have now been deemed to be solely responsible for handling the pandemic. They should at the very least be permitted to speak.
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Truly an amazing echo chamber. This is suggestions from ed reformers on how schools should operate:
https://aheadoftheheard.org/magic-wand-2/
Not one public school or public school advocate heard from.
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Twenty hours ago the real news (meaning not-fake MAGA news) reported that the US Supreme Court’s Justice Barret ruled that students can’t block the Indiana University vaccine mandate.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/supreme-courts-barrett-rejects-indiana-university-students-vaccine-mandate-2021-08-12/
If Oklahoma’s school districts have to go to court to fight Traitor Trump’s totally corrupt zombie MAGA Republicans running that state, that ruling indicates the districts will win.
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Reblogged this on What's Gneiss for Education and commented:
It is good to see some districts with backbone!
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Utah’s school districts are doing nothing, but the Salt Lake County health department mandated masks K-6 which was promptly voted down by the county council. One who voted against masks is a teacher. The anti-mask crowd flew a 3-percenter flag and chanted “USA.” Crazy people.
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Wack-a-doodle – but the squeaky wheel seems to get the grease.
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DeSantis…. at a press conference referenced the Brown research that was done at the beginning of the pandemic – that was discussed on this blog. He is using Emily Oster’s “research” as a basis for his mandate for schools not to require masks.
“Last Friday, DeSantis issued an executive order ordering school districts not to mandate the use of masks or they could risk losing state funding. The order cited a Brown University study that looked at schools in New York, Florida and Massachusetts, but with a caveat: It analyzed cases associated with schools and not cases spread in schools.
One of the authors, Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, said she was not consulted by the governor’s office and said the study relied on data prior to the emergence of the more contagious delta variant.”
Flawed research to begin with. A governor latching on to this flawed research willy-nilly to further a personal agenda.
The lack of critical analysis and thoughtful use of “data” – just reckless and dangerous.
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The only thing Emily Oster should be consulted for is a palm reading on one’s future love life prospects — and even then, one should get a second opinion from a real palm reader.
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Osterich Heads
Emily’s head
is Oster sized
It’s blind-man led
And ostrich wise
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Texas governor Greg Abbott has tested positive for Covid
There is a term for what we are witnessing in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Utah and some other Republican led states.
It is called the “Lone Neuron State of mind”
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