AISES, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, is a national nonprofit organization focused on substantially increasing the representation of Indigenous peoples of North America and the Pacific Islands in science, technology, engineering and math studies and careers.

The vision of AISES is for the next seven generations of Native people to be successful, respected, influential and contributing members of our vast and ever-changing global community.

Entering its sixteenth year at the UCLA campus, AISES strives to encourage American Indians to pursue careers as scientists and engineers while preserving their cultural heritage. The goal of AISES is to promote unity and cooperation, provide a basis for the advancement of American Indians all while providing financial assistance and educational opportunities.

AISES devotes most of its energy to its outreach program where members conduct monthly science academies with elementary through pre-college students from Indian Reservations. Serving as mentors and role models for younger students enables AISES at UCLA students to further develop professionalism and responsibility while maintaining a high level of academic and increasing cultural awareness.

Noli’s middle school science teacher Sabrina Sobel said this is the beginning of her students working with UCLA mentors. This program, offered to all science students in grades 6-12, was separate from their regular curriculum but was incorporated into things that they are currently learning or have already learned about. The program was run school-wide with the students completing the STEM workshops with their teachers in other content areas. “Prior to the start of the school year, UCLA contacted us and wanted to partner with us in the STEM department. Because we had limited access to field trips and guest speakers, we had to shelve this idea,” Sobel said. However, having it implemented as virtual sessions turned out to be highly successful.

“The students were very excited about the program,” Sobel said. “Next time, they would like to have the UCLA team come to the school for in-person activities. We had all of the middle school students and a large portion of high school students participate.”

While learning how to assemble and work a robot improved engineering, math and technology skills, a session on native plants addressed the science component. High school science teacher Jay Dagostino has been working with his biology students on identifying invasive plants growing near the school campus. They are learning how to plant native varieties and eradicate non-native ones.

“The (AISES at UCLA) native plant lesson in the morning was good supplementary information about native plants that students worked with in science and culture classes,” Dagostino said. “The robot activity was a fun hands-on project for the students.”

Sobel said the students were able to play a Kahoot game with students from other schools to test their initial knowledge of native plants.

“The robots were a successful hands-on learning activity since several of the students had to troubleshoot and change the wiring of the system to get them working properly,” she said. “By incorporating this activity, our hope is that this is the start of a strong partnership. We hope to continue working with AISES at UCLA in the future.” For more information, www.steamconnection.org/ekgar and www.ceed.ucla.edu/aises-page.

Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians

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Program founder and event facilitator Karena Zermeno also represents one of the sponsors, Altura Credit Union. Backpacks filled with gifts, a Student of the Month award, certificates of recognition and much more were donated by the program’s sponsors to the award recipients. Each student was invited to the podium to share their personal story, past challenges and future goals with a room full of supporters that included principals, teachers, peers, family members and community and school district dignitaries.

February’s students of the month from Hemet Unified School District schools are Kasey Aguilar, Aaliyah Cruz, Erica Gutierrez, Amari Hill and Cynthia Jauregui. San Jacinto Unified honorees for February are Freddy Boyd and Abigail Lazarrus.

Hemet Unified School District

Kasey Aguilar from Tahquitz High School is the class of 2022 valedictorian and Principal Kari McGowan said she is the “epitome of Titan Pride.” Being on ASB all four years and serving as its current president are among her numerous accolades and accomplishments. A past soccer player for the school, she joined the football team this year as its field goal kicker and made 27 of 30 point after kicks and was named Varsity Special Teams Player of the Year. Kasey said her father was in the Navy for 22 years and was deployed for much of her childhood. She, her mother and her three siblings found it hard to have him gone so much. In 2015, a close family friend died and left behind four teenagers that Kasey’s family took in, completely changing their family dynamic. Kasey has volunteered 100-plus hours to AYSO and became Tahquitz’s first female kicker to play in a game and score a field goal. She said through her hard work she achieved a goal she set for herself in sixth grade which was to be the valedictorian for her graduating class. She plans a career in the surgical field and hopes to attend UCLA to major in biology.

Hemet High School’s Aaliyah Cruz was nominated by her ASB teacher Lindsay Brown who said she has had the joy of knowing Aaliyah all four years and watching her grow throughout her high school career. “She goes over and beyond to be kind and include everyone and truly leads by example,” Brown said. Born and raised in Hemet, Aaliyah will be a fourth-generation Hemet High School graduate. “School was difficult for me,” she said. She worked to overcome dyslexia by committing herself to new challenging roles and getting involved in ASB, yearbook and softball. Aaliyah said her teachers have taught her more than what can be learned from reading a book such as responsibility, teamwork, accountability and leadership. “It is because of these amazing educators that I want to be a teacher myself,” she said.

Erica Gutierrez was Hamilton High School’s choice for February. Her twin brother, Christian, received the Student of the Month award in January. Her art teacher started off with a quote from Irish artist Stacia Tauscher: “We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.” Erica said online learning during the pandemic proved to be a challenge for her but with the help of teachers and staff she was able to get back on track and she is thankful for their support. Erica aspires to be a wildlife biologist and has always been big on volunteerism and wildlife conservation.

