TALAS E-newsletter – July 29

Little Elm ISD is moving forward with plans to offer two ethnic study courses in the 2022-23 school year.

The courses – African American studies and Mexican American studies – were approved by the LEISD Board of Trustees on Monday in a 4-2 vote.

With the approval the courses will be added to the district’s course catalog for high school students in October. The courses will count as social studies electives.

Region 15’s mission statement says their Education Service Center “is dedicated to excellence in education through leadership, partnership, and service.”

The center has many programs, one of which is the Migrant Education Program, or MEP.

According to Region 15’s website: The USDE Office of Migrant Education has provided funds for supplemental academic and supportive services to the children of families who migrate to find work in the agricultural and fishing industries.

“Parents, share your concerns with your schools. They need to hear from you.”

That’s part of a plea that Austin Mayor Steve Adler posted Tuesday as schools across Texas prepare to return to in-person learning for the new academic year — just as COVID-19 cases nationwide have surged.

But as many districts in the country move to enforce student mask-wearing, Texas districts are bound by an executive order from Governor Greg Abbott, which banned mask mandates from governmental entities.

Recently, there’s been more focus on keywords on resumes, even to the extent that some professionals change keywords on their resume on a per job basis.

Keywords are important – no doubt about that – so it does make sense to include relevant keywords to highlight your hard skills, software that you know, and your professional capabilities.

What is just as important as keywords, but often gets overlooked, are your key accomplishments – the things you have done on the job that demonstrate your ability to make success happen. When a pile of resumes is getting screened by a hiring manager, and they all have the same keywords, it is your key accomplishments that make you stand out and attract the interview.

In a Tuesday announcement, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated guidance to recommend all students and staff wear masks in schools regardless of vaccination status, citing rising infections due to the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said this change is “not a welcomed piece of news” and “was not a decision that was taken lightly,” noting only 30% of children 12-17 are currently fully vaccinated.

Eight states having barred local districts from imposing mask mandates, and the extent to which schools at large will adjust masking policies remains unclear. The American Academy for Pediatrics has also recommended universal masking in school buildings.

The return of in-person learning last spring led to a boost in young children’s reading skills, but performance hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels and racial gaps have grown wider, according to new data from curriculum provider Amplify.

Compared to winter results, the end-of-year data on the widely used Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, or DIBELS, shows that fewer students were at risk of not learning to read — a decline to 38 percent from 47 percent in kindergarten and a drop to 32 percent from 43 percent at first grade. But the scores at third grade, a critical year for developing more advanced reading skills, haven’t bounced back in the same way.

Paullette Healy isn’t sure yet where her 13-year-old son, Lucas, will go to school this fall.

She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and says New York City school buildings are in “disarray,” with overcrowded classrooms and windows that barely open. She worries about classroom ventilation and social distancing.

On a chilly morning just before Valentine’s Day 2020, Viviana Longoria, 16, joined the stream of girls getting off the bus at Lincoln Park School, infant bucket seats in tow.

A slim, poised young woman with waist-length hair, Viviana walked past the principal’s office, along the main hallway, and made a left into the building that houses the school library and the daycare. There, Viviana handed her daughter, Bella Rose, a serious one-year-old with big brown eyes, to a child care teacher, who placed her on a rug with other babies.

Guadalupe Torres of Mi Familia Vota stayed with Maria Cruz Meza for an hour at her doorstep, determined to get Covid-19 vaccinations for her and her husband and son.

Just five days earlier, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sounded the alarm that the country is entering a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” as the delta variant of the coronavirus drives up Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations.