The drop in in school closures (the up-to-date map can be found at the top of our School Opening Tracker page) continued this week. We expanded our mitigation dataset this week and below we look at mask and vaccine policies of the 500 largest US school districts.
1. School closures continued their slowdown this week as we tracked 580 affected districts (from 561 last week) involving 2,265 schools. While the nineteen new districts are a tiny increase from last week's change (we caught twelve new districts with closures last week) the slowdown is reflected in the chart showing "closure events" (a full district, or an specific school) per week. These figures will increase a bit in future weeks as we find closures on a slight time lag but the current trend is clear:
2. In addition to monitoring school closures in all districts across the US, Burbio is expanding the number of districts where we examine details of Covid 19 mitigation policies. This week we look at the mask policies for the 500 largest districts in the US. Almost three-quarters require masks; "other" refers to districts where only a partial requirement exists (only unvaccinated, only certain age groups, etc.).
3. We also look at the number of Top 500 districts that require vaccination for staff. Thirty six percent of the largest districts to do so. "Other" refers to districts where no information was available or only certain staff (i.e, coaches, etc.) are required.
4. States across the country are making testing plans available to districts. Timelines and implementation specifics vary but we wanted to highlight a few examples:
- Massachusetts makes symptomatic, pooled and "test and stay" (also referred to as "test to stay" in other states) programs available to districts. Boston is implementing all three types of testing. Lynn, MA is implementing weekly testing in October. Chelsea, MA schools are implementing optional weekly asymptomatic testing for students, as well as "Test and Stay."
- Connecticut has a weekly testing program called "Project COVID DeteCT" available to grades K-6 everywhere and grades 7-12 in certain cities. New Britain, CT schools are implementing the program, as is Odyssey Community School in Manchester, plus Stamford, CT school district and West Hartford, CT. The program is just getting started with a reported 43 districts expressing interest.
- Rhode Island reports high demand for its testing program, which is run at both state-run sites and through certain districts. Naragansett, RI schools are offering weekly testing, as is Cranston, RI. In the Providence, RI plan on page 14 they outline their testing plans for the year.
- This local media report details Montgomery County, MD's plan to hire 100 staffers to administer a test-to-stay program around the county.
5. With the recent slowdown in school closures in the last two weeks we took a look at what was happening last Fall at this time. Below is the national in-person index by week, calculated from the 2020/21 audit set of 1,200 districts representing 47% of the US school population. Note from September 1st through November 1st last year the percent of students attending "virtual-only" schools dropped from 62% to 37%, dropping an average of three percent a week. From September 15th to October 15th last Fall we noted only ten districts in our dataset that were open for in-person learning that moved backwards to a more virtual format. It was in our October 19th, 2020 and October 26th, 2020 blog posts that we picked up on what would become winter disruptions across the Midwest and Northeast in November.
6. Across the US this Fall we have observed districts using incentive payments for vaccinations and testing. Here are a few highlights from across the country:
- Milwaukee, WI is offering a $100 incentive for eligible students to be vaccinated. Staff are required to be vaccinated.
- Dallas ISD offers teachers ($500) and students ($50) cash incentives for getting vaccinated and nearby Fort Worth, TX ISD similarly offers teachers $500.
- Kentucky offers incentives to teachers ($100) and students ($50) to get vaccinated.
- Phoenix, AZ schools are incentivizing staff ($200) and students ($100) to get vaccinated.
- A ninth grader from Washington, DC won a $25,000 college scholarship in a vaccination raffle.
- Hoxie, AR is rewarding staff that get vaccinated with $200.
- Anderson, IN schools provide $50 as payment for student vaccinations.
- Houston, TX offers a $500 incentive to staff for vaccination.
- Alaska is giving away $49,000 weekly in college scholarships as part of an incentive plan. This story features one of the recent winners.
- Anderson County, SC schools offered a $100 incentive for students to get vaccinated.
- McAllen, TX raffled off an Xbox during a student vaccination event.
- More than 80 New Orleans, LA schools offer incentive payments weekly for Covid 19 testing.