Alessandro High School singled out Amari Hill to be recognized this month. She serves as her school’s representative for the Board of Trustees and only needs to complete 15 more credits to graduate. She is a member of ASB and plans to take after her mother and pursue a career in psychology. She said during middle school she suffered with depression and anxiety but one thing she learned that she will take to college and onward is that “I can’t let my off days turn into my every day.” Her mother said Amari has faced many health challenges and to see how far she has come is amazing. “As for the future, I know Amari is going to rock it out,” her mother said.

West Valley’s Cynthia Jauregui could not attend but Principal Shannyn Cahoon said the senior is a four-year cadet with the school’s Navy JRTOC and very active with the program. She’s also on the soccer team and is “honest and dedicated and believes in service to country and stands firm on her beliefs.” Cynthia plans to either attend college or enlist in the U.S. Navy as a step in accomplishing her lifelong goal of being “financially independent.” San Jacinto Unified School District

Freddy Boyd transferred to San Jacinto High School two years ago and has excelled on and off the football field since he arrived. Principal Courtney Hall said he is one of the best ambassadors for the school by possessing the skill to talk to people that takes most people many years to develop, if ever. “You can tell he genuinely cares about what you have to say,” Hall said. Football coach and Tiger University teacher/mentor Aric Galliano said Freddy is a born leader and has made first team All-League both seasons and team MVP this past year. Freddy started off by saying, “This community offers nothing but the best so I feel it deserves nothing but the best in return. I believe my greatest contribution to my community, my school and my family is the way I motivate others and bring joy into people’s lives whether I know them or not.” His passion for sharing knowledge and helping others is what has led him to aspire to three careers simultaneously: a football coach, a personal trainer and a high school math teacher, all to help further develop the next generation of society. He said his mother’s ability to maintain a positive outlook despite what is going on around her is one of the many lessons he will carry throughout his future journey. “Because my mom is my role model, my hero and most of all, my best friend,” Freddy said.

Mountain Heights Academy chose Abigail Lazarrus as its outstanding student for February. Principal Ken Swanson met her when she first moved to San Jacinto as a fifth-grade student at Megan Cope Elementary where he was principal at the time. Abigail said her parents divorced at that time but that her father started sexually abusing her at the age of 3 and it continued when he had visitations. She said she was sexually abused by her boyfriend at the age of 13 and “lost myself.” She started hanging out with the wrong crowd, drinking, doing drugs and fighting which led to her being kicked out of school. “I was a toxic person and hard to be around,” Abigail said. “I tried to take my own life.” She said the ensuing trauma led to physical problems and she was full of pain. Now four months clean and sober, she finished high school in early February. “I found hope and I want to inspire others,” she said. She is working as a respite caregiver for adults with special needs and plans to attend college and start her own business. “My goal is to make people feel beautiful and empowered and feel good about themselves,” she said.

Jasmine McKenna of Mountain View High School, who couldn’t attend the recognition ceremony when she was honored in January, was given the opportunity to share her story at this month’s event. The school’s ASB director said when in-person learning resumed in August students were isolated and disconnected but when Jasmine joined ASB she brought many students with her and improved school morale. She serves as her school’s Board of Trustees representative and even though she officially graduated in January and works two jobs, she has committed to continuing her role of reporting at monthly school board meetings. “One thing I learned while being here at Mountain View is that even if you don’t believe in yourself when things get really difficult there are people that are there for you and they are there to help you,” Jasmine said. “When I was younger, my mom and dad split up and not having my mom around was very difficult for me and caused a lot of personal problems for me and it also affected my schoolwork,” Jasmine said. “But I decided I didn’t want it to affect me in the long run so I started focusing more and putting myself out there.” She hopes to follow her dad’s creative path as a tattoo artist and open her own shop. Her ultimate goal is to work in the dental field as a dental assistant or a hygienist. Closing remarks

Zermeno applauded the students for sharing their personal stories and for being great examples of being able to persevere through difficult times and situations. She encouraged everyone to forgive the past and to “forgive the person who did you wrong because when we forgive, we do something very powerful, not for them but for ourselves.” She said it gives us the ability to move on and look forward and added, “Don’t give up on your dreams. Don’t be a victim, be a victor.”

HUSD Superintendent Christi Barrett said some of the students’ speeches brought to mind the importance of family and what that means. “Many of us have a very distinct definition and mental model of what a family is,” she said, adding that the critical takeaway from this event is that everyone has the ability to be someone’s family. “Family means to love and to support without judgment and to love unconditionally.”

SJUSD superintendent Dave Pyle said he was inspired and impressed by the fact that so many of this month’s honored students have played a strong leadership roles at their schools, with ASB and other programs. For more information, www.studentofthemonth.net.

Diane A. Rhodes | Contributed

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Schoolchildren in California, Oregon and Washington will no longer be required to wear masks as part of new indoor mask policies the Democratic governors of all three states announced jointly on Monday.

“With declining case rates and hospitalizations across the West, California, Oregon and Washington are moving together to update their masking guidance,” the governors said in a statement. There are more than 7.5 million school-age children across the three states, which have had some of the strictest coronavirus safety measures during the pandemic.

The new guidance will make face coverings strongly recommended rather than a requirement at most indoor places in California starting Tuesday and at schools on March 12, regardless of vaccination status. In Washington and Oregon, all the requirements will lift on March 12. In all three states, the decision of whether to follow the state guidance will now rest with school districts.

The milestone, two years in the making, comes as much of the country relaxes public health orders, including school mask mandates, in an effort to restore normalcy and boost economic recovery. The changes reflect a growing sense that the virus is not going away and Americans need to learn to live with it. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, announced Sunday that the state’s masking requirements in schools would be lifted by March 2. New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts and others recently made similar adjustments to ease restrictions for schools.

The announcements signal a turning point that is poignant in its timing, coming almost exactly two years after American cities began shutting down to prevent COVID-19′s spread. California was the first state to announce a shutdown with stay-at-home orders in March 2020, followed soon after by other states.

“Two years ago today, we identified Oregon’s first case of COVID-19,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said in the statement. “On the West Coast our communities and economies are linked. Together, as we continue to recover from the Omicron surge, we will build resiliency and prepare for the next variant and the next pandemic.”

Earlier this month, California became the first state to formally shift to an endemic approach to the coronavirus with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement of a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business shutdowns.

Newsom has come under growing pressure from Republicans and other critics to ease the school mandate, which has increasingly become a polarizing issue among parents, with some questioning why it’s still necessary when masks are no longer required in other public places.

The powerful California Teachers Association said it expected a mixed reaction to the announcement.

“While some students are ready to immediately remove their masks, others remain very afraid,” CTA President E. Toby Boyd said in a statement. The union has more than 300,000 members. “Change is never easy, and today’s announcement is bound to disrupt and destabilize school communities.”

A handful of California school districts have already dropped mask mandates for students in recent weeks in open defiance of the state mandate. Meanwhile, a survey published last week by the UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies found that more than 60% of California parents still support wearing masks in schools.

In Connecticut, Monday marked the first day of classes since the state ended its school mask mandate. Kindergarten teacher Rochelle Brown said 15 of her 17 students came to school wearing masks, and she is still wearing a mask in class herself.

“This is normalcy for them,” said Brown, a teacher at Poquonock Elementary School in Windsor, Connecticut, where a lot of her students have never known school without a mask. “I didn’t really hear a lot of conversation with the kids saying, ‘Oh, there’s that child, they’re not wearing their mask.’ They just did what they normally do every day.”

The West Coast announcements come after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased the federal mask guidance Friday, essentially saying the majority of Americans don’t need to wear masks in many indoor public places, including schools. Federal mask mandates still apply in high-risk indoor settings such as public transportation, in airports and in taxis.

The new CDC guidelines are based on measures focused more on what’s happening at hospitals than on test results. The CDC said that more than 70% of Americans live in places where the coronavirus poses a low or medium threat to hospitals and therefore can stop wearing masks in most indoor places.

The CDC had endorsed universal masking in schools regardless of virus levels in the community since July, but it is now is recommending masks only in counties at high risk.

Based on that criteria, 16 of Oregon’s 36 counties fall under the “high” level of transmission. Dr. Dean Sidelinger, Oregon’s state epidemiologist, said he hopes community leaders will use the CDC framework in “guiding their decisions” about masking.

California and Washington also have several counties still listed as high risk, but projections show that case numbers and hospitalizations will continue to drop over the coming weeks, officials said.

“We’re turning a page in our fight against the COVID virus,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Monday during a news conference.

Inslee said in a separate statement that he expects many businesses and families to continue choosing to wear masks. “As we transition to this next phase, we will continue to move forward together carefully and cautiously,” he said.

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It was while picking my 2-year-old’s pancakes from my 4-year-old’s hair last week that I got the email: After two days in school since our last quarantine, my daughter’s preschool class was in quarantine again.

Omicron has thrown everyone. It’s thrown medical professionals. It’s thrown politicians. And it’s thrown parents of children under 5 back to March 2020, when we were expected to work full-time jobs while quarantining toddlers. Now we’re doing it again. Unless the childcare quarantine rules change, we’ll keep doing it, a week at a time, again and again.

This whiplash is due to health guidance requiring unvaccinated people to quarantine following any COVID exposure. Because preschool- and day care-age kids are mostly ineligible for vaccines, this means that anytime one of the 27 students and staff in my daughter’s preschool class or the dozen children and staff in my son’s day care tests positive, my kid must quarantine for a week.

Given that approximately 1 in 10 Bay Area residents had an asymptomatic COVID infection at the height of the surge, and our preschool tests students twice weekly, it is no wonder my daughter was in preschool 10 days of the last four weeks.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It isn’t this way for school-aged kids. California and the CDC allow unvaccinated children to stay in school after an in-school exposure if the students were masked and the exposed student is asymptomatic and tested. Bay Area jurisdictions have embraced that policy despite the Omicron surge, insisting schools stay open.

Why is childcare treated differently? It can’t be vaccination eligibility, as the K-12 rules apply to unvaccinated students. It can’t be risk of severe disease, as children under 5 have very low risk of COVID hospitalization, like their school-aged counterparts. It can’t be masking rules, as the child care quarantine-at-home rule applies regardless of a child care center’s masking policy. (In my daughter’s preschool class, where mask compliance is high, not one exposed child has tested positive during any quarantine this year.)

