Today: Staff sergeants lead classrooms, the Biden administration moves to end a policy that targeted Chinese researchers and after a pandemic hiatus, Modern Love is back with its college essay contest.
Substitutes in camouflage
National Guard troops are staffing classrooms in New Mexico to help with crippling staff shortages related to the pandemic. While there, they are employing their informal motto, “Semper Gumby” — Always Flexible.
In one classroom in Estancia, about an hour outside of Albuquerque, my colleague Erica L. Green watched a member of the Guard use her uniform in a vocabulary lesson. The students were working on their pronunciation of a “bossy R,” as in -er, -ir-, -ur.
“My substitute is wearing gear,” one student responded.
“Yes,” the teacher, Lt. Col. Susana Corona, replied, beaming. “The superintendent allows me to wear my uniform. I’m wearing a pair of boots.”
Other states have also turned to uniformed personnel to help schools cope. In Massachusetts, National Guard members have driven school buses. In Oklahoma, police officers served as substitutes. Some critics have worried that putting more uniformed officers in schools could create anxiety in student populations that have historically had hostile experiences with law enforcement.
But in New Mexico, schools have largely embraced state militia members as a complicated but critical step toward recovery.
“You always have to be ready when there’s a need, when there’s a call to service,” said Colonel Corona, who watched her own fourth grader try to learn remotely last year.
Some teachers have expressed gratitude for what one called “extra bodies.” Others see the deployment as a way to avoid tackling longstanding problems undergirding the staff shortages, although state lawmakers just passed legislation that will raise teachers’ base salary by an average of 20 percent, starting this summer.
Students were mostly unfazed, Erica reported, but one third grader told her that she knew that “this is not normal.”
First graders can tell, too. They called their new teacher, Staff Sgt. Rainah Myers-Garcia, “Ms. Soldier.”
Once when a teacher was out unexpectedly, Sergeant Myers-Garcia relied on Google searches to handle a fraction lesson. The next day, she had work sheets her mother had printed out for a morning icebreaker, a bag of prizes she bought from Walmart and two lesson plans she borrowed from other teachers.
“In their defense, their teacher’s not here and they have a soldier for a teacher,” she said.
But despite hiccups, and the Guard’s flexible-first approach, superintendents and school leaders have said the staffing shortages have been just too great to bear without help.
“The image that comes to mind is walking into a grocery store and seeing bare shelves,” said Royceann LaFayette, a high school counselor in a farming community about half an hour south of Albuquerque.
Her school was short about half-dozen teachers this fall. Airman First Class Jennifer Marquez joined last month, covering multiple subjects.
“We’re going to use her every day until she gets orders that she has to go back,” Eliseo Aguirre, the principal, said, “which I hope isn’t until the end of the year.”
The end of the ‘China Initiative’
The U.S. Justice Department will soon announce changes to the China Initiative, a Trump-era effort to combat Chinese national security threats. The modifications will most likely focus on efforts to root out academics who lied about or hid Chinese affiliations.
Critics put pressure on the Biden administration to end the program, saying that it had unfairly targeted Asian professors, chilled scientific research and contributed to a rising tide of anti-Asian sentiment.
They also said that the program had lumped financial disclosure cases with more serious crimes, like espionage and trade-secret theft, wrongly giving the impression that everyone who hid Chinese affiliations was a spy.
And while the program did result in numerous pleas and convictions, several cases against academics have ended in acquittal or dismissal.
In one high-profile failure, prosecutors withdrew charges against Gang Chen, a mechanical engineering professor at M.I.T., after the Energy Department said that his undisclosed affiliations with China would not have affected his grant application.
“You work hard, you have good output, you build a reputation,” Dr. Chen told my colleague Ellen Barry earlier this year. “The government gets what they want, right? But in the end, you’re treated like a spy. That just breaks your heart. It breaks your confidence.”
Virus news
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A new Virginia law will effectively bar local school mask mandates by giving parents the right to exempt their children without stating a reason. The law, signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin last week, also limits remote instruction.
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The Maryland State Board of Education voted to rescind the school mask mandate on Tuesday. The State Assembly will make the final call.
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The school district in Jackson, N.J., is raising pay for bus drivers to $30 an hour from $22.67 per hour, an attempt to address the shortage.
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Masks will be optional in Anchorage’s public schools starting Feb. 28.
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New Hampshire will no longer allow schools to shift to fully remote or hybrid instruction because of outbreaks.
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A good read from The Atlantic: Olga Khazan explored the question: “Should parents alone decide what kids learn and how they live, or do government institutions have a role to play too?”
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And a good read from The Associated Press: Remote school made it easier for young Olympians to juggle training, competitions and class work.
What else we’re reading
Colleges and universities
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The head of the California State University system resigned amid allegations that he had previously mishandled sexual harassment complaints.
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The University of California, Berkeley, said it might have to accept thousands fewer students than planned. A state appellate court ruled that it had to cap enrollment at pandemic levels after a legal battle with a residents’ group.
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For years, the State University of New York system has enforced inflexible debt-collection practices on former students with unpaid tuition bills. Now, officials are promising change.
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New Mexico is expected to expand its free college program this fall, already one of the country’s most generous.
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An official at the University of Alabama resigned after the police arrested him on a charge of soliciting prostitution.
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A private equity investor was sentenced to 15 months in prison, the longest sentence yet in the nationwide college admissions bribery case.
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Howard University received a $2 million donation to digitize a major collection of Black newspaper archives.
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Just odd: A student at Brigham Young University tried to make rocket fuel in his on-campus kitchen. He displaced 22 students after unleashing a fireball.
San Francisco recall
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Chinese American voters and volunteers were crucial to victory in the school board recall election, which three members lost in a landslide.
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“This year a lot of parents are telling me, ‘We are done with being scapegoats,’” one campaign organizer told my colleague Thomas Fuller, the San Francisco bureau chief. “We are still being looked at as foreigners. We are Americans. You have to give us respect.”
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From Opinion: Jay Caspian Kang looked at the ways organizers capitalized on anger about changes to the admissions process of Lowell, an elite public high school. (For more, check out the most recent episode of “Time to Say Goodbye,” a newsletter and podcast that Jay co-hosts. The conversation starts around the 54-minute mark.)
And the rest …
Modern Love’s college contest
The last time Modern Love hosted a college essay contest was in 2019. The world was … a different place, especially for college students.
At long last, the contest is back. And we want to hear from you. What has love been like for you during these extraordinary times? Have you experienced surprising opportunities, unexpected challenges, new ways to connect or to make the best of difficult circumstances?
Undergraduates, submit your personal essay of 1,500 to 1,700 words no later than March 27 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. The Times will announce one winner and four finalists by early May. The winner will receive a $1,000 prize, and all five essays may be published in Modern Love.
Click here for more information about how to apply, a selection of past winners and finalists and the rules for this year. Good luck, and see you next week!
That’s it for this week’s briefing. If you have questions for our education reporters, please write to us using this form. We will regularly answer questions in the newsletter.
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