[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                   BACK TO SCHOOL: HIGHLIGHTING BEST 
                 PRACTICES FOR SAFELY REOPENING SCHOOLS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                      EARLY CHILDHOOD, ELEMENTARY,
                        AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

                                OF THE

                    COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR
                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

           HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-28

                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor
      
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]      

          Available via: edlabor.house.gov or www.govinfo.gov

                               __________
                               
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
45-793                    WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                  

                    COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR

             ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT, Virginia, Chairman

RAUL M. GRIJALVA, Arizona            VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina,
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut              Ranking Member
GREGORIO KILILI CAMACHO SABLAN,      JOE WILSON, South Carolina
  Northern Mariana Islands           GLENN THOMPSON, Pennsylvania
FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida         TIM WALBERG, Michigan
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon             GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
MARK TAKANO, California              ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York
ALMA S. ADAMS, North Carolina        RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia
MARK De SAULNIER, California         JIM BANKS, Indiana
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          JAMES COMER, Kentucky
PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington          RUSS FULCHER, Idaho
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York          FRED KELLER, Pennsylvania
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania             GREGORY F. MURPHY, North Carolina
LUCY McBATH, Georgia                 MARIANNETTE MILLER-MEEKS, Iowa
JAHANA HAYES, Connecticut            BURGESS OWENS, Utah
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan                 BOB GOOD, Virginia
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota                LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan
HALEY M. STEVENS, Michigan           DIANA HARSHBARGER, Tennessee
TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ, New Mexico   MARY E. MILLER, Illinois
MONDAIRE JONES, New York             VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana
KATHY E. MANNING, North Carolina     SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin
FRANK J. MRVAN, Indiana              MADISON CAWTHORN, North Carolina
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York, Vice-Chair  MICHELLE STEEL, California
MARK POCAN, Wisconsin                JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas                Vacancy
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey
JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
KWEISI MFUME, Maryland

                   Veronique Pluviose, Staff Director
                  Cyrus Artz, Minority Staff Director
                                 ------                                

  SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, ELEMENTARY, AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

   GREGORIO KILILI CAMACHO SABLAN, Northern Mariana Islands, Chairman

JAHANA HAYES, Connecticut            BURGESS OWENS, Utah
RAUL M. GRIJALVA, Arizona              Ranking Member
JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky            GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida         RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia
MARK De SAULNIER, California         FRED KELLER, Pennsylvania
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York          MARY E. MILLER, Illinois
LUCY Mc BATH, Georgia                MADISON CAWTHORN, North Carolina
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan                 MICHELLE STEEL, California
KATHY E. MANNING, North Carolina     JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York              Vacancy
ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT, Virginia  VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina
                                       (ex officio)
                           
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Hearing held on September 29, 2021...............................     1

Statement of Members:
    Sablan, Hon. Gregorio Kilili Camacho, Chairman, Subcommittee 
      on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education....     1
        Prepared statement of....................................     3
    Owens, Hon. Burgess, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Early 
      Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education.............     4
        Prepared statement of....................................     6

Statement of Witnesses:
    Forte, Denise, Interim Chief Executive Officer, The Education 
      Trust......................................................    13
        Prepared statement of....................................    14
    Jara, Jesus F., Ed. D., Superintendent of Schools, Clark 
      County School District.....................................     8
        Prepared statement of....................................    10
    Jha, Ashish K., MD, MPH, Dean and Professor of Health 
      Services, Policy and Practice, Brown University School of 
      Public Health..............................................    29
        Prepared statement of....................................    31
    Zweig, David, Journalist.....................................    23
        Prepared statement of....................................    26

Additional Submissions:
    Questions submitted for the record by:
        Wilson, Hon. Frederica, a Representative in Congress from 
          the State of Florida 
        Morelle, Hon. Joseph D., a Representative in Congress 
          from the State of New York 
    Response to question submitted for the record by:
        Dr. Jara.................................................    91
        Ms. Forte................................................    93

 
                   BACK TO SCHOOL: HIGHLIGHTING BEST
                 PRACTICES FOR SAFELY REOPENING SCHOOLS

                              ----------                              


                     Wednesday, September 29, 2021

                  House of Representatives,
                   Subcommittee on Early Childhood,
               Elementary, and Secondary Education,
                          Committee on Education and Labor,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., 
via Zoom, Hon. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan [Chairman of the 
Subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Sablan, Hayes, Yarmuth, Wilson, 
McBath, Levin, Manning, Bowman, Scott, Owens, Grothman, Allen, 
Keller, Miller, Steel, and Foxx (ex officio).
    Staff present: Melissa Bellin, Professional Staff Member; 
Ijeoma Egekeze, Professional Staff Member; Rashage Green, 
Director of Education Policy; Christian Haines, General 
Counsel; Rasheedah Hasan, Chief Clerk; Sheila Havenner, 
Director of Information Technology; Joe Herrbach, Professional 
Staff Member; Ariel Jona, Policy Associate; Andre Lindsay, 
Policy Associate; Max Moore, Staff Assistant; Mariah Mowbray, 
Clerk/Special Assistant to the Staff Director; Kayla 
Pennebecker, Staff Assistant; Veronique Pluviose, Staff 
Director; Lakeisha Steele, Senior Education Policy Advisor; 
Banyon Vassar, Deputy Director of Information Technology; 
Claire Viall, Professional Staff Member; Michael Davis, 
Minority Operations Assistant; Amy Raaf Jones, Minority 
Director of Education and Human Resources Policy; David 
Maestas, Minority Fellow; Hannah Matesic, Director of Member 
Services and Coalitions; Audra McGeorge, Minority 
Communications Director; Eli Mitchell, Minority Legislative 
Assistant; Mandy Schaumburg, Minority Chief Counsel and Deputy 
Director of Education Policy; and Brad Thomas, Minority Senior 
Education Policy Advisor.
    Mr. Sablan. The Subcommittee on Early Childhood, 
Elementary, and Secondary Education will come to order. Welcome 
everyone. I note that a quorum is present. The Subcommittee is 
meeting today to hear testimony on ``Back to School: Best 
Practices for Reopening Schools.''
    This is an entirely remote hearing. All microphones will be 
kept muted as a general rule to avoid unnecessary background 
noise. Members and witnesses will be responsible for unmuting 
themselves when they are recognized to speak, or when they wish 
to seek recognition. I also ask that Members please identify 
themselves before they speak. Members should keep their cameras 
on while in the proceedings. Members shall be considered 
present in the proceeding when they are visible on camera, and 
they shall be considered not present when they are not visible 
on camera. The only exception to this is if they are 
experiencing technical difficulty and informed the Committee 
staff of such difficulty.
    If any Member experiences technical difficulty during the 
hearing, you should stay connected on that platform. Make sure 
you are muted and use your phone to immediately call the 
Committee's IT director whose number was provided in advance.
    Should the Chair experience technical difficulty or need to 
step away, Mr. Levin or another minority Member--or another 
majority Member, I apologize, a majority Member is hereby 
authorized to assume the gavel in the Chair's absence. This is 
an entirely remote hearing; as such, the Committee's hearing 
room is officially closed. Our Members who choose to sit with 
their individual devices in the hearing room must wear 
headphones to avoid feedback, echoes, and distortion resulting 
from more than one person on the software platform sitting in 
the same room. Members are also expected to adhere to social 
distancing and safe healthcare guidelines, including the use of 
masks, hand sanitizers, and wiping down their areas both before 
and after their presence in the hearing room.
    In order to ensure that the Committee's staff Committee 
Rules are adhered to, staff will be keeping track of time using 
the Committee's digital timer, which appears in its own 
thumbnail. Members and witnesses are urged to wrap up promptly 
when their time has expired.
    Pursuant to Committee Rule 8(c), opening statements are 
limited to the Chair and the Ranking Member. This allows us to 
hear from our witnesses sooner and provides all Members with 
adequate time to ask questions.
    I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening 
statement.
    Today, we are discussing the obstacles schools have faced 
to safely reopen, and how school districts by using the funding 
from the American Rescue Plan to protect students and staff and 
get students back on track. Each of us here agrees that safely 
reopening schools for in-person learning is critical for our 
fight against COVID-19. Across the country, students are 
returning for the third school year under the cloud of a 
pandemic that has disconnected millions of our students from 
their education; expanded achievement gaps for students of 
color, students with disabilities, and English language 
learners; and eroded students' mental health. The emergence of 
the Delta variant has elevated the threat facing our students. 
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, more than 
240,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 during just 1 
week earlier this month alone, 1 week. Fortunately, young 
people who contract the virus appear to have lower risk of 
serious illness.
    However, lower risk is not zero risk. COVID-19 has claimed 
the lives of nearly 500 Americans under the age of 17. That is 
more than 2-1/2 times the number of students who have succumbed 
to influenza, the flu, over that same period. And while young 
people are more likely to recover, the risk of lingering 
symptoms and the risk of transmission to adults must be taken 
seriously. The Delta variant has intensified the challenges 
facing school districts and the importance of implementing a 
science-based layered mitigation strategy to get students and 
staff safe.
    With the right precautions and resources, schools can 
mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and safely reopen classrooms. 
This is why House Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, 
providing $122 billion to ensure school districts have the 
resources to follow public health guidance, reopen, and remain 
open, and support students' academic, and social emotional 
needs. Today, our witnesses will help us examine how schools 
are using these resources to navigate the difficult challenge 
of reaching these goals.
    In North Carolina, for example, schools that implement the 
proper mask use largely prevented the transmission of the 
virus, according to one study. In San Francisco schools, where 
90 percent of adolescents are fully vaccinated, there have been 
no COVID-19 outbreaks since classrooms reopened.
    A recent nationwide surveys of school superintendents found 
that three quarters of school districts are using Federal 
funding for summer learning opportunities so that students can 
catch up on lost time in the classroom.
    In my district, the Northern Marianas Islands, schools are 
also using this funding for summer learning, as well as hiring 
more teachers to work with students needing additional support 
and installing new ventilators in each classroom to help 
prevent virus particles from accumulating. Unfortunately, some 
States and school boards have chosen to play politics with 
these resources instead of following the science.
    In Florida, Republican education leaders have even blocked 
funding for districts that require mask use. The State has one 
of the worst COVID infection rates in the country, and its 
schools desperately need resources. Undermining school funding 
only makes it harder for students to safely return to 
classrooms. Research shows that schools that started the 
academic year without mask requirements were over three times 
more likely to have a COVID-19 outbreak between August and 
September.
    However, we also know that reopening classrooms and making 
up for lost learning time is not enough to ensure equal access 
to quality education. Earlier this month, the Committee took 
the step by passing its portion of the Build Back Better Act. 
This included significant investments in school infrastructure 
and teacher preparation that our schools and students need.
    Today's hearing is an opportunity to learn from experts 
about the obstacles schools face to reopening safely, how 
schools can get students in the classroom safely, and how 
States and districts can leverage Federal grants, Federal funds 
to build a more inclusive education system for the future.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Sablan follows:]

      Statement of Hon. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, Chairman, 
  Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education

    Today, we are discussing the obstacles schools have faced to safely 
reopen, and how school districts are using the funding from the 
American Rescue Plan to protect students and staff and get students 
back on track.
    Each of us here agrees that safely reopening schools for in-person 
learning is critical to our fight against COVID-19.
    Across the country, students are returning for their third school 
year under the cloud of a pandemic that has:

   Disconnected millions of our students from their education,

   Expanded achievement gaps for students of color, students 
        with disabilities, and English language learners, and

   Eroded students' mental health.

    The emergence of the Delta variant has elevated the threat facing 
our students. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, more 
than 240,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 during just 1 week 
earlier this month, alone--one week. Fortunately, young people who 
contract the virus appear to face lower risks of serious illness. 
However, lower risk is not zero risk. COVID-19 has claimed the lives of 
nearly 500 Americans under the age of 17. That's more than 2.5 times 
the number of students who have succumbed to influenza, the flu, over 
that same period.
    And while young people are more likely to recover, the risk of 
lingering symptoms and the risk of transmission to adults must be taken 
seriously.
    The Delta variant has intensified the challenges facing school 
districts and the importance of implementing a science-based, layered 
mitigation strategy to keep students and staff safe.
    With the right precautions and resources-schools can mitigate the 
spread of COVID-19 and safely reopen classrooms.
    This is why House Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, 
providing $122 billion to ensure school districts have the resources to 
follow public health guidance, reopen and remain open, and support 
students' academic and social-emotional needs.
    Today, our witnesses will help us examine how schools are using 
these resources to navigate the difficult challenge of reaching these 
goals.
    In North Carolina, for example, schools that implemented proper 
mask use largely prevented transmission of the virus, according to one 
study.
    In San Francisco schools, where 90 percent of adolescents are fully 
vaccinated, there have been no COVID-19 outbreaks since classrooms 
reopened.
    And a recent nationwide survey of school superintendents found that 
three-quarters of school districts are using Federal funding for summer 
learning opportunities so that students can catch up on lost time in 
the classroom.
    In my district, the Northern Mariana Islands, schools are also 
using this funding for summer learning as well as hiring more teachers 
to work with students needing additional support and installing new 
ventilators in each classroom to help prevent virus particles from 
accumulating.
    Unfortunately, some states and school boards have chosen to play 
politics with these resources instead of following the science. In 
Florida, Republican education leaders have even blocked funding for 
districts that require mask use. The State has one of the worst COVID 
infection rates in the country and its schools desperately need 
resources. Undermining school funding only makes it harder for students 
to safely return to classrooms.
    Research shows that schools that started the academic year without 
mask requirements were over three times more likely to have a COVID-19 
outbreak between August and September.
    However, we also know that reopening classrooms and making up for 
lost learning time is not enough to ensure equal access to quality 
education. Earlier this month, the Committee took the next step by 
passing its portion of the Build Back Better Act. This included 
significant investments in school infrastructure and teacher 
preparation that our schools and students need.
    Today's hearing is an opportunity to learn from experts about the 
obstacles schools face to reopening safely, how schools can keep 
students in the classroom safely, and how states and districts can 
leverage Federal funds to build a more equitable education system for 
the future.
                                 ______
                                 
    I now turn to the Ranking Member, Mr. Owens, for the 
purpose of making an opening statement. I now recognized the 
distinguished Ranking Member. Mr. Owens.
    Mr. Owens. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The American Rescue Plan did not deliver on its promise to 
help schools safely reopen in this fall. If it had, we would 
not be sitting here in this hearing today. Untargeted funds was 
never the answer to safe-school reopening, and the Democrats 
sabotaged those efforts even further by voting not to require 
in-person learning as condition to COVID-19 relief funding. Our 
top priority must be protecting children's access to classrooms 
for full-time, in-person learning. To accomplish that goal, we 
must lean on the scientific facts, and not political fiction.
    According to the CDC, schools are not a significant source 
of COVID-19 spread or infections. The current surge we are 
experiencing in COVID-19 related hospitalizations began in 
June, long before schools reopened. And the data from the Los 
Angeles Unified School District showed that infection rates in 
that school dropped following the mass school reopening.
    We also know that children are at exceptionally low risk of 
infections from COVID-19. For adults, including teachers, 
school administrators, administration staff, and children over 
12 there are several safe, effective, and widely available 
vaccines that are proven to ward off serious infections and 
hospitalization.
    For those in need of extra protection, masking is also 
available. While the science behind the benefits of masking up 
for our children is questionable, parents know best how to 
safeguard their children's mental and physical health. As such, 
the Federal Government has no business dictating medical 
decisions on behalf of individuals and families.
    Clearly, the classroom setting does not heighten the 
children's and teachers' risk of severe COVID-19 cases. But all 
children, especially those with disabilities and experiencing 
domestic abuse or poverty, are at exceptional risk of learning 
loss and mental health decline for remote learning. To make 
matters worse, we do not know the long-term implications of 
mass school closures. But preliminary data suggest that it is 
negatively impacting the entire trajectory of students' lives. 
During the 2020 through 2021 school year, students fell an 
average of 5 months behind in math, and 4 months behind in 
reading. Low-income and minority children were especially 
impacted by these closures, falling 1 to 2 months further 
behind their white peers.
    To put this in perspective, as a result of pandemic-related 
learning loss, students may earn $49,000 to $61,000 less over 
their lifetime. T That would impact the U.S. economy by $128 
billion to $188 billion annually once this generation enters 
the workforce.
    Every child's life and learning are important. We should do 
everything we can to ensure that they receive a high-quality 
education. But this is not just individual futures on the line; 
our entire society stands to lose if we cannot get our 
educational system in order. Democrats are choosing the devil 
we don't know, with a long-term impact of learning loss, over 
the devil we do know, COVID-19. We have long-term mitigation 
and prevention strategies in place to prevent serious 
infections. We do not have a long-term strategy in place to 
reeducate millions of students who fell behind or off the 
school radars all together.
    More funding is not the answer. More government mandates 
are not the answer. I urge our Committee to lead by example and 
fully reopen as a signal to schools across our country that it 
is safe for them to do so, too.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Owens follows:]

Statement of Hon. Burgess Owens, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Early 
             Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education

    The American Rescue Plan did not deliver on its promise to help 
schools safely reopen in the fall. If it had, we would not be sitting 
in this hearing today. Untargeted funding was never the answer to safe 
school reopenings, and Democrats sabotaged those efforts even further 
by voting not to require in-person learning as a condition of COVID-19 
relief funding.
    Our top priority must be protecting children's access to the 
classroom for full-time, in-person learning. To accomplish that goal, 
we must lean on scientific facts and not political fictions. According 
to the CDC, schools are not a significant source of COVID-19 spread or 
infections. The current surge we are experiencing in COVID-19 related 
hospitalizations began in June, long before schools reopened, and data 
from the Los Angeles Unified School District show that infection rates 
in that district dropped following mass school reopenings.
    We also know that children are at exceptionally low risk of 
infection and hospitalization from COVID-19. For adults, including 
teachers and school administration staff, and children over 12 there 
are several safe, effective, and widely available vaccines that are 
proven to ward off serious infections and hospitalization.
    For those in need of extra protection, masking is also available. 
While the science behind the benefits of masking for children is 
questionable, parents know best how to safeguard their children's 
mental and physical health. As such, the Federal Government has no 
business dictating medical decisions on behalf of individuals and 
families.
    Clearly, the classroom setting does not heighten children and 
teachers' risk of severe COVID-19 cases. But all children, especially 
those with disabilities and experiencing domestic abuse or poverty, are 
at exceptional risk of learning loss and mental health decline from 
remote learning.
    To make matters worse, we do not know the long-term implications of 
mass school closures, but preliminary data and studies suggest that it 
is negatively impacting the entire trajectory of students' lives. 
During the 2020-2021 school year, students fell on average 5 months 
behind in math and 4 months behind in reading. Low-income and minority 
children were especially impacted by these closures, falling one to 2 
months further behind than their white or wealthy peers.
    To put that into perspective, as a result of pandemic-related 
learning loss, students may earn $49,000 to $61,000 less over their 
lifetime. That could impact the U.S. economy by
    $128 billion to $188 billion annually once this generation enters 
the workforce.
    Every child's life and learning are important, and we should do 
everything we can to ensure they receive a high-quality education. But 
it's not just individual futures on the line--our entire society stands 
to lose if we cannot get our educational system in order.
    Democrats are choosing the devil we don't know, the long-term 
impacts of learning loss, over the devil we do, COVID-19. We have long-
term mitigation and prevention strategies in place to prevent serious 
infections. We do not have long-term strategies in place to reeducate 
millions of students who fell behind or off schools' radars completely.
    More funding is not the answer. More government mandates are not 
the answer. I urge this Committee to lead by example and fully reopen 
as a signal to schools across America that it is safe for them to do 
so, too.
                                 ______
                                 
    Thank you to all the witnesses for participating in this 
important discussion today. And I yield back the balance of my 
time.
    Mr. Sablan. Thank you very much, thank you, Mr. Owens.
    Now, without objection, all the Members who wish to insert 
written statements into the record may do so by submitting them 
to the Committee Clerk electronically in Microsoft Word format 
by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, October 13.
    I will now introduce our witnesses. I will start with Dr. 
Jesus Jara. Mr. Jara, I would like for you to know that my 
father, my late father also was named Jesus. And Mr. Jara has 
served as superintendent of the Clark County, Nevada school 
district, the fifth largest school district in the Nation, 
since 2018. Previously he served as a Deputy Superintendent for 
Orange County Public Schools and the Superintendent and Chief 
Operations Officers in Monroe County Public Schools in Florida. 
He received his doctorate in education, education policy, 
leadership, and administration from the University of 
Massachusetts in Amherst. I am pleased to recognize my 
distinguished colleague, Chairman Bobby Scott, to quickly, 
briefly introduce our next witness.
    Chairman Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I am very 
proud to introduce somebody I have known for about 25 years. 
Denise Forte has worked in leadership roles in several 
nonprofit organizations, and spent 20 years in progressively 
senior, congressional staff roles, starting on my staff. And 
most recently, as Staff Director of the House Committee on 
Education, and what was then the Workforce, on the Democratic 
side.
    She also served the Obama administration at the Department 
of Education, where she held the positions of Principal Deputy 
Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary in the 
Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. She has 
a B.S. in computer science from Duke, and an M.A. in Women's 
Studies from George Washington University.
    And now, she serves as the interim CEO of Education Trust, 
a well-known, well respected, national nonprofit research and 
advocacy organization that works to close opportunity gaps that 
disproportionately affect students of color and students from 
low-income backgrounds. It is certainly a pleasure and a 
delight to welcome Denise Forte back to the Committee.
    Mr. Sablan. Thank you, Chairman Scott.
    Our next witness is Mr. --let me try this. Mr. David 
Zweig--did I come close, David--who is a freelance journalist 
who has written for the Atlantic, The New York Times, and The 
Wall Street Journal, among other national publications. I am 
going to say David here. I apologize. David has been invited to 
lecture about the intersection of media, technology, and 
psychology at numerous universities and academic conferences 
around the country and abroad. He has also written extensively 
on issues related to COVID-19, kids, and schools.
    Our other witness is Dr. Ashish Jha. Wow, I thought it was 
Jesus. But Dr. Jha is Dean of the Brown School of Public 
Health, is recognized globally as an expert on pandemic 
preparedness, and response, as well on policy research and 
practice. Previously, he served as a faculty Member of the 
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical 
School, was the Director of the Harvard Global Health 
Institute, and served as the Dean for Global Strategy at the 
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Jha received of 
his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and holds a Master's in 
public health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public 
Health.
    We appreciate the witnesses, all of you, for participating 
today, and look forward to your testimony. Let me remind the 
witnesses that we have read your written statements, and they 
will appear in full in the hearing record. Pursuant to 
Committee Rule 8(d) and Committee practice, each of you is 
asked to limit your oral presentation to a 5-minute summary of 
your written statement.
    Before you begin your testimony, please remember to unmute 
your microphone. During your testimony, staff will be keeping 
track of time, and a light will blink when time is up. Please 
be attentive to the time, wrap up when your time is over, and 
re-mute your microphone. If any of you are experiencing 
technical difficulty during your testimony or later in the 
hearing, you should stay connected on the platform. Make sure 
you are muted and use your phone to immediately call the 
Committee's IT director, whose number was provided to you in 
advance.
    We will let all the witnesses make their presentations 
before we move to Member questions. When answering a question, 
please remember to unmute your microphone. The witnesses are 
aware of the responsibility to provide accurate information to 
the Subcommittee and therefore we will proceed with your 
testimony.
    I will first recognize Dr. Jara. Dr. Jara, you have five 
minutes, sir.

   STATEMENT OF DR. JESUS F. JARA, Ed.D., SUPERINTENDENT OF 
             SCHOOLS, CLARK COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT

    Mr. Jara. Thank you. Chairman Sablan, Ranking Member Owens, 
and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the invitation 
to participate in this hearing.
    For the record, my name is Dr. Jesus Jara. I serve as a 
superintendent of the Clark County School District in Las 
Vegas, Nevada, the fifth largest district in the country, 
serving 304,000 diverse students as a minority majority school 
district with over 70 percent of our children receiving free 
and reduced lunch meals.
    We reopened our schools in March 2021. This feat was only 
possible because of our 42,000 employees, our business and our 
community partners, and the families of the Clark County 
community. Federal support from the American Rescue Plan made 
it possible for our school district to stay connected to our 
students, so they could continue learning from home during the 
pandemic. As we adapted to these unprecedented circumstances, 
we went from crisis to response, then to stabilization, to 
improvement.
    Let me illustrate what the Clark County School District did 
to respond. When the pandemic hit and the decision to shut down 
was made, our priority was to protect our students and staff. 
We sent everyone home, and then sent about creating distance 
learning options to students could connect and learn from their 
teachers. We quickly discovered that many of our students 
didn't have internet access or mobile phones. One young woman 
in high school who had no internet access, or a mobile phone 
asked a friend to contact her teachers to get her missed 
assignments. Once alerted to her circumstances, her teacher 
relayed the information to the administration, and provided the 
necessary connections for continued learning. This young woman 
caught up in her assignments. I am proud to say she will start 
college next fall.
    Similar stories played out throughout the school district, 
and our country, and our public schools. In a matter of weeks, 
we were able to deploy over 247,000 devices and provide 
internet access to the students who previously did not have it.
    In 2020, student mental health escalated, and we moved to 
intervene immediately. The district created Lifeline, a program 
to enable educators and leadership to interface with and 
determine student's level of need. We also instituted protocols 
to ensure students isolated at home could meet with school-
based mental health professionals in virtual and in-person 
formats. We know kids need to be with their peers in the 
classrooms, learning from their teachers. As we designed our 
back-to-school plan we consulted stakeholders throughout the 
school district and our community, including our five 
bargaining units representing 42,000 employees of the Clark 
County School District. Together, we instituted a mask mandate 
and social distancing protocols, purchased, and provided PPE, 
enhanced cleaning protocols, and improved ventilation systems.
    Without their vying and voices in the process, we would not 
have been able to reopen our schools in March 2021. Like so 
many other urban districts across America, my colleagues and I 
are experiencing staff shortages. We need more substitute 
teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and custodians. All 
of these vacancies are putting instruction, extracurricular 
activities, and maintenance of our district assets at risk.
    The American Rescue Plan COVID relief funds enabled the 
Clark County Public Schools to prioritize the needs, address 
obstacles, reopen safely to support students' social, and 
emotional learning, and academic needs. We enlisted over 80 
nongovernmental organizations to help us design a program 
called Focus on the Future of Our Kids: Community Input 
Process. We have received over 13,000 responses from families 
and Members of the community. In addition to students most 
impacted by the pandemic, 90 percent of the survey respondents 
identified those who experienced historical, racial inequities, 
students of low-income families, students of color, English 
language learners, children with disabilities, and students 
experiencing homelessness. Because of these community 
conversations, we have allocated $533 million of the allocated 
dollars in ESSER. We firmly believe that investing our ARP 
funding to address learning needs is prudent despite the 
infrastructure and other investment needed in this district. We 
are hopeful that these needs can be remedied using the school 
construction funding in the budget reconciliation act proposed 
by the House of Representatives.
    The circumstances were unprecedented. The needs are great. 
And now it is time to shape a recovery benefiting our children, 
our community, our country, and the future.
    Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify this 
morning.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Jara follows:]

                  Prepared Statement of Jesus F. Jara
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Mr. Sablan. Thank you, Dr. Jara.
    We will now hear from Ms. Forte. Ms. Forte, welcome back to 
the Committee. And you have five minutes, please.

STATEMENT OF DENISE FORTE, INTERIM CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE 
                        EDUCATION TRUST

    Ms. Forte. Good morning, Chairman Sablan, Ranking Member 
Owens, Chairman Scott, and Members of the Committee. My name is 
Denise Forte, and I am the interim CEO of The Education Trust, 
a national nonprofit research and advocacy organization 
dedicated to closing opportunity gaps in education that 
disproportionately impact students of color and students from 
low-income backgrounds. As noted, I was also a congressional 
staff Member for 20 years, most recently as the staff director 
for this Committee. So, it's truly an honor to return to the 
Committee today. And in my other full-time job, I am the proud 
mother of two sons who attend public schools right here in D.C. 
and are experiencing firsthand the return to school after 
spending a year at home in virtual settings.
    Today, I am pleased to share The Education Trust's thoughts 
on how we, collectively, can address the long-standing 
inequities that we know existed before COVID-19 and have grown, 
how we support student and community voice, and implement 
evidence-based and equitable solutions to ensure student 
success.
    As this school year is underway, district leaders and 
educators across the country are working hard to meet the needs 
of students, families, and staff using vital American Rescue 
Plan funds.
    The Education Trust has spent the last 18 months working 
with advocates from civil rights, disability rights, business, 
education, and parent communities to center their voices in a 
recovery effort, and highlight promising actions taken by 
States and districts. Today, we are urging State and local 
leaders to take these actions.
    First, State and school district leaders must address the 
immediate needs of educators, students, and families. Parents 
understand that in-person learning is preferable. However, many 
families of color, including Black families, have reasonable 
mistrust with our public school and public healthcare systems. 
Trust between school leaders, community Members, and parents is 
the foundation of a strong and safe school community and 
maximizes student outcome.
    Leaders should actively inform and invite conversations 
with families. Trust is also built when districts and schools 
marshal their resources to provide safe, in-person learning 
through adequate testing and contact tracing, upgrades to 
replace faulty and out-of-date ventilation, and basic public 
health protocols, such as mandatory masking, distancing, and 
hand-washing, and, obviously, access to COVID-19 vaccinations.
    Second, States and school districts must ensure that 
funding is used equitably to address students' social, 
emotional, and academic development. Beyond addressing the 
immediate physical needs of students, educators, and staff, we 
must do everything in our power to ensure that children reach 
their highest academic potential and overcome this devastating 
year-and-a-half of unfinished learning.
    Our research indicates when implemented under the right 
conditions, there are two strategies that are most effective to 
accelerate learning: targeted intensive tutoring and expanded 
learning time. We also know that strong, positive relationships 
with teachers and schools can dramatically enhance motivation, 
academic engagement, and social skills.
    In close partnership with a diverse and representative set 
of stakeholders, States should support districts and schools to 
identify and implement evidence-based strategies to accelerate 
student learning. These efforts should include high-quality 
statewide summative assessments to help target additional 
resources; professional learning opportunities for educators to 
ensure students have the opportunity to reach high standards; 
and additionally, strategies for leveraging school-based 
teacher leadership, distributed leadership, and innovative 
staffing models to provide supervision and support to tutors 
and teachers.
    Additionally, they can and should invest in high-quality, 
culturally responsive instruction materials that teach the 
truth about the history of this country. We call upon States 
and school districts to provide clear and accessible 
information about how they are spending the precious relief 
dollars.
    Finally, State and school districts must ensure that 
funding is used to lay the foundation to address the inequities 
that are exacerbated by COVID-19. State and local leaders 
should be planning for how ARP funds and other resources can 
yield lasting, structural change. Congress should support these 
efforts in a variety of areas, including possible legislation 
to increase equitable access to early childhood education, 
advanced course work, home broadband, strong and diverse 
educators, and school meals, eliminate discriminatory school 
discipline practices and incentivize States and localities to 
make their funding formulas more equitable.
    In closing, The Education Trust looks forward to assisting 
State and local leaders, Congress, and the administration in 
deploying resources in equitable ways, that address the needs 
of underserved students, and close opportunity and access gaps.
    Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today, and 
I look forward to taking your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Forte follows:]

                   Prepared Statement of Denise Forte
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Mr. Sablan. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Forte, for your 
testimony.
    We will next hear from Mr. Zweig. Sir, you have for five 
minutes. Thank you. I think you are muted, sir.
    David, you are muted. We can't hear you. You have to 
unmute. We would really like to hear your testimony.
    OK. Let's move on to the next witness, David, and then we 
will come back to you, because we do----
    Mr. Zweig. I switched.
    Mr. Sablan. five minutes here. Thank you.

 STATEMENT OF DAVID ZWEIG, JOURNALIST, THE ATLANTIC, NEW YORK 
                    MAGAZINE, WIRED MAGAZINE

    Mr. Zweig. Is it me now? OK.
    Good morning, and thank you, Chairman Sablan. Thank Ranking 
Member Owens, and Members of the Subcommittee for inviting me 
to testify today.
    Since the spring of 2020, I have been researching and 
writing about the nexus of kids and schools and COVID. From the 
beginning of the pandemic, I have looked not only at the 
circumstances in our country, but, critically, contrasted them 
with the circumstances surrounding, and the policies affecting, 
children and schools in other countries.
    In late April 2020, schools began reopening in much of 
Europe. Roughly a month later, the schools remained open as the 
education ministers from 22 EU nations convened, and it was 
reported that open schools were not causing an increase in 
cases. Yet, in America, schools stayed closed for the duration 
of the academic year.
    That spring set the tone for much of America's approach to 
children and schooling for the rest of the pandemic. Today, we 
are seeing similar patterns play out in many of our schools 
with excessive mitigation measures, where, once again, the U.S. 
differs greatly from most of our peer nations across the 
Atlantic.
    Since at least right now, there is general agreement that 
schools should be open, the relevant discussion is how they 
should remain open. One issue is quarantine protocols that 
repeatedly send great numbers of healthy children home for 
days, or for more than a week at a time. Instead, schools 
should consider employing Test to Stay. In this program, if a 
student is exposed at school, they get tested, and if negative, 
they continue to attend school. A large study of more than 200 
schools in England found that quarantining students offered no 
benefit over Test to Stay.
    This program is also preferable to routine surveillance 
testing, considering the latter's onerous costs, logistics, and 
the high potential for high rates of false positives. Some 
countries are not employing either practice and are simply 
following the classic advice ``if you're sick, stay home.''
    The most charged topic in the U.S. and one that I have 
extensively researched and written about is student mask 
mandates. Recently, the CDC released two studies which 
concluded that mask mandates correlate with the lower-case 
rates in schools. The studies, however, have major limitations. 
Among them, not accounting for vaccination rates among staff 
and eligible students, nor accounting for changes in community 
rates.
    Conversely, the CDC published a large comparative study 
earlier this year of more than 90,000 students that found no 
significant benefit of student mask mandates. But debating 
conflicting studies on mask mandates distracts from and 
undermines confidence in the schools that we know work, such as 
fresh air and vaccinating the adults around children.
    The World Health Organization advises against masking 
children under age 6 and recommends masks on kids aged 6 to 11 
only under certain circumstances. The European Center for 
Disease Prevention and Control does not recommend masks for 
primary students at all. Yet, the CDC recommends that all 
American children, starting at age 2 wear masks in school. To 
be clear, millions of children in Europe are not wearing masks 
in school. If there is no evidence that kids in Europe are at a 
greater risk of severe illness, or a bad outcome, or their 
surrounding communities are at a greater risk than their 
counterparts in the U.S. because of this policy, we should ask 
ourselves why so many nations in Europe and elsewhere have 
already settled this issue from a policy perspective, they 
don't make kids wear masks. Why do we? Masks are not a benign 
intervention. They interfere with language acquisition, reading 
comprehension, and socio-emotional development. Quite simply, 
seeing faces is a fundamental part of how humans, and 
especially children, connect and communicate with each other. 
None of us knows what the impact will be, nor what it is like 
as a child to wear a mask all day, every day, for years on end.
    More broadly, to what end are we implementing all these 
intervention in schools? COVID, as has been known since the 
very beginning, thankfully poses very limited risk of severe 
disease to almost all children. There is much to say on this 
specific point, some of which I detailed in my written 
testimony.
    Risk averse does not mean doing everything possible or 
conceivable to mitigate the spread of a virus to kids. Rather, 
we are treating the risk of one harm to the amplification of 
risk from other harms. Keeping kids home, alone in their 
bedrooms, glassy eyed in front of screens all day is not, 
quote, ``playing it safe.'' Nor is preventing them from seeing 
their friend's smiles or their teachers' faces. For a few 
weeks, this was no big deal, but now in academic year No. 3 of 
the pandemic, we need specific metrics for when these 
interventions on children can end. The reason school policies 
in European nations differ from ours is not because they have, 
quote, ``beaten the virus.'' It is because they are, and have 
been, interpreting the data very differently from our public 
health officials.
    I urge the Members of this Committee to ask the CDC to 
provide specific, evidence-based reasons why its masking 
guidance differs so dramatically from that of the World Health 
Organization, UNICEF, and the ECDC, and why our Nation's school 
children have dramatically different burdens imposed upon them 
relative to their European peers.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Zweig follows:]

                   Prepared Statement of David Zweig
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Mr. Sablan. Thank you, Dr. Jha. I mean, Mr. Zweig. Thank 
you.
    Finally, we will hear from Dr. Jha. Dr. Jha, please unmute 
your microphone and you have for five minutes. Thank you very 
much.

 STATEMENT OF DR. ASHISH K. JHA, DEAN AND PROFESSOR OF HEALTH 
   SERVICES, POLICY AND PRACTICE, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF 
                         PUBLIC HEALTH

    Dr. Jha. Good morning, and I hope you can all hear me OK. 
Thank you, Chairman Sablan, Ranking Member Owens, and Chairman 
Scott. Thank you for having me here.
    Approximately 20 months, ago we confronted a novel disease 
we knew almost knowing about. Today, about 20 months later, we 
know how the virus spreads, and we have developed all the tools 
we need to end this pandemic. But because we have failed to 
apply that knowledge consistently, too many Americans continue 
to get infected and ill across our country.
    Today's focus is on COVID and kids in schools. Throughout 
this pandemic, the risk for kids has been consistently 
minimized, based largely on the fact that children are less 
likely to get sick than adults. This is, of course, true. It is 
also the wrong comparison, because basically for nearly every 
disease, kids always have better outcomes than adults, whether 
it is COVID, or the flu, or even cancer, kids have lower 
mortality than adults. The question isn't are kids at lower 
risk compared to adults? The question is: How does the risk of 
COVID in kids compare to other risks that children face? And 
with that lens, it is clear that COVID is an important 
challenge. Over the past year, COVID has been one of the 
leading--one of the top 10 causes of death--among American 
children. So, while the risk is low, we cannot and should not 
be cavalier about its short term or long-term effects.
    Now the risk of COVID in kids and staff have led many 
school districts to remain remote for much of the last year. 
The harm done by closed schools has been well-documented today 
by other experts. And I am not going to go through it. But it 
is very clear that closed schools are very, very harmful to 
children. And in our hyper-polarized country, some have chosen 
to highlight the very real cost of keeping schools closed, 
while minimizing the risk of COVID in kids. Others highlight 
the real cost of COVID to kids and minimize the cost of closing 
schools. We need to do better: less polarization, more focus on 
children.
    And here is the good news on all of this. We can do both. 
During the past 20 months of studying SARS-CoV-2 and from 
decades of studying how airborne viruses spread, we know how to 
keep students and staff safe in schools. There is broad 
consensus among experts, both in the U.S. and around the globe 
that we must take a layered infection prevention approach. So 
what is that? Vaccinations, ventilation, and filtration--and I 
will go through each of these a bit more--regular testing and 
tracing, universal use of masks, and avoiding crowds and 
promoting personal hygiene. No single layer is perfect. But 
implemented together, they can make a big difference.
    Now, of course, each school and each community is 
different. And that means school districts must invest in 
strategies in ways that allow them to implement these 
strategies, taking those local context factors into account. 
One key approach is that schools or school districts need to 
develop school-based teams who are focused on keeping schools 
safe.
    Now, I want to talk about what the barriers to 
implementation of these strategies have been. There are many 
obstacles. But perhaps, none is more daunting than the 
misinformation and disinformation that is undermining public 
confidence in the scientific evidence. Here is some of what 
that evidence tells us: vaccines are the most effective weapon 
we have in this pandemic. And schools should require all adult 
staff to be vaccinated and should strongly encourage kids where 
eligible to get vaccinated.
    Masking makes a difference. It is puzzling to me that some 
people think it wouldn't. This is an airborne disease spread 
primarily through aerosols. Masks slow the spread of aerosols 
and reduce inhalation, albeit imperfectly. In study after 
study, the data suggested that masking reduces spread. No 
single study is perfect. One can look at the dozens of studies 
and find holes in every one of them, but that is not how 
evidence-based decisionmaking works.
    As a doctor, I am confronted with dozens of clinical 
questions where the data are not perfect. I look at the 
totality of the evidence. And from the totality of the 
evidence, the data is very clear, masks for children are 
helpful. We know testing is critical. Testing students and 
staff, regardless of symptoms, allows schools to immediately 
identify cases and prevent large outbreaks. And we know that 
ventilation and filtration make a very big difference. This can 
be as easy as opening windows and doors, but also requires 
upgrades in air filters in ventilation systems.
    Thankfully, Federal funding has been provided through the 
ARP for these critical upgrades, investments that will help end 
the pandemic. But better air quality will have long-term 
benefits as well: improving cognition, moods, preventing the 
spread of other infections. This is a really smart investment 
for our kids.
    So, in conclusion, for all the progress we have made as a 
Nation, there is a lot more we have to do to confront the 
challenges of this pandemic. It is imperative that we act on 
the knowledge we have gained and use all of these measures to 
keep kids and staff safe in schools. If we do these things, we 
can get them back safely, we can end this pandemic, and build 
resilience against health threats of the future. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Jha follows:]

                  Prepared Statement of Ashish K. Jha
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Mr. Sablan. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you very much.
    And, so, we will now move on to Member questions. Under 
Rule 9(a), we will now question witnesses under the five-minute 
rule. I will be recognizing Subcommittee Members in seniority 
order. And again, to ensure that the Members' five-minute rule 
is adhered to, staff will be keeping track of time, and the 
timer will show a blinking light when that time has expired. So 
please be attentive to the time, wrap up when your time is 
over, and re-mute your microphone.
    As Chair, I now recognize myself for five minutes. 
Superintendent Jara, numerous studies show that lost 
instructional times has impacted student learning and 
exacerbated preexisting achievement gaps. The American Rescue 
Plan requires that school districts use at least 20 percent of 
their funds to address lost instructional time by supporting 
students' academic, social, and emotional needs. And I was 
really encouraged, greatly encouraged to see the Clark County 
School District is exceeding this reservation and using 80 
percent of its American Rescue Plan funds to address learning 
loss. I am rather envious.
    So Superintendent, can you share the evidence-based 
interventions that Clark County Public Schools are using to 
support student learning this school year? And how is Clark 
County School District ensuring those interventions are 
targeted to meet the needs of student groups most impacted by 
the pandemic, such as students of color, students from low-
income backgrounds, and students with disabilities, and English 
learners?
    Mr. Jara. Chairman Sablan, superintendent Jara for the 
record again. Thank you. First of all, let me just thank 
Congress for the allocation of the resources that have been 
provided. I think it is a historic investment in K-12 
education, so I really appreciate as we are moving into this 
direction.
    As I mentioned in my testimony, this was something that was 
important for us as a community to really allocate time for 
community input. As moved into improvement after we stabilized 
this community and our children, one of the things that was 
very clear was their loss in learning. And there is an 
opportunity for us to move forward.
    So, the allocation of resources to support our kids really 
was research-based, but also involved community input. We 
brought in our students to reengage in summer accelerations. I 
heard in your opening remarks a lot of our school systems 
brought in our kids in this summer for summer acceleration, 
reengaging into our schools.
    So, we are looking at extended learning opportunities, 
really investing in our educators? professional learning. We 
are proud of the work around mathematics across the entire 
district. Our English language learners, all our teachers, 
18,000 educators, had the opportunity to participate in 
learning. Lowering the ratios for safe professionals are 
included in the plan to hire more social workers, including 
counselors, implementing high quality math instruction, 
professional development, as well for our educators and 
instructional materials, purchasing really some of the 
personalized opportunities for our kids in programs, not only 
through technology, but also manipulators and face-to-face. And 
then we have a huge, Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, 
investment in early childhood. We know that our children, the 
earlier that we get them in our schools, I would say, the 
better chances we have in really eliminating some of the gaps.
    So, there is a huge investment in our early childhood and 
early literacy for our teachers and our educators. So thank 
you, Chairman.
    Mr. Sablan. No. Thank you, Superintendent.
    Ms. Forte, let me try and get this one in. Education 
advocacy and civil rights groups have called on the Department 
of Education to ensure that as we start accountability systems 
as required under the Every Student Succeeds Act, these systems 
are equipped to identify low-performing schools and direct 
additional support and resources where they are needed the 
most.
    So, how can the Department of Education support States in 
improving their accountability systems to ensure that Federal 
resources are supporting these schools and addressing the 
resources inequities that students of color and students from 
low-income backgrounds face?
    Ms. Forte, we have less than half a minute.
    Ms. Forte. Yes. Thank you for that question, though. We 
can't go back to a time when all this data was hidden, and that 
is why accountability systems have been so important. The 
Department plays a critical role in supporting States to 
develop and implement these systems that actually drive 
additional Federal resources to schools, to address resource 
inequities. And in order to have a robust set of student 
opportunity in outcomes, we do need a fuller picture where 
students have equitable experiences. And States really have to 
be the first ones to be able to collect and provide that 
transparent data.
    Hopefully the Department can reiterate through guidance or 
technical assistance that States and school districts can use 
funding from the ARP to invest in robust K-16 data systems.
    Mr. Sablan. Thank you. Now, Ms. Forte, we are out of time, 
but if you could please provide us some greater detail in 
response to that question. I would appreciate it.
    I would now like to recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. 
Owens, for his questions. Mr. Owens, you have for five minutes, 
sir, please.
    Mr. Owens. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Zweig, in your testimony, you discussed one of the most 
critical issues we face in this debate, which is the number of 
students being quarantined and the length of those quarantines. 
Los Angeles County released data 2 weeks ago showing that only 
.2 percent of the students and staff in close contact in 
schools subsequently tested positive. This seems to demonstrate 
an extremely low level of COVID spread in the school systems in 
Los Angeles County. How should this inform the debate about 
quarantine?
    Mr. Zweig. It is an important question, and as I noted in 
my initial statement, one of the best ways, I think, to address 
this is to use a program like Test to Stay, which has shown to 
be really effective and successful at not quarantining kids who 
are healthy and keeping them home, yet also keeping the schools 
safe at the same time. If there is a child who is exposed to 
someone who was infected, you test that child. If they are 
negative, send them back to class.
    Mr. Owens. Very good. I am going to continue with you 
asking you, several States have prohibited their school 
districts from implementing universal mask mandates in their 
school districts. And those States have been criticized and 
investigated by the Biden administration. Do you believe local 
school and public health officials have sufficient expertise to 
make policy decisions about COVID mitigation strategies without 
State guidance?
    Mr. Zweig. It is interesting. I have interviewed 
superintendents from the tiniest school districts to some of 
our largest cities in the country. And every single one of them 
has told me, I am not equipped to make these types of 
decisions. They lack epidemiological and infectious disease 
expertise. These are educational professionals.
    So, time and again, they have almost been begging to have 
more guidance from above, particularly from their State 
Government saying you need to do X, and that way, it frees them 
up, and then they just follow the guidelines of State health 
departments that actually do have the staff, that do have the 
expertise in these healthcare matters, rather than sort of 
punting it to people who, where this is totally outside of 
their wheelhouse.
    Mr. Owens. And one last question. Two of our other 
Subcommittees had a joint hearing yesterday, ``Examining Ways 
to Protect the Health of Communities from COVID-19.'' Among 
other things that the hearing looked into, specifically, was 
the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of 
color, which you argue that the country's mitigation strategies 
in schools have reduced or exacerbated, or increased the 
disproportionality of COVID's impact on our communities at 
risk?
    Mr. Zweig. Yes. There is an extensive amount of evidence, 
and data, and studies that shows that those people with the 
least resources, particularly in relation to schools and 
education, have suffered the most, whether it is from school 
closures, because those children at home, they have family 
Members who are unable to help them with work, versus families 
with more resources can hire tutors, and maybe one of the 
parents is home.
    So, schools closures have been really damaging to them, and 
even things like mitigation measures within the schools are 
more damaging. An example might be where you have a child who, 
perhaps, their family are English language learners. And the 
parents are not able to help them read at home. And the child 
is a kindergartner, and when they are in school, their only 
opportunity for learning how to read is when they are wearing a 
mask and the teachers are wearing a mask. Whereas other 
students, they can go home, there is no mask, they have tutors, 
et cetera.
    So, these are just a couple of examples. This is what we 
see play out in society at large, that the people with the 
fewest resources unfortunately often bear the greatest brunt of 
the burden of these types of mitigation measures. And the 
education and school system is no exception to that problem.
    Mr. Owens. Thank you. Thank you very much.
    Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Sablan. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Owens.
    I would now like to continue on with Member questioning. I 
would like to recognize one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. 
Hayes. Mrs. Hayes, five minutes please.
    Mrs. Hayes. Thank you, Chairman Sablan. And thank you so 
much for having this hearing. And to all of the witnesses for 
being here to continue this important conversation on this 
critical issue.
    My Governor has issued guidelines that require masks to be 
worn in schools, for school bus drivers and at childcare 
facilities. And he recently implemented in the State of 
Connecticut a requirement that all school personnel be 
vaccinated or require testing. This is a decision that is not 
made lightly. It is made for the health and safety of our 
children.
    I want to emphasize that this measure underscores 
Connecticut's efforts to reopen schools safely and in person. 
Something that we struggled with as a Nation all of last year. 
So, we are taking those measures in conjunction with aggressive 
State vaccination efforts so that our children can learn at 
school full-time, in person.
    Today, Connecticut's positivity rate is about 2.83 percent, 
which we are very proud of, because we have taken this pandemic 
seriously from the very beginning. But there are still many 
challenges for breakthrough cases in our areas of highest need 
and our most vulnerable students.
    Earlier this year, the Department of Education issued an 
interim final ruling requiring that State and school districts 
meaningfully engage in stakeholder consultations and take 
public input into account when developing their plans to use 
American Rescue Plan funds.
    Ms. Forte, why is it important for school districts to 
engage a diverse and representatives set of stakeholders in 
their reopening plans?
    Ms. Forte. Thank you for that question, Congresswoman 
Hayes.
    The importance and criticality honestly of stakeholders 
can't be understated. It is critical that States and school 
districts meaningfully engage those who have a deep, deep 
understanding of the school system, and are most impacted by 
the decisions made by the State's education system, including 
students, families, educators, district leaders, service 
providers, community Members, and advocates.
    We have seen when strong stakeholder engagement is present, 
that they are able to direct funds in a more equitable fashion, 
and we know that the voices are being heard. This engagement 
should be part of a very sustainable feedback loop that allows 
students, families, and community Members, to both provide 
input on initial plans, but also feedback as they are 
implemented.
    Mrs. Hayes. Thank you, and I don't come to this 
conversation from a lack of perspective. So many people talked 
about their district opened without problems. I am a 
Representative for Connecticut's Fifth District. And we have 
some of the largest equity gaps in the Nation. I have some of 
the highest performing schools in the world and some of the 
lowest performing schools in the country that are literally 5 
miles apart. During my time as the National Teacher of the 
Year, I traveled to districts all over the country and all over 
the world, and they are not all created equal.
    So, the fact that people believe that just because one 
school district was able to open immediately and effectively, 
because they might have had the physical structure, the 
broadband, the supports already in place, does not mean that is 
the mechanism or the measure by which we can evaluate every 
district.
    Dr. Jara, has your district engaged families, and, 
particularly, families who have been the most impacted during 
this pandemic in your district planning for reopening to meet 
the needs of children?
    Mr. Jara. Great question, Representative Hayes. Yes, we 
did. Actually, when we started reopening, we brought in not 
only our bargaining units, but all our community. A s somebody 
who came into this country not knowing English, one of the 
things that I always said is if my mother was educating me now, 
how would you be able to do that? We did participate. I made 
myself available to the Nevada PTA town halls, all our advocacy 
groups to really look at ways to address and open schools 
safely. So yes, we did across the entire community. I am going 
to tell you; we have opened schools. As you mentioned, we have 
some of the largest equity gaps, as well. It has been not 
without a challenge, but the commitment to keep our kids in 
school has been great from this entire community, so thank you.
    Mrs. Hayes. Well, thank you. And thank you for just 
reemphasizing and reiterating our commitment to keeping our 
children in school. But also, the fact that has to be done 
safely. It is incredibly disheartening that on this Committee, 
in the highest Halls of Congress, we are still even having a 
discussion that I think is something we should all agree on. We 
want our kids to be safe. And it is our responsibility to 
protect them from all harm based on the data and the 
information that we have. Again, thank you all so much for your 
thoughtful answers.
    Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Sablan. Thank you very much, Mrs. Hayes.
    I now would like to recognize Mr. Grothman, please. Mr. 
Grothman you have five minutes, sir.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you.
    Mr. Zweig, I don't know if I am pronouncing it right. At a 
different hearing yesterday, one of the witnesses testified 
Congress should consider tying funds to doing what the CDC 
wants. Apart from the fact the CDC has gotten so much wrong 
already here, given the degree of disagreement on the 
scientific community about the CDC's recommendations, would 
that be a wise step to take? Just to say you have to follow the 
CDC?
    Mr. Zweig. I think that is a terrible idea. And I will give 
you an example why. The CDC, for a very long time, was 
recommending 6 feet of distancing in the schools. However, a 
number of States were not complying with this guidance. 
Ultimately, in Massachusetts, they performed a study, and they 
found that 3 feet of distancing was no worse than 6 feet of 
distancing. Had all the States in the country lockstep complied 
with the 6-foot guidance, there never would have been an 
