School Quarantines In Mississippi, North Carolina; Arizona Teacher Resigns, Fined

CNN: Over 100 Students Quarantined In Mississippi School District After Several Individuals Tested Positive For Covid-19
Several students in the Corinth School District in Mississippi have been infected with Covid-19 a little over a week after in-person classes resumed. Taylor Coombs, spokesperson for the Corinth School District, told CNN that six students and one staff member tested positive for the coronavirus. According to Coombs, 116 students that have been considered in "close contact" of a positive case have been sent home to quarantine for 14 days.(Lynch, 8/5)

ABC News: Students At School Touted By Pence For Reopening Must Quarantine Due To COVID-19 
Fourth graders at a school in North Carolina have been asked to quarantine for 14 days after a student there tested positive for COVID-19. The school, a Thales Academy in Wake Forest, said it was notified on Monday that the student became infected after having contact with an infected family member. (Torres, 8/5)

GMA: This Teacher Resigned Over COVID-19 Concerns. Then He Was Fined $2,000. 
An Arizona teacher has left his job during the novel coronavirus pandemic after his district required all educators to return to the classroom for virtual learning. Tavious Peterkin, from Surprise, Arizona, was scheduled to begin his first year at Dysart Unified School District. Peterkin has been teaching for 15 years and was hired to teach band and choir. (Pelletiere, 8/5)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Jefferson Parish Teachers Test Positive For Coronavirus Just Days Ahead Of 1st Week Back In Person 
A "handful" of Jefferson Parish schoolteachers have tested positive for COVID-19 since returning to their classrooms Monday to prepare for the opening of in-class instruction next week, a development the Jefferson Parish public school district said it has been anticipating and will deal with in accordance with state guidelines. (Calder, 8/5)

The Washington Post: Blount County Tennessee Schools Bringing Students Into Classrooms 
It was just before 7:30 a.m. when the line of Blount County Schools buses grumbled into the parking lot of Heritage High School and began dropping off students — some wearing masks, others barefaced — into the fraught new world of in-school education during a pandemic. At the flagpole in front of the school, two unmasked teens hugged before sitting down in a small group to chat until the bell rang. The scene of students reuniting could have been from any other first day of school in any other year. But over their shoulders, an early August thunderstorm brewed above the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains — an almost-too-perfect metaphor for what many parents and teachers here, and across the country, worry is coming. (Shilton and Heim, 8/5)

Schools continue to draft reopening plans —

WBUR: Boston Public Schools Issues First Draft Of Reopening Plans, Outlining Hybrid Learning Groups 
With about a month until classes begin and amid a pandemic churning up endless questions, Boston parents got their first detailed peek at what the school week might look like this fall. Officials with Boston Public Schools (BPS) publicly released a first draft of its state-required reopening plan Tuesday night. "The upcoming school year will look and feel different than any we have previously experienced," said BPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius in a memo included in the plan. (Jung, 8/5)

AP: Inslee: Most Schools Should Go Online-Only, Cancel Sports
Gov. Jay Inslee said Wednesday that he’s strongly recommending most schools offer online-only learning for students this fall due to COVID-19, and canceling or postponing sports and all other in-person extracurricular activities. “This pandemic will continue to grow unless something changes,” Inslee said, adding if every school district brought all students back “I believe we would see a dangerous increase of COVID activity.” (Ho, 8/5)

Reuters: Chicago Says Students Will Stay Home, New York Erects COVID-19 Checkpoints
Chicago will teach online only when school resumes in September, the mayor said on Wednesday, and New York City announced checkpoints at bridges and tunnels to enforce a quarantine on travelers from 35 states on a list of coronavirus hot spots. The teachers’ union and many parents in Chicago had objected to a plan to allow students the option of attending class in pods of 15 pupils twice a week. (Caspani and O'Brien, 8/5)

The Washington Post: America Is About To Start Online Learning, Round 2. For Millions Of Students, It Won’T Be Any Better
America is about to embark on Round 2 of its unplanned experiment in online education — and, for millions of students, virtual learning won’t be any better than it was in the spring. As the start of school inches ever closer — and is already underway in some places — many teachers have yet to be trained how to be more adept with online learning. School district leaders spent so much time over the summer trying to create reopening plans that would meet safety guidelines for classes inside school buildings that they had little time to focus on improving online academic offerings. And millions of students nationwide still lack devices and Internet access. (Natanson and Strauss, 8/5)

Kaiser Health News: With Caveats, Hopeful News For Preschools Planning Young Kids’ Return
Sabrina Lira Garcia is proud to work as a clinical assistant in the COVID-19 ward of a Los Angeles hospital, but sometimes she wishes she could just stay home with her infant son until the pandemic is over. Pulling her child from day care has never been an option for Lira Garcia, however. She can’t let her career lapse. Her husband was born in Mexico and is undocumented. The family pays monthly legal fees to help him get residency papers. If he were ever deported, she’d have to support Jeremiah, born in October, by herself. (Almendrala, 8/6)

In higher-education news —

Houston Chronicle: Bill Proposes $1 Billion For Medical Schools To Encourage Enrollment, Retention Of Black Doctors 
A recently proposed bill would spend $1 billion to provide more resources, and encouragement, to doctors of color. The Expanding Medical Education Act was introduced by Senator Tim Kaine, D-Va., on July 30 and aims to "tackle the lack of representation of rural students, underserved students, and students of color in the physician pipeline. (Gowdy, 8/5)

Boston Globe: Among Colleges’ Many Fall Worries: Students’ Mental Health
As colleges prepare elaborate plans for socially distanced classrooms and extra cleaning procedures this fall, their students have been stuck at home, already grappling with one major yet invisible effect of the pandemic — the toll on their mental health. Ever since campuses abruptly cleared in March, students’ lives have been upended. In a matter of days, internships were postponed, summer programs cancelled, job interviews paused indefinitely. (Krantz and Fernandes, 8/4)