I suspect part of the rationale for treating child care and school differently may be that K-12 students risk formal education loss if quarantined at home. But that minimizes the social and emotional learning that younger children do in childcare settings — learning that prepares them for elementary school and beyond. If you think early-learning experiences aren’t important to kids, I’ll put you on speakerphone the next time my son talks about doing the party freeze dance with Zoe and Nicco.

Such distinctions between child care and school also miss the parents’ perspective. It’s hard to overstate how difficult it is to work while caring for someone whose favorite game is called “one, two, three, KABOOM!” Many of my friends with small kids now wonder — again — if they should quit their jobs. We’re told this isn’t March 2020, but it can sure feel like it.

I don’t doubt the seriousness of this surge or COVID restrictions generally. But this policy just doesn’t seem right. Not when vaccines are widely available, and therapeutics help the most vulnerable. For Pete’s sake, we now allow young children to attend NBA games where, if even 1 in 40 attendees has COVID, a child has a greater than 25% chance that someone within a two-seat radius of them is infected. And yet, we don’t allow parents to send children to day care if one since-removed child tested positive.

To be sure, some parents will not send their child back to child care after an in-school exposure. But let that be our decision, based on our circumstances. We can’t keep doing this.

Cynthia Stein, of Oakland, is an attorney and mother of two kids under 5 years old.

CYNTHIA STEIN | Contributed

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Since California health officials decreed the end of the mask mandate for restaurants and grocery stores last week, frustrated parents have been asking: When can their kids take their masks off at school?

They didn’t get any answers during a much anticipated press conference Monday hosted by California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly, who said the state would wait until Feb. 28 to potentially change masking rules at schools.

The California Teachers Association, one of the state’s largest unions with over 300,000 members, supported the decision to “pause and gather more information” before revising the mask mandate for schools.

But some parents and educators, who until recently supported strict mask rules in the classroom, are losing their patience.

“I really started thinking, why aren’t we talking about the masks coming off?” said Dr. Will Sheldon, an Oakland parent and a family medicine doctor. “There was no discussion of what the off-ramps are going to be.”

Concerns over education quality

Parents and educators interviewed by CalMatters said the social and emotional harms of long-term masking need to be weighed against what appear to be the minimal benefits of masking amid rising vaccination rates and receding case numbers.

Sheldon said his daughter has had a harder time making new friends because masks cover her facial expressions. But of greater concern, he said, are the kids he sees in his clinic who are deaf or have other language delays and rely on reading lips to learn speech and reading.

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“I think they were a good idea early in the pandemic,” Sheldon said. “At this point, I’m more than ready for them to change. I think we’ve gone to an extreme.”

Meanwhile, public health experts are saying masks will play a smaller role in 2022’s pandemic playbook.

“As omicron quiets down, we’re approaching a point where we can take masks off,” said Robert Schooley, a professor of medicine at UC San Diego. “But if I had a 5- to 12- year- old who wasn’t vaccinated, I would still want them to keep the masks on until they get vaccinated. It’s not always trivial when a child gets COVID.”

High-quality, tight-fitting masks have been shown to protect against transmission, but they don’t completely eliminate the risk of getting COVID-19. And with the low risk of serious illness for kids, some parents are saying it’s time to lift the mask mandate and take a step towards normalcy.

While not all parents oppose masks in schools — CalMatters spoke to parents who thought they should embrace all measures to reduce the death count — some worry the masks are reducing their child’s enthusiasm for learning.

“I want my son to feel excited and connected,” said Patricia Johnson, an Oakland parent of a first grader. “That’s what I’ve wanted from school all along. I want him to love school.”

Jason Peplinski, the superintendent of Simi Valley Unified School District, said public health experts can’t underestimate the effect wearing masks for two years has had on kids. He hopes the mandate lifts for all students. A middle ground, he said, would be a logistical nightmare.

“What I don’t want to happen is for the governor to say if you’re vaccinated you can unmask,” Peplinski said.

“That puts the onus on school districts.”

Some teachers are also calling for an end to the mask mandate.

Bevin Abbe, a vocal music teacher at Santa Susana High School in Simi Valley, said masks have been stifling her students’ creative expression for too long. She worries that more introverted students are hiding behind their masks, delaying their social development.

Abbe said debate over masking has become heated in her county of Ventura. Her district’s teachers union declined to take a position.

“Our union has chosen to respect the different views of our membership and society, at large,” said union president Amanda Hogan. “We have not taken a position on masks in the past and are unlikely to in the future.”

Public health experts endorse masks

The California Department of Public Health issued its school mask mandate in July as most of the state’s school districts were set to return to fully in-person instruction for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The mandate placed the responsibility of enforcement on local school officials.

As the omicron surge led to record case numbers among students, teachers and staff, many schools were pushed to a breaking point. But as case numbers decline, more states are starting to lift school mask mandates and taking steps towards normalcy . Lawmakers in some more conservative states are working to ban mask mandates altogether.

Simi Valley’s Peplinski and parents opposing the mask mandate say it doesn’t make sense for a vaccinated child to be able to eat at a restaurant or shop for groceries without a mask but have to put one on in the classroom. Public health experts, however, say the comparison isn’t completely valid because education is compulsory and students spend most of their time at schools.

