California schools under intense strain, fighting to stay open during Omicron surge
LA Times, MELISSA GOMEZ, PALOMA ESQUIVEL: "In Los Angeles, schools saw a massive 130,000-student drop in daily attendance when students returned from winter break this week, the latest pandemic hit to education.
In San Diego, severe staffing shortages led school leaders to warn families of the possibility of “COVID Impact Days” similar to heat or snow days. And in Culver City, district leaders announced that they would close all schools next week to give students and staff time to “recoup and recover.”
Educators across California are in triage mode working to keep campuses open and the state’s 6 million children in class as Omicron-fueled coronavirus cases surge. Save for some notable exceptions, they are managing to do so. But staff and students are strained in new and stressful ways as yet another intense pandemic chapter unfolds at schools."
‘A huge strain.’ Sacramento area schools enter another week of a COVID surge
MOLLY SULLIVAN, SacBee: “Sacramento-area school districts are being hit hard by a wave of omicron cases.
The Sacramento City Unified School District has 1,366 positive cases and 10,041 students in quarantine, according to its dashboard. The district is hiring substitute teachers to fill gaps left by sick or exposed staff. San Juan Unified has 2,237 positive student cases and 4,725 student exposures across its dozens of campuses.
Elk Grove Unified, the largest district in the region, reported 286 active cases on Friday. And Folsom Cordova had 772 active cases among students and staff as of Wednesday, with nearly 1,800 students in quarantine.”
Bay Area zero-waste stores thrive after wave of pandemic pollution
SF Chronicle, TARA DUGGAN: "When Shanti Jourdan received her first bicycle delivery of laundry detergent, Epsom salt and olive oil from Re-Up Refill Shop in Oakland, she thought she had found the holy grail.
“I’ve been really into the idea of zero waste and reuse instead of recycle since I was a young teenager,” said Jourdan, 30, an Oakland yoga instructor and astrologer. She posted Instagram photos of the jugs and jars, neatly labeled with embossed black tape. “It felt like it was too good to be true.”
That was late 2020, the year Re-Up Refill Shop opened selling bulk products in reusuable containers out of a few shipping containers in West Oakland. The company has since expanded to a retail store in Rockridge, during a period when several similar businesses started around the Bay Area — all focused on avoiding single-use plastic."
California forcibly sterilized people for 70 years. Survivors can now get compensation
NADIA LOPEZ, SacBee: “Arcadia resident Mary Franco was in her first year of middle school in 1934 when she was forcibly removed from her home and institutionalized.
Her parents didn’t know it at the time, but by committing her to a state hospital in Pomona, they were also signing away her reproductive rights to the state of California. She was 13, alone and confused. She would never have children.
“She did know she was sterilized and she blamed her family for it,” said Stacy Cordova Diaz, Franco’s niece. “It was a super shameful thing that really tore the family apart.”
Will California see more tsunami threats from future submarine volcanoes?
SF Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: "Volcanologists say the Pacific eruption that triggered tsunami warnings along the West Coast over the weekend appears to be sputtering out — but that doesn’t mean that any one of many submarine volcanoes around the Pacific won’t produce a similar threat in the future.
Bay Area residents were among those waking up Saturday to news that a volcano had erupted near the Pacific island nation of Tonga, and the tsunami waves triggered by the blast were heading to the California coast. By Sunday morning, the tsunami warning had been lifted for California, but not until after it had led to closure of beaches, some precautionary evacuations and localized flooding.
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano eruption appeared to be one of the most powerful eruptions in recent history. California is more accustomed to the threat of tsunamis triggered by ocean earthquakes, but it’s not out of the question another volcano-generated one could hit the West Coast at some point, experts say."
Capitol Weekly Podcast: Big Week for California Healthcare
Capitol Weekly Staff: "First, Governor Newsom announced his proposed budget for 2022–23, which includes funding to expand MediCal coverage to undocumented immigrants of all age groups.
This expansion of services closes a gap: undocumented immigrants aged 25 and under or 50 and older were already eligible for MediCal through previous legislation."
Single-payer health care advocates rip Gavin Newsom for ‘flip-flop’
SF Chronicle, JOE GAROFOLI: "The California Nurses Association didn’t just endorse Gavin Newsom for governor in 2018; the powerful union drove a giant red bus around the state with Newsom’s face plastered on the side of it.
Written underneath: “Nurses Trust Newsom. He shares our values and fights for our patients.”
Now, though, the nurses union is ready to throw Newsom under the bus."
More kids in the hospital with COVID renew fears for medically fragile children
LA Times, EMILY ALPERT REYES: "Whenever someone tells Jamie Chong that COVID-19 isn’t a serious threat to children, she reminds them that the common cold can send her child to the hospital.
Her son, Asher, who is nearing his third birthday, has cerebral palsy and issues with his respiratory and gastrointestinal systems, putting him at higher risk from the coronavirus.
Chong has been caring for him in their Simi Valley home during the pandemic and strictly limiting who can enter. Sometimes, when cases have surged, she has even decided to turn away his home nurses."
Some Bay Area companies urging, but not requiring, COVID-19 boosters as omicron surges
SF Chronicle, CHASE DIFELICIANTONIO: "As a sushi chef and restaurant owner who’s a former cancer researcher, Randy Musterer doesn’t take the issue of vaccines lightly. But in the midst of the omicron surge, he said he has to balance health concerns like mandating the shots with having enough people to keep his doors open.
Musterer owns Sushi Confidential restaurants in Campbell and San Jose, and throughout the pandemic he has strongly encouraged his employees to get vaccinated and boosted, but he hasn’t made it a requirement to work there.
“We haven’t been forcing it,” Musterer said of requiring vaccines and boosters."
Kevin de León, working to clear encampments, wages an escalating fight with activists
LA Times, DAVID ZAHNISER: "For the last year, Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de León has focused much of his energy on reducing the number of encampments in his Eastside district, working with city agencies to move people off the streets and into temporary housing or other forms of shelter.
Last spring, he said, his office succeeded in moving 74 homeless people off a median strip in El Sereno and into two converted motels. Six months later, dozens more were relocated from a two-block section of Main Street in downtown. And since Thanksgiving, his team — working alongside outreach workers — moved about 90 people out of encampments that have long surrounded El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument and into temporary housing.
Those efforts have put De León, a veteran politician known for his left-of-center challenge to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2018, in direct conflict with some of the city’s most outspoken homeless advocates, who say he is pursuing a policy of “banishment” for L.A.'s unhoused."
Proposed 600-mile Lost Sierra Route would connect Truckee to Lassen
SF Chronicle, GREGORY THOMAS: "The summit of Mount Ingalls, the highest point in Plumas County, offers panoramic views of some of California’s finest landmarks: Lassen Peak to the north, the jagged Sierra Buttes to the south, glacial lakes and extensive woodlands in all directions.
It’s an incredible spot. But getting there is a pain. The summit trailheads are only accessible via long stretches of rocky logging roads that are poorly signed. People sometimes get lost before they even start their treks.
Getting to such hard-to-reach, yet spectacular places in California’s northern Sierra will be a whole lot easier if a newly proposed 600-mile trail network comes to fruition."