opportunity to test this out. It is only because Massachusetts 
didn't go along with the CDC's guidance that scientists and 
experts were able to perform this study. And lo and behold, 
there was no benefit of 6 feet rather than 3 feet. After the 
study came out, the CDC, shortly thereafter, changed its 
guidance away from 6 feet down to 3 feet.
    So, this is one example that we can't know what is 
happening unless States are given the opportunity to test 
different things. The CDC is an important and wonderful 
organization, but they are not infallible. So, I hope this 
example at least gives a sense of why that is important.
    Mr. Grothman. I am glad the State of Massachusetts had the 
guts to stand up to them.
    Obviously, different countries view things differently, you 
talked about different States doing things differently. How did 
the United States' response compare to, say, the European 
response or other peer countries as to how they dealt with 
COVID in schools?
    Mr. Zweig. Well, as I mentioned in my opening statement, I 
think one of the biggest differences is that in Europe, and 
this is in many different countries with different cultures and 
different rates of cases and mortality rates and et cetera, one 
of the unifying factors is that they really prioritized keeping 
schools open. So, this is in direct contrast to somewhere like 
California and some other areas where kids were out of school 
for a full year in many instances.
    So, there is this kind of 30,000-foot view where schools in 
a lot of these cultures, they said, this should be the last 
place to close and the very first place to open. There were a 
number of academics and scientists in America who argued for 
that policy, but it obviously was not followed throughout the 
country.
    And then, as I mentioned, that sort of overarching 
philosophy you could then see play out with a variety of other 
measures, whether it is with masking and other interventions. 
There is this sort of philosophy of priding normalcy for 
children over a sort of, what, at times, seems to be a 
hyperbolic kind of a security theater, whether it is the 
Plexiglass, you know, between the desk and things of that 
nature.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. I will give you another kind of general 
question. Some of my colleagues, when they talk about 
opportunities for students, seem to talk primarily about income 
level. Do you believe income level of parents is the most 
important thing in how you raise children, or are there other 
things more important? Maybe that is an unfair question to ask 
you, but I don't think it is.
    Mr. Zweig. I am sorry, you are asking me if an income level 
is the most important factor in how children are being raised?
    Mr. Grothman. Right. I mean, the implication from some of 
my colleagues, I found a little bit offensive, to imply that if 
you don't make a lot of money, you can't be a good parent, or 
that if you make a lot of money, you are automatically a good 
parent.
    I tell you what, I will give you another question.
    Mr. Zweig. Yes, I would disagree with that notion. I do 
not----
    Mr. Grothman. Yes, I find it offensive when people imply 
that.
    Mr. Zweig. OK.
    Mr. Grothman. You mentioned in your statement that you have 
been researching and writing about children in schools and 
COVID since the beginning of the pandemic. Could you give me a 
general sense the type of people you have talked, to gain the 
level of expertise you have?
    Mr. Zweig. Sure. One of the things that is fun about being 
a journalist is I get to talk to everyone. So, I now have a, 
you know, virtual Rolodex in my phone of infectious disease 
specialists, epidemiologists, immunologists, pediatricians, 
superintendents from schools.
    So that has enabled me to have a really kind of wide-angle 
lens on seeing the issue of kids in schools and COVID from a 
whole variety of perspectives, that someone who, perhaps, is an 
academic in a particular lane stays in that lane and lacks this 
sort of a larger perspective that I hope that I have been able 
to bring to myself by talking to so many different people on a 
regular basis.
    Mr. Grothman. You have been very enjoyable. Now my five 
minutes is up.
    Mr. Zweig. Thank you.
    Chairman Sablan. Thank you. Thank you. And if we start 
commenting on what we take as offensive we would never get 
anything done, but we are all entitled to our own opinion.
    So, I would like to now recognize Mr. Yarmuth, the Chairman 
of the Budget Committee. Thank you very much. You have five 
minutes.
    Mr. Yarmuth. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thanks 
to all the witnesses for being here today.
    In relation to that last comment, I didn't hear any of our 
Members talk about the subject that Mr. Grothman raised. As a 
matter of fact, the only discussion I heard at all about income 
disparity was from the Republican witness, so I don't know 
where that question came from, but moving right along. Ms. 
Forte, your organization did a poll in New York State of 
families there, and it indicated that while families 
overwhelmingly wanted their kids to be in the classroom in 
person, they still had reservations about health and safety 
issues, particularly and understandably, with Black and Latino 
families. My district in Louisville is 96,000 kids. It is 
majority non-White, and I know that we have a lot of that 
situation in my district where parents are very wary of sending 
their kids to school.
    In your report, were you able to deduce any strategies for 
convincing Latino and Black families of the necessity and the 
safety of sending kids back to school?
    Ms. Forte. Thank you for that question, Congressman. At the 
heart of the matter for many families of color in terms of 
returning to school was, you know, over the past year-and-a-
half, many of them are able to experience school with their 
students, and saw firsthand what the classroom looked like, 
even though it might have been on video in a virtual setting. 
And many students of color continue to face a lot of micro 
aggressions, they are being over disciplined, even in a virtual 
setting.
    So, one of the things that parents are asking for is how 
school leaders--how district leaders--can go about that with a 
lens that really addresses the social, emotional, and academic 
well-being of their students. And there are a variety of 
solutions to go about that.
    One is making sure students have strong relationships in 
the school building with the principal, with the teacher, with 
the tutor. There are a number of schools, including my son's, 
who take advantage of City Year programs and service learning 
so that children have more opportunities to build strong 
relationships with adults in the building.
    The other thing we do know is that we need to start 
embracing our children from an asset perspective, meaning they 
all come to school with their own strengths, and we need to 
empower them to see those. But, again, going back to the idea 
of strong relationships in the school system, that is what 
parents are hoping for. They want to make sure that their 
children, when they return to school, are safe and secure and 
are welcomed.
    Mr. Yarmuth. Thank you very much.
    Dr. Jha, I know that those of us who spend far too much 
time on MSNBC are very familiar with you. I suspect that my 
Republican colleagues are not as familiar with you, but we are 
honored to have you here, and thank you for your work 
throughout this pandemic.
    I was intrigued by your testimony talking about the layered 
technique and the fact that there are some elements of the 
strategy, the layering strategy that actually have benefits 
beyond just dealing with COVID, particularly the ventilation 
issue. You know, we have put a lot of money in the American 
Rescue Plan to deal with those kind of upgrades. Can you 
elaborate a little bit on how important this is to fund 
remediation of ventilation systems in schools?
    Dr. Jha. Yes, Congressman, thank you for that question. And 
indeed, there is very, very good evidence that improving 
ventilation makes an enormous amount of difference. This is an 
airborne disease, and as such, things like wiping down services 
or Plexiglass, not so helpful. For the pandemic itself, we have 
got to clean the air, and that has got to be the strategy.
    But what we knew before the pandemic, Congressman, is that 
poor quality ventilation had profound effects on cognition, on 
mood, and that is why companies had been making big investments 
and really having high-quality indoor air. It should be 
something that should be available to all of our children and 
all of our colleagues in schools as well.
    So, I think the American Rescue Plan opens up an 
opportunity to make smart investments and substantial upgrades 
in ventilation and filtration, and if we do, it will help end 
the pandemic, but it will have long-term benefits for our kids 
and people who work in schools. And, obviously, that is clearly 
a good investment for us to be making.
    Mr. Yarmuth. Thanks for that answer, and I yield back.
    Chairman Sablan. Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth. 
Thank you.
    I would like to now recognize the former Ranking Member of 
this Subcommittee, Mr. Allen. Mr. Allen, you have five minutes, 
sir.
    Mr. Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 
holding this hearing. It is very important that we get to the 
bottom of this issue and the truth of this issue, and, like I 
said I think we all agree it is for the children and their best 
interest.
    I will say that when it comes to reopening schools, the 
12th District of Georgia, the district I represent, we worked 
very hard to get our students back in the classroom, but also 
to give parents a choice whether they were in person or 
virtual.
    Across the mostly rural district, I have talked to many 
parents in public and private schools who were committed to 
sending their children back in person. Columbia County School 
System is one of the largest in my district, and it was the 
first to reopen.
    A smaller private school, Heritage Academy, which is a 
school for low-income students, took action to install the 
industry recommended air ionizers, and to keep an open line of 
communication with parents to ensure they would monitor their 
child's symptoms. This led to 100 percent buy-in in staff and 
parents in fully reopening.
    One of the largest districts in Georgia, Richmond County 
School System, addressed reopening concerns by giving the 
students and the parents the choice and the learning equipment 
they needed for long-term use, whether they chose in-person or 
virtual.
    Mr. Zweig, I hope I pronounced that correctly, as you 
probably observed, families across the country, especially low-
income and working parents, face significantly more challenges 
when schools are not fully open. What advice can you offer to 
decisionmakers who are weighing being risk-averse in trying to 
do what is best for their children and the teachers for their 
students?
    Mr. Zweig. Well, obviously, every community is going to 
have a different degree of prevalence of COVID at different 
times, and that will influence the decisions of any education 
professionals, you know, in that particular community.
    But I would say that--and you are going to probably hear a 
theme that I am going to touch on a lot today--that there is 
this sort of broader view that is worth bearing in mind. And 
then the notion that closing schools and keeping children home 
is, quote, ``safe,'' that is the best thing to do so at all 
times, I think, is very misguided.
    Again, we have real-world observational evidence in front 
of us taking place throughout Europe, where they have been 
conducting themselves quite differently than a lot of America 
as far as keeping kids in schools, as far as not burdening them 
with excessive mitigation measures.
    It is not that they don't care about children there, I am 
quite certain. It is that there is a different approach to what 
is safe and what does that mean, and they understand that 
doesn't specifically mean keeping children home, or doing 
everything you can, or perceive that you can do, against a 
virus versus being aware of a variety of other harms and 
illnesses that can come to children.
    Mr. Allen. Well, let's be honest here. A lot of this was 
created by special interest and their influence over not only 
the Biden administration, but over many of our school systems 
across the country. You know, how has special interest caused 
more confusion and clouded the science that other countries are 
relying on more? How are they dealing with it?
    Mr. Zweig. Well, you know, as I am sure everyone has seen, 
there certainly were reports that came out in the media 
regarding teachers unions having private conversations with 
Members of the CDC. However, the CDC has said, which is 
appropriate, that they have met with a variety of stakeholders.
    So, I think it does make sense, and it is appropriate, 
teachers are important stakeholders, but other stakeholders 
should be involved in these conversations as well. And I would 
sort of broaden that statement to say that part of what we need 
to look at is not just infectious disease or viral mitigation 
but broader concepts about what makes a flourishing childhood.
    We don't want our children to be in danger, of course, but 
we also want to look at this from a much larger, more holistic 
perspective. Again, and we are seeing this play out in a 
variety of other places.
    Mr. Allen. Great. Well, thank you very much. Again, you 
have been very helpful.
    And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Sablan. Well, thank you, Mr. Allen.
    Ms. Wilson, Frederica, you now have five minutes, please.
    Ms. Wilson. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, for holding this 
hearing today, and thanks to all of the witnesses for 
appearing.
    All across America, millions of students are returning to 
their classrooms for the first time in more than a year. The 
time they spent away, and how districts make up for it, will 
have significant and lasting consequences. McKinsey estimates 
that this generation may earn roughly $50,000 to $60,000 less 
over their lifetime. Many students have entirely fallen between 
the cracks and may never catch up.
    According to Bellwether Education Partners, up to 3 million 
students that have become totally disconnected from the 
education system. Thankfully, districts have the resources to 
address these challenges. Congress has invested roughly $200 
billion to help schools safely reopen.
    However, officials in my home State of Florida and several 
others have put politics above public health. Our Governor 
DeSantis has forced districts to stop implementing mask 
mandates while the Delta variant surges across our State. 
People in my district die every day. We have lost dozens of 
teachers in Florida.
    DeSantis is failing to protect Florida students and 
educators and endangering our state's recovery and the safe 
reopening of schools. Florida is the only State which has not 
submitted its ESSER plan to the Education Department to claim 
all of its relief funding.
    I have a few questions. Dr. Jara, as the Clark County 
School District uses their ESSER funds to invest in the 
children, are you considering equity in education and the 
funding for Black and Hispanic children and Black teachers 
specifically, and are you working closely with your Federal 
delegation?
    Mr. Jara. Representative Wilson, great to see you. I have 
grown up in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. So, yes, we are 
obviously considering equity as a minority/majority district 
here in the Clark County School District, yes, we are. That is 
why we have partnered with our nonprofits for the community 
input as we have opened schools. So that is No. 1.
    My delegation is very involved in the working of our ESSER 
III, and they have been really tied at the hip with us in 
making sure that we are providing the resources to where the 