“If you want to go to a restaurant, that’s your choice,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. “But kids need to be in schools, and I’d like to see them protected as much as possible.”

Noymer said masks should be required at schools to eliminate the possibility of returning to virtual instruction. That said, he thinks the mandate could be lifted in the next month or so once case numbers and hospitalization rates are back down to where they were last May.

Noymer said the state could set various thresholds for case numbers, hospitalization rates and vaccination rates that would trigger an end to the mask mandate for schools. But on Monday, Ghaly provided no concrete metrics.

He said the state would continue monitoring a variety of data points for the next two weeks.

Until then, some parents will remain exasperated.

“All they did was announce that they’re having another press conference in two weeks,” said Sheldon. “It felt like they were just kicking the can down the road.”

Joe Hong | Contributed

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Lowe is in her fifth year of teaching at Noli Indian School and currently teaches math, which has always been her passion. Noli’s principal, Donovan Post who is also serving as director of the preschool, selected Lowe to be the Curriculum Coordinator at both sites to provide extra support in that area.

“I lead the selection process, adoption and implementation of new curricula,” she said. “I support teachers in the use of curricula and related classroom programs.”

In the simplest terms, curriculum (singular for curricula) is a description of what, why, how and how well students should learn in a systematic and intentional way. The curriculum is not an end in itself but rather a means to fostering quality learning.

Lowe said the kindergartners are using Benchmark Advance, while the other classes are using levels of Ready to Advance appropriate to their grades/ages. Ready to Advance integrates language arts, mathematics, social studies and science into a rigorous, cohesive academic program. In kindergarten, Eureka Math has been adopted for mathematics.

The “top-notch curricula from Benchmark Education” is the one that has been chosen for the preschool and the staff there couldn’t be happier. To meet the demands of the Common Core State Standards, new curricula was necessary, and this one seems to be a good fit for students and teachers.

“Previously, teachers were creating their own units of study,” Lowe said. “Benchmark Education is a leading publisher of English-Language Arts curricula. Their programs run up to grade 6.”

Locally, this curricula is being used by Hemet Unified School District in grades TK-5 and in Murrieta Valley Unified School District for grades 2-5.

Lowe said among the many deciding factors in choosing Benchmark Education were the rich text experiences, close reading, interventional options and digital components. There are authentic literature selections included from many cultures, including Indigenous peoples. The language learning is a separate subject being taught by teachers from their own planned units of study. This is typical as world languages are not a component of the standards for English-Language Arts.

Although the teachers and students have enjoyed working with the new curriculum in conjunction with the newly installed Smart Boards, there has been a little bit of a learning curve.

“A learning curve is always expected with a large-scale change,” Lowe said. “The teachers and classroom aides have been enthusiastically using the new program, and that really helps the students adapt. The students see their excitement, and it gets them excited, too.”

Benchmark Education president Tom Reycraft said, “Proven time and again in field research, our programs help boost reading proficiency under the new state standards. Since our inception in 1998, our mission has remained to provide classroom-tested solutions that help educators differentiate instruction and enable every student to achieve success.”

“I have prior work experience as a training coach for several curriculum companies; Benchmark happens to be one of them,” Lowe said. “I was able to use my own expertise to provide professional development for the teachers and classroom aides.”

Since 2019, Lowe has also been the Google Coordinator at Noli and took on that same position at the preschool since she began working with Post at that site about two years ago.

“The position began as the Google administrator and has grown into other instructional technology support, including Clever single sign platform at the preschool and Smart Board support at both sites,” Lowe said. State-of-the-art interactive whiteboards were installed at the preschool at the start of the current school year. A lot of work happened behind the scenes last summer to get ready for students to return to in-person learning. An interactive whiteboard is just as it sounds: a digital whiteboard with interactive enhancements. Lowe said teachers and students are really enjoying this new technology and all the opportunities it provides to the learning environment. Students can use it for a drag-and-drop activity to practice sorting words by vowel sounds or read along in their books as the words are highlighted on the large monitor in front of them.

Teachers can lead their class in a real-time creation of a graph or use the interactive whiteboard in a collaboration meeting to analyze data and record ideas. “The possibilities really are endless,” Lowe said. Teachers continue to learn alongside their students who are always finding creative and exciting ways to use the new technology.

“It makes our job a little easier,” Ana Garcia said. Teaching the three-year-old classes, she said the Benchmark curriculum makes it easier to present the material to her students. Having the interactive whiteboard allows her to access materials in front of the students instead of having to go to a computer to do so. Lessons can be adapted creatively to meet the needs of all the students.

“Because I’ve always taught ages 3 to 5, I look at the 3s as a ‘tween’ because they still want to be little but also want to be more independent. They are so fun,” Garcia said.

Melissa Arviso, who team teaches with Garcia, said the new whiteboard gets the children’s attention more. Everything is linked to the computer so they can read along with their lap books as well as count and recite colors and other lessons that appear on the 85-inch screen. Their morning class has 20 students and the afternoon session has 12.

