Portside

Return to Normal pushed schools to a crisis point. How do you run a school without enough staff? Zoom-learning was soul-crushingly devoid of laughter and energy of a traditional classroom and could never serve as a replacement for hands-on learning.

“Children are vaccinated as soon as they are born,” said Ania Ramírez, 33, collecting her fully vaccinated son, Fabio, age five, from school. “If he’s already got all the other vaccines, why wouldn’t I put this in him?”

Reader Comments: Supreme Court Spreads COVID, Children, Schools, Omicron; Progressives and Democrats; Capitol Armed Coup Plotters; Voting Rights; Real Martin Luther King; Housing and Profits; Don’t Look Up; Student Activist Scholarships; more....

My kids shouldn’t have to color their Santa Claus figurines with brown ink like I did. “America is less and less white, but a melanin-deficient Santa remains the default in commercials, mall casting calls, and movies,” - Aisha Harris.

The Scranton Federation of Teachers, representing more than 800 teachers and paraprofessionals, announced today that it will set up picket lines and go on strike at 12:01 a.m., Nov. 3. The union has been working under a contract that expired in 2017

Rich countries contribute an average of $14,000 per year for a toddler’s care, compared with $500 in the U.S. The Democrats’ spending bill tries to shrink the gap.

Still present today - strontium-90 from nuclear tests was transmitted from the grass, to cattle, to milk, and finally to human bodies — with special concern as it built up in children’s bones and teeth.

Reader Comments: Afghanistan & Vietnam; COVID-19 and children; Rich Trumka Remembered; Ben & Jerry's and anti-BDS laws; Berlin Wall; Stanley Aronowitz; You Can Help - Haiti Emergency Relief Fund; lots of announcements; more....

But children also burn out fast. Their high metabolisms make them particularly vulnerable to stunted growth and disease if they don’t get the calories they need.

The U.S. now has an average of about 129,000 new COVID-19 cases per day, a rate that has doubled in a little over two weeks, and an average of 600 people are dying each day of COVID-19, double the death rate seen in late July.