greatest need, and appreciate the question, Representative 
Wilson.
    Ms. Wilson. What strategy is Clark County School District 
using to find and reengage missing students?
    Mr. Jara. Yes, thank you, Representative Wilson. Our 
Governor really created a task force right away when the 
pandemic started, which was a public-private partnership, and 
we partnered together, and it was critical here. We started 
connecting our kids and going out into the community, and then 
we reshuffled.
    And as I said earlier, we had to change. We are educators, 
but we had to learn as superintendents, as educators, what we 
needed to do in partnering with the county, with the Southern 
Nevada Health District, to keep our kids safe and being in 
school.
    So, yes, you know, we had to re-shift our work. Our truant 
officers became attendance navigators. Our principals went out 
and sent tests into our community, into our schools, knocking 
on doors, doing wellness checks to connect with our kids. As 
they couldn't come in, we had to connect at their homes. We 
also, though our summer program, bring in our children, 
reengaging them in schools.
    So, all of that work. We went pretty much out into the 
community. You know, I'm proud to bring our kids. We have over 
304,000 of our children in our schools. And then, also, provide 
a choice. Our kids are also, in Nevada, learning, giving our 
parents an opportunity to reengage, so multitude of modalities 
to then making sure that our children were in school.
    Ms. Wilson. Thank you so much.
    Dr. Jha, it is a pleasure to have you here with us. This is 
quite an honor. Mask, why is it important that local education 
leaders can draw on this tool to respond to spread in their 
community? I heard you say that you think vaccinations should 
be mandated, but in addition, masks.
    Mr. Jara. Absolutely. As Dr. Jha, there is a multitude of 
strategies and----
    Ms. Wilson. No, this is for the physician.
    Mr. Jara. Oh.
    Dr. Jha. That is the problem of having names that sound 
very similar.
    Congresswoman, thanks for your question. I will be very 
brief because I know we are out of time. Look, the data on 
masking overall on humans is overwhelming. It is very, very 
clear that masks help, and it makes all the sense in the world. 
This is an aerosol disease, airborne disease, of course, 
masking is going to help. Children are going to be able to do 
this as well. I know I am over time. Thank you, Congressman.
    Chairman Sablan. Thank you, Dr. Jha. Please feel free to 
submit your response in writing for the record. We would 
appreciate that. Thank you.
    Ms. Wilson. Mr. Chair?
    Chairman Sablan. Yes.
    Ms. Wilson. Congresswoman Wilson. I have questions that I 
am going to submit to the Committee.
    Chairman Sablan. All right.
    Ms. Wilson. And hopefully the witnesses can respond in 
writing.
    Chairman Sablan. Yes. Yes, please do that. Thank you.
    Now I would like to recognize--let me see--Mr. Keller, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania. Sir, you have five minutes.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    As America's schools start their new academic year as 
recently as several weeks ago, today's hearing is incredibly 
important. Having America's children safely return to school, 
back to full in-person instruction, is a goal of every Member 
of this Committee that we can all support.
    It is widely accepted that students' learning suffered 
during the 2020-2021 school year. A recent study conducted by 
McKinsey & Company found that the impact of school closures on 
learning loss was significant, leaving students, on average, 5 
months behind in math and 4 months behind in reading by the end 
of the school year.
    Even now, we are still not back to full in-person learning, 
despite the fact that those vulnerable to COVID-19 have had the 
opportunity to receive a vaccine and risks to K-12 students 
remain minimal. School closure policies, along with 
requirements such as mask mandates are problematic for 
students, particularly those with disabilities. The decision to 
keep students out of school and whether or not to wear a mask 
is best made by parents and families relying on the latest 
public health guidelines in coordination with local school 
boards.
    Mr. Zweig, thank you for your testimony and for being with 
us today. The World Health Organization advises against 
requiring students with disabilities to wear masks. Can you 
tell us why they made this recommendation?
    Mr. Zweig. Thank you for the question. I can't speak for 
the World Health Organization specifically, but what we do know 
is that there are a variety of kids who have special needs, 
whether it is some autistic children, whether it is some 
children who have sensory issues and a variety of other sort of 
issues and challenges that certain kids deal with, and masks 
can be very problematic for them.
    I have interviewed numerous teachers, as well as other 
education professionals, as well as psychologists who work with 
autistic children, and they have all talked about how 
challenging it is and harmful it is for some of these children. 
They simply cannot keep the mask on. So that is something 
bearing in mind and that is part of the reason.
    I think the other larger picture here is bearing in mind 
the age stratification of risk, and it is so wildly 
disproportionate, tilted toward older people that--and there 
have been a number of polls that have shown that--a lot of 
Americans drastically overestimate the risk to children. This 
isn't to say there isn't a danger posed by COVID, only that we 
generally have a very wrong understanding of how that risk 
relates to other risks that confront children.
    Mr. Keller. And thank you, and I would just like to 
followup with you on another question. The Biden administration 
has supported universal masking in schools. What challenges 
exist with mask mandates in a school setting, and what has your 
research shown about the return on investment of such a 
difficult-to-implement policy?
    Mr. Zweig. Yes. You know, the evidence for masks is mixed 
as far as specifically related to masking mandates of students. 
I agree with Dr. Jha, of course. There is great evidence that 
some masks work on some people in some circumstances. But there 
is a very big difference between a healthcare worker wearing a 
fit-tested KN95 that is extremely tight on their face where a 
millimeter of air is not going to get around the edges versus a 
child wearing a cloth mask that their parents bought off of 
Etsy or, you know, Amazon.
    And we have seen this borne out in the data. Like I 
mentioned earlier, one of the CDC's own studies did not find a 
statistically significant benefit of the student mask mandate 
compared to schools that didn't have a student mask mandate.
    And to this point, a number of experts, including Michael 
Osterholm, Celine Gounder, these are people who are on 
President Biden's COVID transition team task force, they have 
said publicly and clearly that cloth masks offer, at best, a 
marginal benefit, and that is the mask that most children are 
wearing.
    And related to that point is the notion of compliance. 
There is a study that came out in Marin County that the CDC put 
out, and it showed--there were mask mandates--but guess what 
happened? The teacher pulled the mask down. There is a 
difference between mechanistic studies and how human beings 
behave in the real world.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I think the 
benefits, and we can all look at that when it comes to our 
psychological well-being of seeing our friends, and 
particularly at a young age, seeing classmates smile at one 
another and have that friendly greeting that you can't do with 
a mask. So, I think there is a lot of benefits that exist for 
our students, and for us as adults, when we can exchange that 
smile and have that camaraderie that a lot of students look 
forward to in school.
    So with that, I will yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Sablan. Yes, thank you, Mr. Keller. Since you are 
in the Committee room, you can put your mask back on. Thank 
you.
    Now I would like to recognize Mrs. McBath from Georgia. 
Mrs. McBath, you have five minutes, please.
    Mrs. McBath. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you so much 
for holding this very timely and pertinent hearing on examining 
how we can best assure that our children have a safe and 
enriching return to school this fall.
    And I also want to thank our witnesses for taking time 
today to share their evidence-based research and observations 
with all of us. And as students, teachers, and staff return to 
classrooms for the first full school year in almost 2 years and 
many are in school classrooms for the very first time, it is 
really essential that we ensure they have healthy and safe 
environments in which to flourish, as well as the tools 
necessary to equitably address the academic and social needs 
that they are going to face.
    And I am so proud to have voted in support of the American 
Rescue Plan, which provides States like mine, Georgia, critical 
funding to help reopen schools safely and help students make up 
for the lost time in a classroom.
    My home State has actually received over $4.25 billion in 
funding, and it is imperative that school districts use these 
funds to help ensure that children, our teachers, and staff, 
have safe classrooms to return to, whether that be providing 
masks, free COVID testing, or updating ventilation and 
filtration systems as we are talking about this morning. We 
have got to make sure that our children are healthy so that 
they are in the best position to learn and to grow.
    So, Ms. Forte, thank you so much for sharing your testimony 
today. My first question is actually for you. The COVID-19 
pandemic has truly disrupted learning for all of our students, 
every one of us knows that, and particularly, for students who 
had less access to quality educational opportunities prior to 
the pandemic.
    Acknowledging this, the American Rescue Plan Act provided 
the largest investment in K-12 education in history and 
required that States and districts use a portion of their funds 
to actually address the lost instructional time.
    So, Ms. Forte, if you could please just tell us what 
evidence-based strategies should schools implement to address 
the impact of unfinished learning?
    Ms. Forte. Thank you for that question, and also thank you 
for framing it in the way that you did in terms of unfinished 
learning. The Education Trust, we don't believe in learning 
loss, because students from all communities really missed out 
on the learning, as opposed to them themselves losing learning.
    The real issue here is, we have looked at the research, we 
have done the research ourselves, and there are evidence-based 
strategies that schools should be using across this country 
that we know will impact and affect students and support their 
accelerated learning. We have to accelerate. This is not about 
remediation.
    We need to understand and invest in practices that will not 
only help students make up for unfinished learning but 
accelerate. And students who are even surpassing grade level 
expectations must have opportunities to accelerate their 
learnings.
    So, a couple of ideas that we have looked at and we have 
researched include intensive tutoring. That can be in small 
sizes with very low ratio for adult to students. We know that 
this also comes with the importance of professional development 
for those adults in the room, expanded learning, expanded time, 
adding more time to the day, including making sure that day is 
filled with full child support, such as play for our early 
kids, or it could be music for adults. There are a number of 
ways that we can accelerate learning, and the research is 
showing that both intensive tutoring and the availability of 
the expanded day is the way to go.
    Mrs. McBath. Thank you so much.
    And I know that I am running out of time, but Dr. Jha, in 
your testimony you describe five steps that schools should take 
to safely reopen for in-person learning, including the 
vaccination and also mask use, ventilation testing and social 
distancing. These practices are aligned with the latest 
guidance from both the CDC and also the American Academy of 
Pediatrics.
    Why is it so important that schools use CDC guidance as a 
foundation for implementing COVID-19 prevention strategies to 
safely maintain in-person instruction this academic year? Thank 
you.
    Chairman Sablan. Congresswoman----
    Dr. Jha. Sorry. Thank you. Yes, Congresswoman, it is a 
great question. Obviously, no agency has gotten everything 
right. CDC represents the best scientific evidence that we have 
to date. The American Academy of Pediatrics, our Nation's 
pediatricians, are deeply engaged on these issues and are 
calling the scientific evidence.
    I think it is a great place to start, to begin with the CDC 
and AAP guidelines. And where they converge, I think this is 
where the school district should begin their work. Again, they 
are not going to get it perfectly, but they have been pretty 
consistently right on a lot of issues over the pandemic.
    Chairman Sablan. Thank you, Doctor.
    Mrs. McBath. Thank you so much, and my time is up. I yield 
back.
    Chairman Sablan. Thank you, Mrs. McBath.
    I now would like to call on Mrs. Miller. Mrs. Miller of 
Illinois, please, you have five minutes.
    Mrs. Miller. Thank you to the Chairman and Ranking Member 
Owens and thank you to all the witnesses. And I want to assure 
you that we do share your opinion, that our children are not 
only an asset, but the greatest asset of our country.
    Mr. Zweig, a few other Members, Ms. Wilson, and Mr. Keller, 
have mentioned a study produced earlier this year by McKinsey & 
Company that found that the 2020-2021 school closures could 
have an annual negative economic impact of $128 billion to $188 
billion once the affected students enter the workforce. Could 
you please explain why these school closures could have such a 
dramatic impact on the affected students?
    Mr. Zweig. Thanks for the question. Well, we have known for 
years and years now that there is a strong association between 
education, of course, and income as people move from being 
children to adults, and beyond income, and then, of course, 
connecting the dots, income, connecting to access to better 
healthcare and other parts of participating in society.
    So, if kids are home and not in school for a year, which 
has happened in a number of places in our country, that, of 
course, is going to have reverberating effects on these 
children's lives potentially for years to come. And the reality 
is, no one knows. No one knows exactly how this is going to 
play out.
    I had a really interesting conversation with a child 
psychologist who works on the staff of one of our large 
cities--staff of the Education Department, one of our large 
cities on the East Coast--and she told me about one of her 
students, who is a minority student, who was on her way to 
college. She was going to community college, first one in her 
family, but then schools closed. She wasn't able to maintain 
her job at Starbucks. She wasn't able to get online in her home 
because they lack the resources, and now she has completely 
lost touch with her.
    You know, so it is these sort of heartbreaking stories 
about kids who have really kind of slipped through the cracks, 
and not all of them, it seems, are going to be able to be 
brought back in the fold. I know educators are working as hard 
as they can, of course, to try to do so.
    Mrs. Miller. Thank you. Mr. Zweig, you also made the point 
that keeping kids away from schools or employing some of the 
mitigation strategies favored by the CDC should not be viewed 
as playing it safe, the playing-it-safe option. In other words, 
whether or not these policies have some marginal benefit, they 
are not without harm. Could you please elaborate on the harm 
you see from our country's policies?