Post said when he took over as preschool director he assessed what was needed to enable staff to do their jobs in the best way to benefit the students. Because technology plays such a big role in the life of children these days, it was an easy transition for them to get used to having such interaction in their classrooms. Amanda Vallin is the Pre-K teacher and she likes the new tools because she can add things into the lesson since the boards are connected directly to the internet. If they are learning about bears, she can show a video about them to reinforce the topic, for instance. She can also use her computer to add interactive games that expand on what is already available in the curriculum.

Kindergarten teacher Sierra Vivanco said the board is super useful and the touch screen capabilities make it fun for all the students to participate. She said the Eureka Math program allows her to monitor a child’s progress to see if they are grasping the concepts and she can present the same information with a different approach to help them understand it, if needed.

She has incorporated a writing companion that pairs up with Benchmark Education that helps children comprehend what they are reading and this has made the lessons more engaging for the students. Another way Vivanco utilizes the new technology is with a “dot cam” (document camera) which is a small camera connected to her desk computer that can transmit images to the large monitor.

Amber Young is her classroom aide and Vivanco said they make a really good team. Young was a teacher for 20-plus years and this is Vivanco’s first year of teaching so they are learning from each other, Young said.

“We’re really thrilled to bring these opportunities to our students and are already seeing the positive impacts of these resources,” Lowe said. “We look forward to 2022 with new achievements from our students. It is still very early in the adoption, but preliminary informal assessments are showing promising results.”

Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians | Contributed

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As some of the last statewide mask mandates in the U.S. near an end, decisions about whether students and teachers should continue to wear masks in school are shifting to local leaders, who are caught in the middle of one of the most combustible issues of the pandemic.

“Unfortunately, this is an issue where you are not going to make everybody happy,” said Jeffrey Solan, school superintendent in Cheshire, Connecticut. “We can’t allow those individual passions to decide the debate.”

The question of masks in schools has been so contentious in much of the country that school board meetings have devolved into shouting matches, scuffles and arrests. Protesters have shown up outside administrators’ homes. And slates of pro- and anti-mask candidates have run for school board seats in an attempt to shape policies.

In the hours after Connecticut’s governor announced the state’s mask requirement would end later this month, Solan was peppered Monday with messages from families who feel masks are critical for protecting students and from others who have long been opposed.

If the decision had to be made right away, he said, his district in New Haven’s suburbs would continue to require masks, based on metrics developed with local health officials, including vaccination and infection rates.

Some school officials around the country welcomed state-imposed mandates for sparing them from having to make unpopular decisions, especially early in the pandemic. But many superintendents say they now have the tools to decide whether masks should be required, and they welcome the ability to adapt as needed.

The governors of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon this week announced plans to lift mask requirements in schools by the end of February or March, as COVID-19′s omicron surge subsides. Massachusetts joined the list on Wednesday.

“I’m pretty uncomfortable with it,” Massachusetts parent Kerry Arouca said after her state’s announcement, which she said felt rushed. “I think that until we get a better handle on COVID-19 that the kids should do their best to keep their masks on, maybe some mask breaks outside until everybody is vaccinated.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends masks for students and staff inside buildings, leaving district leaders to weigh the federal guidance against what they have seen in their own schools and heard from the parents, teachers and students.

Some districts, including Philadelphia; Wichita, Kansas; and Albuquerque, New Mexico, have continued to require masks despite the end of state mandates.

Many others have made them optional.

West Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Superintendent Wesley Watts said it was comforting at the outset that all schools required masks, but that was then. His district stopped requiring masks at the end of October, once school systems were allowed to opt out of a state mandate as long as they enforced quarantines in line with CDC recommendations.

“Just knowing the pulse of our community, they were ready for it,” Watts said.

Superintendent Joshua Stafford said his Vienna, Illinois, school district made masks optional this week following a judge’s ruling invalidating the state’s mandate. The state has appealed.

“We’re two years into this thing. So we do have some data, we have some trend history, we have some things that we can look at,” he said.

In his Illinois community — 20 minutes from Paducah, Kentucky, and more than five hours from Chicago — Stafford said hardly anyone still wears a mask. That, along with data showing minimal spread in district schools and the problem of masks muffling voices and hiding facial expressions in class, persuaded him to switch to a mask-optional policy.

“On the other side of that coin, you also have those who suffer from autoimmune disorders, other extenuating health circumstances, and that has to be weighed in the balance of this global pandemic and the response to it as well,” Stafford said, “and so it’s not an easy decision or a light decision.”

Marsha McClary, a mother of five kids ages 7 to 17 from suburban Chicago, called the Illinois governor’s efforts to keep a school mandate in place “an atrocity.”

McClary said as she and her husband traveled for work and their kids’ sports over the past two years, they saw places like Texas and Florida that didn’t require masks. When she looked at COVID data for those places compared with Illinois, “it was really easy to say ‘Guys, we just don’t need to do this,’” she said.

School superintendents generally prefer flexibility to make their own decisions on mask requirements based on infection numbers and vaccination rates, said Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association.

“What we’ve seen in this country is that the pandemic and the level of infections is very much dependent on where you are,” he said. “If you create a blanket situation that says everyone is going to have to do this, wear a mask or not wear a mask, you’re not taking into consideration the differences that exist within your own region.”

In a number of states, including Maryland and Virginia, he said, districts have been dropping and reimposing mask requirements to adapt to the latest virus numbers.

