Christian School Kids Meet Jesus Thanks to NRA

3 children and 3 adults are dead in a shooting at The Covenant School, a private religious school in Nashville, Tennessee. The now-deceased female gun enthusiast responsible carried two AR-15 assault-style rifles and a pistol, and was possibly an alumna. Tuition at the Presbyterian-affiliated school ranges from $10,250 to $16,500, plus fees. Almost all students are White.

15 million Americans, about 1 in 20, own an AR-15 assault-style weapon, and some own several. According to the national Gun Violence Archive, there have been 128 mass shootings in the U.S. this year so far.

More:

“Three children and three adults killed by female shooter at Nashville elementary school,” Martin Pengelly, The Guardian

“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” The Onion

Related:

“We spent 7 months examining the AR-15’s role in America. Here’s what we learned.” Washington Post

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School Book Bans Are Rising

“From July 2021 to June 2022, PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 unique book titles.

The 1,648 titles are by 1,261 different authors, 290 illustrators, and 18 translators, impacting the literary, scholarly, and creative work of 1,553 people altogether.”

— “Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools,” Jonathan Friedman and Nadine Farid Johnson, PEN America

“While book bans have long been a part of America’s education fabric, the Pen report suggests they are now driven less by the complaints of individual parents and more by organized, ideological groups and overt pressure from politicians.

About 40% of the book bans in the past year have been connected to political pressure or legislation designed to restrict and reshape teaching, the report estimates.”

— “‘Rapid acceleration’ in US school book censorship leads to 2,500 bans in a year.” Oliver Milman, The Guardian

More:

“Who’s Behind the Escalating Push to Ban Books? A New Report Has Answers,” Eesha Pendharkar, Education Week

“Over 1,600 Books Were Banned During the Past School Year,” Ella Feldman, Smithsonian Magazine

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Back-to-School with the Delta Variant

It’s Back-to-School time in America, but this year that doesn’t just mean pencil cases, it aslo means cases of Pediatric COVID-19, 250,000 in the last week. Kids in low-vaccination states are getting infected at greater rates. Emergency Room visits and hospital admissions in the states with the lowest vaccination coverage were 3.4 and 3.7 times higher than in states with the highest vaccination rates. Children’s hospitals are at or near capacity and asking for federal assistance. For the most recent reporting period, infections among children account for 22.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases. That’s 204,000 infected kids in a week.

Even though most parents favor mask-wearing in schools, nine states prohibit school districts from setting mask requirements: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. Over 1,000 schools have closed due to COVID-19 outbreaks since late July.

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Back-to-School Special: COVID-19

Strained by managing on-line schooling and providing their own daytime childcare during this pandemic, many parents favor in-person schooling for their offspring. After all, the president says it’s safe, right?

The facts say otherwise. Last week, more than 61,000 American children caught the novel coronavirus, the highest weekly increase since the start of the pandemic. So far, 853,000 children in the U.S. have contracted the disease since the outbreak began, and a third of them needed ICU hospitalization. From February though July, at least 121 children have died. Long-term effects of COVID-19 infection in children are suspected.

More:

“More than 61,000 children got Covid-19 last week, a record,” Erika Edwards, NBC News

“Cases of Covid-19 in children on rise, with highest 1-week spike yet,” Sandee LaMotte, CNN

Related:

“I’m Scared to Death’: How Teachers Feel About COVID-19 School Safety,” Healthline

“Risk for Severe COVID-19 Illness Among Teachers and Adults Living With School-Aged Children,” Adam W. Gaffney, MD, MPH, David Himmelstein, MD, and Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, Annals of Internal Medicine

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Trump Administration Back-to-School Special

This summer, White House officials pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to play down the risk of sending children back to school. White House Coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah L. Birx, and Marc Short, chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence, and Paul Alexander, a senior adviser to HHS assistant secretary Michael Caputo, tried to get CDC scientists to downplay the danger of COVID-19 to children, teenagers, and young adults in a political effort to get schools to reopen.

More:

“Behind the White House Effort to Pressure the C.D.C. on School Openings,” Mark Mazzetti, Noah Weiland and Sharon LaFraniere, New York Times

“Trump official pressured CDC to change report on Covid and kids,” Dan Diamond, Politico

“We Can’t Allow the CDC to Be Tainted by Politics,” Richard E. Besser, Scientific American

Related:

“COVID-19 Cases Rising Among U.S. Children as Schools Reopen,” AP via Education Week

“‘Children have become acceptable carnage,’” Andrew Atterbury, Nicole Gaudiano, Mackenzie Mays, Juan Perez Jr., and Madina Touré, Politico

“Children’s role in spread of virus bigger than thought,” The Harvard Gazette

“10 facts about school reopenings in the Covid-19 pandemic,” Anna North, Vox

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Mommy’s Little Virus Vector

There are  56 million K-12 students in the United States, and school districts, politicians, some and parents are anxious for them to get back to schoolrooms and off the kitchen table virtual classroom. But information on COVID-19 in children is just coming to light, and attempts at safely re-opening schools have been spotty and uneven.

Though Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and other Trump idolators prefer to operate in the absence of facts, a new study of 85,000 people with COVID-19 and their 575,000 contacts found that children contract and transmit the coronavirus as frequently as their elders. That means kids, especially the super-spreaders among them, can infect each other, their teachers, and their parents and caregivers. Teachers, understandably, are concerned. And while infected children are less likely to suffer fatalities, there appear to be long-term consequences of COVID-19 infection.

Until September, child sacrifice in the U.S. was a weird QAnon conspiracy theory. Opening schools in a pandemic without real planning makes it reality.

More:

“COVID-19 Cases Rising Among U.S. Children as Schools Reopen,” AP via Education Week

“‘Children have become acceptable carnage,’” Andrew Atterbury, Nicole Gaudiano, Mackenzie Mays, Juan Perez Jr., and Madina Touré, Politico

“Children’s role in spread of virus bigger than thought,” The Harvard Gazette

“10 facts about school reopenings in the Covid-19 pandemic,” Anna North, Vox

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More Than a Single March

Gun violence marches this weekend span the entire country, and over 800 places around the world.

What can be done? The Parkland students have some ideas.

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School Shootings

What students think about school shootings. A Vox video.

More:

“Parkland Students: Our manifesto to fix America’s gun laws,” The Guardian

Follow the March for Our Lives with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High Eagle Eye

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187,000 students experienced school gun violence since Columbine

More than 187,000 students at nearly 200 U.S. schools have experienced gun violence during school hours since the 1999 Columbine shooting. A Washington Post analysis found that there have been 10 school shootings a year since Columbine. There have already been 11 shootings in 2018.

Read the analysis:

“Scarred by school shootings,” John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich, Washington Post

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Guns for Teachers

“It’s no wonder the NRA likes this solution — it involves buying hundreds of thousands of guns, and that’s their solution to everything.” — John Oliver

More on this topic here.

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