The number of families homeschooling in the United States has remained significantly above pre-pandemic levels even though government schools have reopened.
The number of homeschooling students increased by 63% during the 2020-2021 school year in 18 states that shared data, AP reported. That percentage then dropped by only 17% in the next academic year.
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As the peak of the coronavirus pandemic appears to have passed, ten Republican-led states have all recorded the lowest unemployment rate on record.
According to The Hill, the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows ten different states with unemployment rates as low as just over 2 percent. Nebraska and Utah are tied for the lowest percentages in the country, at 2.2 percent each. They are followed by Indiana with 2.4 percent, and Kansas with 2.6 percent. The remaining six states are: Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma and West Virginia.
All ten states’ unemployment rates are currently the lowest on record since BLS first began tracking state-by-state percentages in 1976. Of these ten states, only one has a Democratic governor, with Laura Kelly in Kansas. All ten states have Republican majorities in their respective state legislatures.
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In a letter to the House Speaker and Senate President Friday, President Joe Biden extended the national COVID-19 emergency pandemic indefinitely.
“There remains a need to continue this national emergency,” Biden wrote.
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Parents and residents of San Francisco overwhelmingly voted to recall three school board members in the city’s first recall election since 1983.
Alison Collins, Faauuga Moliga and Gabriella Lopez all lost their positions on the governing body, as the “Yes” option to the recall question gained more than 70 percent in all three cases.
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Connecticut children cannot be certain they can finally be free of wearing masks in school since, although Gov. Ned Lamont (D) said he would end the state school mask mandate by February 28, that plan may depend on the legislature voting to extend his pandemic emergency powers, and then on individual school districts.
In his State of the State address Wednesday, Lamont told residents he will roll back some coronavirus restrictions, including the school mask mandate, adding, “You have earned this freedom.”
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Though children are least likely to experience severe illness from COVID-19, the level of mental health distress many are exhibiting during the government’s response to the pandemic is “utterly devastating,” child psychiatrist Dr. Mark McDonald said in a recent interview.
The Los Angeles-based clinician expressed his concern during a late November podcast for the Unity Project, an organization working to end COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthy children in grades K-12.
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A recent report claims that the world’s top 10 richest men all saw their wealth double over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic, while 99 percent of global income dropped dramatically during the same period.
As reported by ABC News, a study published on Monday by the group Oxfam showed that the collective wealth of the top 10 doubled from approximately $700 billion to over $1.5 trillion between March of 2020 and November of 2021. During that same time, over 160 million people fell into poverty as incomes plummeted. The increase for the top 10 in less than two years represented a greater increase for their wealth than their growth over the previous 14 years combined.
The 10 men who were the focus of Oxfam’s study were: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffett. The data for the study was gathered from the World Bank.
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The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UMPC) announced on Friday that the hospital will establish an in-house staffing agency to solve its nursing shortage.
Dubbed “UPMC Travel Staffing,” the new program will allow the hospital system to move nurses among different locations in order to fill the staffing needs of each hospital.
According to a press release from the medical center, nurses who join the new agency will be allowed to work in the system’s medical facilities in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland.
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