    Mr. Zweig. Yes, it is a great question. I would say, kind 
of, the broad view on that is that, of course, when we are 
confronted with an unknown threat, which, you know, certainly 
was COVID initially, as a precautionary principle, it makes 
sense to do everything you can to try to avoid, sort of, an 
unknown catastrophe.
    But as time played on and we watched what was happening, 
particularly elsewhere outside the United States, at a certain 
point it is not only the logistical right thing to do but the 
ethical thing to do, I believe, to start shifting your 
priorities, that perhaps it is not appropriate to have an 
infectious disease specialist be the person who is directing 
the show for the duration.
    We have to ask, is mitigating a virus ultimately the same 
thing as human flourishing? And initially, yes, it is because 
no one knows what is happening. But as more and more 
information has come in, and as we have seen a real-world 
experiment play out with students in Europe who have been in 
school while kids here have been home, I think that provides 
very persuasive and powerful empirical evidence that there are 
a variety of ways to, quote, ``keep kids safe'' and also keep 
them engaged in their education.
    Mrs. Miller. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairman Sablan. Thank you very much, Mrs. Miller. You are 
very generous with time.
    So now the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Levin, yes, sir, 
you have five minutes. Thank you.
    Mr. Levin. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman; although, I 
didn't move to Illinois. I am still in Michigan.
    So I want to try to get to two things real quickly. 
Doctor--I am going to ask Dr. Jara in a minute about the 
workforce in our schools, but Dr. Jha, the whole problem from 
the beginning has been the politicization of this thing, which 
continues in this very hearing. Let me just ask you a few brief 
questions off the cuff, and then I want to get you as the 
doctor to just give a general statement about where we are.
    So the Delta variant has affected many more kids more 
severely. Is that correct?
    Dr. Jha. Absolutely, Congressman, yes.
    Mr. Levin. And even if we are vaccinated, we can be 
vectors?
    Dr. Jha. It is true, though far less likely for vaccinated, 
but, yes, even vaccinated people can spread the virus.
    Mr. Levin. And so schools are places, wonderful places, 
where we all come together, adults and children, children who 
are old enough to be vaccinated, children who are too young to 
be vaccinated. We know, despite some of the things that have 
been said here, that even cloth masks are effective in 
preventing the spread. Is that true?
    Dr. Jha. Yes. So I agree with Mr. Zweig that there is a lot 
of variation. Cloth masks are not extremely effective. They 
probably reduce things by about 10, 20 percent. Higher quality 
masks like surgical masks make a big difference. You don't need 
to talk about N95s. Mr. Zweig kept saying it is either N95 or 
cloth masks. We know there is a lot of difference between the 
two.
    There is some really good middle ground of high-quality 
masks that kids can wear, masks that I am seeing on my screen 
right now, that would be of much higher quality and kids are 
happy to wear it.
    Mr. Levin. And in the American Rescue Plan, we made the 
biggest investment in the history of our country in the public 
schools to help them provide whatever masks they might need, 
right?
    Dr. Jha. Yes, absolutely. And decent, quality masks are 
relatively inexpensive and widely available. And what parents 
and teachers need is guidance on this, which the CDC has 
provided, and which State health departments could also 
provide.
    Mr. Levin. So if we all stuck together and looked out for 
each other, as the Torah, you know, the No. 1 thing in the 
Torah is that--the Jewish holy book--is that we have to look 
out for each other, not just for ourselves, and for the 
stranger.
    How effectively could we take on this current public health 
thing with our reopened schools, happily reopen the schools, if 
everybody who could got vaccinated and if everyone wore masks 
in schools? How well could we control this pandemic?
    Dr. Jha. Yes, you know, Mr. Levin, much of this 
conversation has gone on about the harms of closing schools. I 
think many of us have been arguing for the whole year that it 
is incredibly harmful to close schools.
    Mr. Levin. Absolutely.
    Dr. Jha. But the good news is that is not the tradeoff. 
That is a false dichotomy.
    Mr. Levin. Absolutely.
    Dr. Jha. We can keep schools open if we do vaccinations if 
we get kids masked up. And if we do testing and ventilation, we 
can keep every American school open full-time this year.
    Mr. Levin. Fantastic.
    All right. Dr. Jara, you know, one of the middle schools in 
my district, East Point Middle School, had to close for a week 
because they didn't have enough educators, and it wasn't an 
outbreak.
    One of our big newspapers reported that 22 percent of the 
district's teaching positions are vacant, and this is a problem 
that has existed before the pandemic. People are tearing down 
on our teaching profession. They are tearing down teachers' 
organizations as if they are some evil thing when they are 
really just the organization of the teachers.
    Talk to us not just about your own district, but as a 
leader in education, is there a longstanding crisis about 
school bus drivers, you know, really every kind of position in 
schools, and what do we need to do about it?
    Mr. Jara. Absolutely, Representative, great question. And 
it is, I mean, I sit with the Council of Great City Schools as 
a Member with urban school districts, but it is not just urban, 
it is suburban, it is rural. We have a huge bus shortage. We 
have a substitute shortage. The workforce is struggling.
    I thank this administration, what we have done is we really 
prioritized education, so I appreciate Congress in K-12. But it 
is a huge hurdle for us to continue and keep staff engaged when 
the national conversation across this country is about public 
schools.
    So really, it is an effort. This is a great conversation 
that we need to have. I have got principals that are 
substituting classrooms, that are serving foods just to try to 
keep our kids engaged, our children in classrooms. Our bus 
shortage is something that we are struggling with.
    We are trying to incentivize using the ARP money, but we 
have to have a nationwide, long-term strategy around how do we 
keep our schools open. So we have done that in partnership with 
everybody in this community, and we are all committed doing 
that here locally.
    Mr. Levin. Thanks, Dr. Jara.
    Well, Mr. Chairman, I would just say that if we all lifted 
up education, treated teachers as professionals as they are in 
other countries like doctors, lawyers, accountants, and stopped 
attacking their organizations, and really compensated them well 
and respected them and all the people who work in our schools, 
we would be in a lot better position. Thanks, and I yield back.
    Chairman Sablan. Thank you, Mr. Levin. My two youngest 
would really appreciate that since they are schoolteachers. 
Thank you.
    Let me see, the Ranking Member of the full Committee, Ms. 
Foxx, are you----
    Ms. Foxx. Yes, sir, I am prepared.
    Chairman Sablan. OK. So you have five minutes, Dr. Foxx.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Zweig, we had two parents testify before this 
Subcommittee earlier this year about the impact of school 
closures on their families. Each recommended that we do 
everything possible to keep schools open in the future. One 
even suggested we should think about schools like we do 
hospitals and grocery stores.
    Do you agree that outside of some obvious and compelling 
circumstances, that we should resolve not to close schools for 
extended periods?
    Mr. Zweig. I certainly do agree with that. And what is 
interesting is, in doing research for my book, all of the 
academic literature prior to the pandemic also said that. None 
of this was planned to close schools for a year, regardless of 
the various dynamics of the pandemic and the sort of 
transmissibility and virulence of this virus. From looking at a 
variety of different sort of pandemic playbooks and academic 
papers written on this, none of them mentioned closing schools 
for a year as one of the measures.
    Ms. Foxx. All right. Well, I appreciate the fact that you 
talked about the statistics on masks, and I believe your 
comments are more believable than comments of others who say, 
oh, masks absolutely work. Nothing that I have read has said 
that masks--all masks--absolutely work.
    So, you talk in your statement about the need for clear 
metrics from the CDC for how and when COVID mitigation 
strategies are unwound. I wrote a letter back in July to 
Secretary Becerra asking for, among other things, the data used 
by the CDC to recommend universal masking in schools. 
Ironically, I sent that letter 2 months ago today, and I still 
haven't gotten a response.
    In the conversations you have had with experts in the 
scientific community, do you believe there is a clear 
understanding about the evidence the CDC is using to inform its 
recommendations? I am a believer in evidence driving decisions.
    Mr. Zweig. I mean, there certainly have been a number of 
cases where the CDC has released guidance related to children 
in schools where there didn't seem to be a very clear 
explanation behind that guidance.
    One example that comes to mind right now would be when they 
initially released guidance for summer camps, they wanted 
children to wear masks at all times in all circumstances, 
including outdoors. And I immediately reached out to a number 
of experts who I wanted to ask, does that make sense to you? 
Because from what we knew, the virus is very unlikely to be 
transmitted outside, and, conversely, the harms of a child in 
90-degree heat in the northeast wearing a mask all day playing 
soccer, for example.
    After I wrote an article about this, the CDC almost 
immediately thereafter changed its guidance and rescinded that 
recommendation, even though none of the underlying data had 
changed. So that is one example where it is OK, this is what 
science is about is questioning. And lo and behold, the CDC, as 
it rightfully should have, ultimately changed its guidance in 
that particular circumstance.
    Ms. Foxx. Yes. Yes, we want questioning, and we want 
modifications. You know, everywhere I go in my district, people 
say, where in the heck is the common sense in Washington, DC.? 
There seems to be none up here.
    So, one more question. You have already alluded to the fact 
that they changed the recommendations this summer about 
camping, but also, CDC revised its school mask recommendations, 
quietly removed guidance for phasing out masking and other 
mitigation strategies in school. Why do you think it is so 
necessary to have clear off-ramps for the disruptions these 
strategies cause in learning?
    Mr. Zweig. It is a great question, and that has really 
become the term de jour, ``off-ramps,'' because it is not clear 
to anyone when these variety of interventions are going to be 
unwound from schools. And I speak to some of the top scientists 
who are in this field of implementation science, and one of the 
things they know is that once you implement something, it is 
very hard to reel it back.
    And one of the ways to unwind something is to have very 
clear metrics, you know, made knowable to the people so they 
understand why they are doing it now, and when specifically it 
can end, rather than, sort of, vague, elliptical, or general 
statements about when sort of unknowable amounts of 
vaccinations or other things.
    So, I would encourage the public health authorities to at 
least say, here is when we can stop X, Y, and Z, and that will 
enable local officials to then have the ability to do that.
    Ms. Foxx. Yes. The goal post keeps changing because it 
appears that it is a control issue. Thank you very much. I 
yield back.
    Chairman Sablan. Thank you, Dr. Foxx. Not to take away 
anything from David, if I have to listen to medical opinions 
from him or from CDC, I go with CDC all the time.
    Let me now recognize Ms. Manning. Ms. Manning, you have 
five minutes. Thank you.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Zweig, I have a variety of questions, so if you could 
give me a yes-or-no answer, I would really appreciate it. Do 
you have a medical degree?
    Mr. Zweig. I do not.
    Ms. Manning. Do you have an educational background in 
epidemiology?
    Mr. Zweig. I do not.
    Ms. Manning. Do you have an educational background in 
infectious disease?
    Mr. Zweig. I do not.
    Ms. Manning. Do you have an educational background in 
pediatric medicine?
    Mr. Zweig. I do not.
    Ms. Manning. Do you have an educational background in 
public health?
    Mr. Zweig. I do not. I think you are aware of my resume.
    Ms. Manning. No, I actually am not, but let me continue.
    Mr. Zweig. Oh, you are not? OK. All right.
    Ms. Manning. Do you have an educational background in 
healthcare?
    Mr. Zweig. I do not. I am a journalist. I think you are 
aware of what my profession is.
    Ms. Manning. Yes, I am aware of that. Thank you.
    Dr. Jha, I believe you do have a medical degree and a 
master's degree in public health, both from an esteemed 
university, and I believe you are recognized as an expert on 
pandemic preparedness and public health. Can you respond to Mr. 
Zweig's position that our schools should have reopened last 
year during the height of the pandemic, and his assertion that 
children in schools should not have to wear masks?
    Dr. Jha. Yes, Congresswoman, I would be delighted to. I do 
have a medical degree, and I have been studying public health 
for about 20-some-odd years. So, with all due respect to Mr. 
Zweig, I think there is a lot of things that he is said that 
isn't consistent with the data.
    Let me be very clear on a few things. The first few months 
of the pandemic school closings made a lot of sense. We didn't 
know where things were. By last summer, most of us in public 
health were calling for a strategy for getting schools back 
open again, and I have been on the record for more than a year 
now saying that we can open schools safely. And obviously, as 
we have gotten more and more tools and we have understood the 
virus better, it has gotten safer and safer to do so.
    You know, on the issue of masking, to go back to something 
Representative Foxx said, none of us believe that masks are 
perfect. I laid out in my strategy that we need to do a variety 
of things, and the data on masking is reasonably good overall 
for everybody, including kids.
    What is really interesting is Mr. Zweig has, multiple 
times, referenced the CDC study, a large CDC study, and if you 
keep listening to him, he says, did not find a statistically 
significant difference. What it found was a 20 percent 
reduction in infections for places that had mask mandates, but 
it did not hit statistical significance. It found a 40 percent 
effect for masking mandates for adults that did hit statistical 
significance.
    You know, you can take any study--and this is what people 
do who try to spread misinformation--is they will go through 
every study and find a little hole in everyone. As a doctor, 
when I am taking care of patients, I have to look at a broad 
range of evidence, including mechanisms of disease. This is an 
aerosol, airborne disease; we know masks are going to be 
helpful. And when you look at the totality of the evidence, not 
the CDC, not the American Academy of Pediatrics, no expert that 
I know of doesn't believe masking is helpful for kids.
    So, with all due respect to Mr. Zweig, I don't know who he 
has been talking, but the consensus in the entire medical 
community from conservatives to liberals, if you understand how 
this disease works, masking is helpful, not everything, not 
