Week in Review 11-05-2021

CORONAVIRUS

Ohio Department of Health (ODH) Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff and colleagues implored parents to get their children vaccinated during a briefing Wednesday after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) signed off on the COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5-11 late Tuesday. Vanderhoff said a large portion of the more than 367,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 pediatric vaccine formulation expected to arrive in Ohio over the coming days are already available and can immediately be administered to children in this age group. The doses are set to arrive in the state on a staggered schedule over the coming days during the first week of vaccine administration, including 252,300 ordered through the state’s allocation and 115,200 ordered by pharmacies through the federal retail pharmacy program. Additional doses will continue to be delivered to providers in Ohio on a regular basis moving forward.

Vanderhoff also announced the official expansion of the Vax-2-School program for those ages 5 to 25. The program will award $2 million in scholarships to eligible Ohioans, and prizes include 150, $10,000 scholarships, and five, $100,000 grand prize scholarships. The program has a series of registration deadlines; to be eligible for all prize drawings, Ohioans should register as soon as the first dose of the vaccine has been administered, ideally by the initial registration deadline of Sunday, Nov. 21.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) will mandate businesses with more than 100 employees and federal contractors to require their staff either be vaccinated or undergo regular testing beginning Jan. 4, 2022, according to a Thursday announcement from the Biden administration. The planned DOL Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requirement was first announced by President Joe Biden in September. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced his office was filing a lawsuit to block the vaccine rule for federal contractors, particularly sheriff’s offices that contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hold detainees in county jails. The Buckeye Institute announced it was filing a separate suit directly to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on behalf of Phillips Manufacturing & Tower Company of Shelby and Michigan-based Sixarp.

More than 41 Ohioans died from COVID each day in October, making it the sixth deadliest month in Ohio since the pandemic began, according to the Ohio Department of Health (ODH). Gov. Mike DeWine cited those numbers during a coronavirus update press conference Thursday as he quarantines after exposure to two staff members who tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week.

EDUCATION

Eric Poklar, an appointed member of the Ohio State Board of Education (SBOE), resigned from his position Friday, Oct. 29, following the earlier announcement of the resignation of SBOE President Laura Kohler. Both departures were triggered in part by their votes against repealing an anti-racism resolution passed by the board last summer amid protests over the police murder of George Floyd. Later on Friday, DeWine announced the appointment of two new individuals to the board: Richard J. Chernesky and Brandon Kern, both for terms ending in December 2024. Chernesky is a lawyer with Dinsmore in Dayton concentrating on general corporate law and Kern is currently the senior director for state and national policy with the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation. 

While “tremendous progress” has been made, a report on computer science (CS) education nationally said the lack of even a single course in 49 percent of high schools is “inadequate.” The report also found that Ohio had a 50 percent rate of foundational computer science access in its high schools in 2019-2020, up from 42 percent the year before. The report, released Wednesday, was developed by Code.org Advocacy Coalition, the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance. It called for state leaders to develop “policies and concrete plans” to expand CS to every school, ensure it reaches underrepresented groups and examine the data to find disparities and areas of need.