Brockport, New York, teacher Christopher Albrecht would prefer to see any changes to his district’s mask policy come at a “natural breaking point,” like the end of the school year, rather than midstream. To do otherwise, he said, risks deepening divisions by creating schools where some students and teachers wear masks and others don’t.

“It really doesn’t seem to be a problem,” Albrecht said of keeping masks on his fourth grade students for now. “I haven’t heard kids complain. They just don’t complain about it. It’s like wearing socks.”

He also worries about parents pulling their children from schools they may no longer view as safe.

So how do superintendents deal with complaints from all sides about masks in schools?

“That’s why superintendents are leaving the profession in numbers, because they’re caught in the middle. They’re damned if they do, they’re damned if they don’t,” Domenech said.

In Oregon, he said, three superintendents were fired for enforcing the state’s school mask mandate that their local school boards opposed.

In New York, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said Wednesday that the state’s school mask mandate will remain in place for now and will be re-examined in early March.

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OXFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A 15-year-old sophomore opened fire at his Michigan high school on Tuesday, killing three students and wounding eight other people, including at least one teacher, authorities said.

Oakland County Undersheriff Mike McCabe said at a news conference that investigators were still trying to determine a motive for the shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, a community of about 22,000 people roughly 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Detroit.

He said he was aware of allegations circulating on social media that there had been threats of a shooting at the roughly 1,700-student school prior to Tuesday’s attack, but he cautioned against believing that narrative until investigators can look into it.

Authorities didn’t immediately release the suspect’s name, but McCabe said deputies arrested him without incident within minutes of arriving at the school in response to a flood of 911 calls about the attack, which happened shortly before 1 p.m. He said the deputies also recovered the semi-automatic handgun and several clips the suspect used in the attack.

“He fired multiple shots,” McCabe said. “Somewhere in the area of 15 to 20.”

The three students who were killed were a 16-year-old boy and two girls, ages 14 and 17, McCabe said. Two of the wounded were undergoing surgery as of 5 p.m. and the six others who were wounded were in stable condition, he said.

McCabe said the suspect’s parents visited their son where he’s being held and advised him not to talk to investigators, as is his right. Police have to seek permission from a juvenile suspect’s parents or guardian to speak with them, he added.

McCabe said he wasn’t aware of any prior run-ins the suspect had with law enforcement or if he had any disciplinary history at school.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also spoke at the news conference, saying, “I think this is every parent’s worst nightmare,” while choking up.

The school was placed on lockdown after the attack, with some children sheltering in locked classrooms while officers searched the premises. They were later taken to a nearby Meijer grocery store to be picked up by their parents.

Isabel Flores, a 15-year-old ninth grader, told WJBK-TV that she and other students heard gunshots and saw another student bleeding from the face. They then ran from the area through the rear of the school, she said.

McCabe said investigators would be poring over the school’s video footage and looking through social media posts for any evidence of a possible motive.

A concerned parent, Robin Redding, said her son, Treshan Bryant, is a 12th grader at the school but stayed home on Tuesday. She said he had heard threats that there could be a shooting.

“This couldn’t be just random,” she said.

Redding didn’t provide specifics about what her son had heard, but she expressed concern with school safety in general.

“Kids just, like they’re just mad at each other at this school,” she said.

Bryant said he texted several younger cousins in the morning and they said they didn’t want to go to school, and he got a bad feeling. He asked his mom if he could do his assignments online.

Bryant said he had heard vague threats “for a long time now” about plans for a shooting at the school.

“You’re not supposed to play about that,” he said of the threats. “This is real life.”

School administrators posted two letters to parents on the school’s website this month, saying they were responding to rumors of a threat against the school following a bizarre vandalism incident.

According to a Nov. 4 letter written by Principal Steve Wolf, someone threw a deer head into a courtyard from the school’s roof, painted several windows on the roof with red acrylic paint and used the same paint on concrete near the school building.

Without specifically referencing that incident, a second post on Nov. 12 assured “there has been no threat to our building nor our students.”

“We are aware of the numerous rumors that have been circulating throughout our building this week. We understand that has created some concern for students and parents,” the administrators wrote. “Please know that we have reviewed every concern shared with us and investigated all information provided. Some rumors have evolved from an incident last week, while others do not appear to have any connection. Student interpretations of social media posts and false information have exacerbated the overall concern.”

McCabe said the incident with the deer head was “absolutely unrelated” to Tuesday’s shooting.

“That was a different incident, different student,” he said.

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When middle school student Diego Stolz, 13, died from the injuries sustained in an on-campus attack by two classmates whom he had reported were bullying him the week before, community members said the only way to prevent such tragedies was to teach their children to fight in order to be able to savagely beat the bullies before they themselves were beaten.

But California school districts vary wildly in the rates of bullying faced by students, as anonymously reported by the students themselves.

According to the California Healthy Kids Survey, which is conducted in about 70% of California’s 1,037 public school districts, about a quarter of seventh graders in Irvine Unified in Orange County have experienced harassment or bullying and about 10% of them have been in a physical fight. In Alameda Unified in the Bay Area, 43% of seventh graders say they’ve been harassed or bullied and 18% of them have been in a physical fight. The disparities between districts don’t neatly line up with socioeconomic status or any other simple explanation. Something else is going on.

