Daily Admin Update
Day - 63
Good Morning
Governor Newsom came out with his budget May Revise last week. Experts are still working to dig through the revised budget and what that means for schools. It will be interesting to see what the final budget looks like. What we do know is that there will likely be a 10% cut in Local Control Funding. This 10% had included the 2.3% COLA presented in January. Fortunately, we had already removed that from our budget so we are looking at a 7.7% reduction in funding next year adding up to about $275,500 for our school. Before you begin to worry we have been budgeting very conservatively and have worked to make cuts this spring. Don't get me wrong, this is going to hurt and we are going to have to dip into reserves likely for the next two years but the school is in a good position to weather these financial struggles. The hope is that we will receive money from the the Federal Government to help soften the blow, I will keep you updated. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
I wanted to send my love to those of you who have family members with COVID and to those of you who have had family members pass. This is a very difficult time and I would love to send you a heart felt virtual hug from the community. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you are in need.
With love,
Sarah
Political Affiliation Alters One’s View of the Pandemic
Several press reports this weekend were a depressing reminder that much of the public debate around the coronavirus is just team red versus team blue — political partisanship masquerading as independent thought.
Hundreds gathered in downtown San Diego to demand businesses and churches reopen, some waving President Donald Trump flags. The conservative speakers included TV talk show host Graham Ledger, former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock and Oceanside City Councilman Christopher Rodriguez, who’s called on businesses to defy public health orders.
Meanwhile, U-T columnist Michael Smolens considered political divisions over face coverings. Riverside County just lifted a requirement that people wear masks outdoors. A city responded with stricter social-distancing guidelines.
To drive the point home, Smolens highlighted a number of polls, including this one from CNN: 82 percent of Democrats say the federal government is doing a poor job responding to the crisis, while 80 percent of Republicans say it’s doing a good one.
-VOS
Coronavirus Testing Needs to Triple Before the U.S. Can Reopen, Experts Say
An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which on Friday reported 3.6 million total tests across the country. To reopen the United States by mid-May, the number of tests performed every day should be 500,000 to 700,000, according to the Harvard estimates, which is a daily minimum of about 152 tests per 100,000 people.
That level of testing is necessary to identify the majority of people who are infected and isolate them from people who are healthy, according to the researchers. About 20 percent of those tested so far were positive for the virus, a rate that the researchers say is too high.
“If you have a very high positive rate, it means that there are probably a good number of people out there who have the disease who you haven’t tested,” said Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “You want to drive the positive rate down, because the fundamental element of keeping our economy open is making sure you’re identifying as many infected people as possible and isolating them.”
The researchers said that expanded testing could reduce the rate to 10 percent, which is the maximum rate recommended by the World Health Organization. In Germany, that number is 7 percent, and in South Korea, it is closer to 3 percent.
There is variation in the rate of testing and positive results among states, but most need to administer more tests to get to the level the researchers suggest — a minimum of about 152 tests per 100,000 people each day.
In most states, people who had severe symptoms, worked in health facilities or were otherwise hospitalized were given priority for testing. The goal of the testing level recommended by the researchers would be to test nearly everyone who has mild or severe flulike symptoms, and an average of 10 contacts for each person who tests positive for the virus.
A shortage of test kits and technical flaws in the United States significantly delayed more widespread testing of the virus, letting it spread undetected for weeks. With more than 695,000 cases as of Friday, the country has the highest number of known cases in the world.
Health experts said that if the U.S. had tested earlier and more, the outbreak would have been better contained. Caitlin Rivers, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said that since that did not happen and the virus spread rapidly, it has made sense to prioritize testing for those in hospitals in recent weeks.
“It does make sense, given constraints, to focus on people with severe illness, because you need that information to guide their care,” Dr. Rivers said.
In mid-May, however, when the researchers estimate infections will have subsided somewhat and states are looking to reopen their economies, Dr. Jha believes vastly expanded testing will be crucial.
“I want to be able to identify everybody who is even mildly symptomatic,” he said. “So when I wake up one morning and have a sore throat and a fever, I should be able to go get tested. And then I want to be able to test all of my contacts if I turn out to be positive, so that I can do the test, trace and isolate strategy that’s so critical to allowing us to open up and stay open.”
“We need to switch from saying to people, ‘if you have mild symptoms, if you’re not feeling super sick, don’t come and stay at home,’ to ‘if you have any symptoms, you need to come in to get tested right away,’ ” he said.
-NY Times