I first became aware of the treasure trove of data in the California Healthy Kids Survey in 2018, after four high school and middle school students in Rancho Cucamonga killed themselves in the first few weeks of the 2018-19 school year. In the process of trying to cover the awful news in a sensitive, responsible way, I encountered the work of Prof. Ron Avi Astor, now at UCLA. Astor and a co-author had looked at the disparities reported in the California Healthy Kids Survey in how many secondary students had reported considering killing themselves in the past year. Astor was — and I believe still is — frustrated at how little was being done with the data, which suggested all sorts of factors impacted how likely kids were to consider suicide.

So, in 2019, I did something about it. Using the most recent California Healthy Kids Survey data, I looked at the self-reported levels of suicidal thoughts among students in the Los Angeles region, discovering sometimes dramatic differences between districts, ranging from a low of 13% in Coachella Valley Unified to a high of 32% in Rowland Unified.

The disparities didn’t nicely track economic fault lines: In Rim of the World Unified, where schools are crumbling as enrollment plummets, only 14% of students said they had considered killing themselves. But in affluent Palos Verde Peninsula Unified, students were 9% more likely to think about suicide.

I wanted to write a story that went beyond a blame-and-shame article, which did not seem likely to prevent any student suicides. Instead, I interviewed officials at districts where students reported low levels of suicidal thoughts, as well as districts that had seen dramatic drops over the past five years. I found common elements in all of them, a set of mental and emotional health supports, sometimes offered for free by outside nonprofits to impoverished districts. The resulting story was passed back and forth between educators on social media and our internal metrics show that the entire package of stories continue to be read, two years later.

Now I want to do the same with bullying, looking at California school districts where students report low levels of bullying and fighting and see what programs they have in common. I want to create a package of stories under the auspices of the 2021 Data Fellowship that educators, parents and students can turn to, find programs that have a proven track record of working and replicate them across the state and nation.

Because I don’t think bullying is inevitable and I don’t believe that adults should just accept that more kids like Rosalie and Diego will die because of it.

Beau Yarbrough | Contributed

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At a school in San Francisco, Governor Newsom announced plans to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of vaccinations required to attend school in-person when the vaccine receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for middle and high school grades, making California the first state in the nation to announce such a measure. Following the other first-in-the-nation school masking and staff vaccination measures, Governor Newsom announced the COVID-19 vaccine will be required for in-person school attendance—just like vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and more.

“The state already requires that students are vaccinated against viruses that cause measles, mumps, and rubella – there’s no reason why we wouldn’t do the same for COVID-19. Today’s measure, just like our first-in-the-nation school masking and staff vaccination requirements, is about protecting our children and school staff, and keeping them in the classroom,” said Governor Newsom. “Vaccines work. It’s why California leads the country in preventing school closures and has the lowest case rates. We encourage other states to follow our lead to keep our kids safe and prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

Thanks to the state’s bold public health measures, California continues to maintain the lowest case rate in the entire country and is one of only two states to have advanced out of the CDC’s ‘high’ COVID transmission category. More information about the announcement can be found here.

The vast majority of school districts have reported that over 95% of students have returned to in-person instruction this school year, as can be seen on the state’s Student Supports & In-Person Dashboard. Thanks to unprecedented resources and public health measures (measures shown to be highly effective), California is leading national trends in preventing school closures and keeping kids in classrooms, accounting for only 14 out of over 2,000 school closures nationwide, or roughly 0.7% – despite the fact that California educates an estimated 12% of the nation’s public school students. If California’s rates had aligned with national trends, the state would have seen upwards of 240 school closures.

In order to further protect students and staff and continue supporting a safe return to in-person instruction for all students, the Governor directed the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to follow the procedures established by the Legislature to add the COVID-19 vaccine to other vaccinations required for in-person school attendance—such as measles, mumps, and rubella—pursuant to the Health and Safety Code. COVID-19 vaccine requirements will be phased-in by grade span, which will also promote smoother implementation.

Upon full FDA approval of age groups within a grade span, CDPH will consider the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Family Physicians prior to implementing a requirement. Following existing statute, full approval of ages 12+ corresponds to grades 7-12, and full approval of ages 5-11 corresponds to grades K-6. Students who are under the age of full approval, but within the grade span, will be required to be vaccinated once they reach the age of full approval (with a reasonable period of time to receive both doses), consistent with existing procedures for other vaccines. The requirement will take effect at the start of the term following full approval of that grade span, to be defined as January 1st or July 1st, whichever comes first. Based on current information, the requirement is expected to apply to grades 7-12 starting on July 1, 2022. However, local health jurisdictions and local education agencies are encouraged to implement requirements ahead of a statewide requirement based on their local circumstances.

Governor Newsom’s historic $123.9 billion Pre-K and K-12 education package is providing an unprecedented level of school and student funding to transform the state’s public schools into gateways of equity and opportunity, supporting the potential of every California student by: achieving universal transitional kindergarten for four-year-olds by 2025, expanding afterschool and summer programs, providing universal free school nutrition, increasing the number of well-prepared staff per pupil, creating full-service community schools to support the mental and social-emotional well-being of students, and more.

gov.ca.gov

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