perfect, but it is an important part of how we keep kids safe.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you, Dr. Jha. And, by the way, have your 
children wore masks in school?
    Dr. Jha. They have ever since they have been able to go 
back to school. I think they started going back in March.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you very much.
    Ms. Forte, as schools reopen, students most impacted by 
school closures, students of color, students with disabilities, 
underserved students are returning to in-person learning facing 
widening achievement gaps, systemic barriers to learning, and 
increased risk of exclusionary discipline and harassment among 
other issues, and that is a big issue in my district that I 
represent. How should districts be working to create safe and 
inclusive learning environments as they reopen?
    Ms. Forte. Thank you so much for that question. And my kids 
wear masks in school as well. All students, all students 
deserve to learn in an environment where they feel they belong, 
where they have their identity affirmed, where they are engaged 
and have agency in their learning. But too often, we all know 
students face many barriers on the inside and outside of school 
that make it challenging to learn.
    We believe that to address these inequities and ensure all 
students have access to equitable learning environments we have 
to protect as well as expand district funding for whole child 
supports. We also need to make sure that our teachers and 
professionals in the classroom have access to the supports that 
they need.
    And it is critically important that we invest in a 
coordinated district-wide effort, including working with 
community-based organizations to identify and proactively 
reengage students who are offline, hard to find, or have left 
school all together.
    And then in my 1-minute left, we absolutely need to do 
something about the use of suspensions and expulsions for minor 
offensives. We cannot keep our kids feeling safe in school and 
have an agency and an affirmation of identity without it.
    Chairman Sablan. Thank you, Denise.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairman Sablan. Thank you, Ms. Manning, for the 
outstanding questions that you asked. Very much appreciated.
    And now I have the gentleman from New York, who has been so 
patient. I now recognize Mr. Bowman for his five minutes before 
I recognize our Chairman, full Committee Chair. Mr. Bowman, 
sir?
    Mr. Bowman. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all 
the witnesses for joining us today.
    Some of you know, before coming to Congress, I worked in 
education for 20 years, had the privilege of being an 
elementary school teacher, a high school guidance counselor, 
and a middle school principal for 10 091/2 years. So, I am 
still very plugged into what is happening with our schools in 
New York City, as you know, the largest school district in the 
country, serving 1.1 million students. And I have a very 
stressed out, frustrated wife who is a second-grade teacher, 
who I love very dearly and try to support her as much as I can.
    Thankfully, the city did implement mask mandates, and 
strongly encouraged vaccinations from the very beginning of the 
full reopening. And, thankfully, we have positivity rates of 
about .27 percent across the city, which is excellent, even in 
a large school system where class size is way too big. 
Obviously, we want the rates to be zero, but that is a really 
good number.
    However, I have heard from parents throughout my district 
and across the city who are still very concerned about the 
Delta variant, who live in low vaccination communities with 
higher COVID rates in terms of the community spread, who really 
wanted a remote option for the safety of it, but also because 
some students, we might be surprised, actually did well with 
remote learning because of social anxieties related to school.
    So, I wanted to ask, Dr. Jha, what you think about a remote 
learning option going forward. Personally, as a former 
educator, I thought remote learning was here to stay just to 
help with lower class sizes and some of the other issues that 
happen, particularly in middle schools. As you know, middle 
school can be challenging. So, I wanted to have Dr. Jha respond 
to the remote learning piece, and then I have a followup 
question if we could get to it.
    Dr. Jha. Yes. So, Congressman, thank you. And, you know, 
New York City has just been doing an extraordinary job. A very, 
very complicated situation in New York and, you know, the 
schools are--some of them are very old. Again, I don't need to 
tell you, Congressman. I think they have done a great job, 
because they follow the science, and the science is they are 
getting people vaccinated, they are using testing, they are 
asking kids to mask up and adults, of course. It is working.
    You know, on the issue of remote learning, it is 
interesting. So, first of all, I think we all agree that 
schools should be open and in person full-time. There are a 
small number of kids who do benefit from remote learning and 
that should be a parent decision. And I think that is a place 
where, either because they have specific health issues, or they 
have other types of needs, I have generally believed that 
coming out of this pandemic we have got to give people more 
choices.
    So, a lot of talk happens about giving parents choices. I 
think on things that affect their kids and their kids only, it 
makes a lot of sense. You know, when it comes to, you know, not 
wearing a mask, well, it is not just about you; it is going to 
be everybody else. There I think we have got to follow public 
health guidelines. But I am pretty supportive of giving parents 
more choices on these issues.
    Mr. Bowman. Absolutely. Thank you for that response. You 
know, we passed the American Rescue Plan several months ago, 
which brought unprecedented resources to school districts 
across the country. What I hope to see, and I believe the 
Chairman and others had hoped to see, is the hiring of more 
teachers to help lower class size.
    In addition, outdoor learning spaces have been shown to 
also have benefit as well, and alternative learning spaces in 
the lowering of class size as well. And although that is not 
in-school learning, it is still in person, and helps with the 
overall development of our kids and the social emotional 
development of our kids as well.
    So, I wanted to just throw that out there and ask anyone if 
they had a comment on the benefits of outdoor learning 
opportunities, particularly in parts of the country where the 
climate is warmer for longer periods of time, and kids can 
benefit from it. Anyone can jump in.
    Mr. Zweig. Outdoor learning is fabulous. I pushed for it in 
my own village here at the beginning of the pandemic. 
Obviously, it makes everyone safer, and there is a lot of 
evidence that learning outside has other sort of holistic 
benefits, so it is a fabulous idea.
    Mr. Jara. Representative Bowman, Superintendent Jara for 
the record. I think one of the things we have done pre-
pandemic, and obviously we have seen expanding is outdoor 
gardens. Actually, some of the opportunities that we have had 
for children in the desert. So, it is great that, you know, we 
have taken advantage of that. But schools have been able to do 
that as individual schools.
    Mr. Bowman. Awesome. Thank you all so much. I yield back 
the rest of my time, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Sablan. Yes, thank you, Mr. Bowman.
    May I inquire, Dr. Foxx, do you have any more Members 
present before I yield to the Chairman, the full Committee 
Chair?
    Ms. Foxx. Not at this time, sir. Thank you.
    Chairman Sablan. OK. Thank you, Dr. Foxx. Thank you.
    So now, I would like to recognize the always present, very 
good leader in our Committee, the full Committee Chairman, Mr. 
Bobby Scott, for five minutes, sir, please.
    Mr. Scott. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want 
to thank all of our witnesses for their testimony, and ask 
first, Ms. Forte, if she could comment on the importance of 
student assessments to make sure that we get the data that we 
need to ascertain what inequities have been exacerbated by the 
pandemic?
    Ms. Forte. Thank you, Chairman Scott. We need as much data 
as we can possibly get, and it is not just about the basic 
system of assessments or the assessment in the classrooms that 
we have. It is really a system of assessments that we need to 
go forward to be able to understand clearly what is happening 
in the classroom, how kids are being supported with the amount 
of online learning, and that type of rounded assessment is what 
will give us the most accurate and representative data.
    And, in particular, we are looking at inequities, which is 
what The Education Trust does every day. Without that data, we 
are unable to really dig down and see what is going on in the 
schoolhouse experience for Black and Latino students. So now, 
more than ever, in particular with the amount of investment 
that Congress has put toward school, nearly $200 billion, we 
need that data to be able to drive resources and drive 
outcomes.
    Chairman Scott. Thank you.
    Mr. Jara, Superintendent Jara. You mentioned a lot of 
initiatives to bring students back up to make up for the time 
they lost. Are you able to target those initiatives to where 
they are best needed, based on the data that Ms. Forte just 
mentioned?
    Mr. Jara. Representative Scott, great question. Yes, I 
mean, we have had not only the summative, but also the 
formative assessments, and we use our student level data from 
when the kids just came in, and also from the spring from last 
year to really target some of the support. Yes, sir.
    Chairman Scott. Thank you.
    And Dr. Jha, I think you have indicated that we all agree 
that students should be in school and a lot of things that they 
can't get not in school. We heard in the opening statements 
that the Republicans have criticized the American Rescue Plan 
for not requiring students to return to school safe or not. You 
indicated that a return could be made safe. Can you say a word 
about what is wrong with parents having the choice as to 
whether the students should be masked or not?
    Dr. Jha. Absolutely, Congressman. Look, I am a parent. I 
have kids in school. And I want to have a lot of freedoms about 
how I raise my kids. But there are certain freedoms I don't 
have. I don't get to send my kids to school if they have not 
gotten the measles vaccine. I don't get to send my kids to 
school if they are not properly clothed. If there were economic 
issues, I might need some help. But there are a certain set of 
requirements that I have as a parent because it is good for the 
public health of other children. Those public health rules that 
require kids to be vaccinated for instance against measles, 
protect my children in the school. So, while we think 
individual parenting decisions are extremely important, we have 
always made decisions for public health that protect all the 
kids and teachers and staff in schools.
    Masking is very much that. It is not a personal choice. It 
is not just about you. It is about the toxic air, or the 
infected air you are going to breathe if you are infected, and 
you are subject other people to infection. And this is why, in 
public health, there is broad consensus. There really aren't 
very many experts out there who think that kids wearing masks 
is not a helpful thing, and that is why we all believe this. 
And this is not, as I said, not an individual choice of public 
health decision.
    Chairman Scott. Thank you.
    Can you say a word about the social, emotional learning 
that takes place when you are actually in school?
    Dr. Jha. Yes. It is extraordinarily important. I saw in my 
own children that when they were remote for almost a year, I 
think it was incredibly harmful. But it is not about my 
anecdote. The data on this is very clear that for many, many 
kids, being remote was very difficult and harmful to be very 
honest. And so, the question isn't--nobody should frame the 
question as remote versus in person. We have all got to get 
kids back in person. That is the right things for kids, great 
for families. The question has always been how do you do it 
safely? We have the evidence and scientists to do it safely. 
And I keep hearing people sort of set up a false dichotomy, all 
of us believe that in-person education is better for children. 
The key issue is how do we do it in a way that keeps kids, and 
teachers, and staff safe.
    Chairman Scott. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
    Mr. Sablan. Thank you, Chairman Scott. Also, I want to 
thank all the Members and witnesses for the questions.
    I would be remiss if I don't, finally it dawned on me, Ms. 
Forte, now I remember you in our Committee, and welcome back.
    So, I now remind my colleagues that pursuant to Committee 
practice materials for submission for the hearing record must 
be submitted to the Committee Clerk within 14 days following 
the date of this hearing. So, it is by close of business on 
October 13, 2021, and preferably in Microsoft Word format. The 
materials submitted must address the subject matters of the 
hearing. And only a Member of the Subcommittee or an invited 
guest may submit materials for inclusion in the hearing record. 
Documents are limited to 50 pages each. Documents longer than 
50 pages will be incorporated into the record via an internet 
link that you must provide to the Committee Clerk within the 
required timeframe. But please recognize that in the future, 
that link may no longer work.
    Pursuant to House rules and regulations, items for the 
record should be submitted to the clerk electronically by 
mailing submissions to [email protected]. That 
is [email protected].
    Now witness questions for the record, again, I want to 
thank the witnesses for their participation today. Members of 
the Subcommittee may have some additional questions for you. 
And we ask the witnesses to please respond to those questions 
in writing. The hearing record will be held open for 14 days in 
order to receive those responses.
    I remind my colleagues that pursuant to Committee practice, 
witness questions for the hearing record must be submitted to 
the Majority Committee Staff, or Committee Clerk, within 7 
days. The questions submitted must address subject area of the 
hearing.
    I now recognize the distinguished Ranking Member for a 
closing statement, Dr. Foxx, or Mr. Owens.
    I don't see either Member. Here is Mr. Owens. Burgess, 
please.
    Mr. Owens. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for once again calling 
this hearing. I want to thank our witnesses for offering their 
expertise today. Mr. Chairman, I am actually encouraged by the 
level of agreement in this hearing. I had several hearings in 
the spring with some of my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle questioned the need to reopen schools and were dismissive 
of the experience of parents and children during remote 
learning. I am happy to see we have moved beyond that and have 
a universal knowledge that kids need to be in school.
    That being said, we seem to disagree on a couple of key 
points. First, Republicans recognize that our conversation 
around COVID mitigation need to be more comprehensive. The 
benefits of COVID mitigation strategies needs to be evaluated 
on its own merits for actually slowing the spread of the virus 
and using a cross-method analysis that weighs the potential 
benefit of that strategy and the harm that strategy might cause 
to long-term health and development of our children. For 
example, thousands and thousands of students are, right at this 
moment, being unnecessarily quarantined and separated from 
school. So schools might be open officially, but they are 
closed for many, many students who desperately need to be in 
class. Very few are acknowledging the ongoing harm that is done 
to vulnerable students by these policies.
    Second, the public seem more comfortable with ambiguity of 
the data. You know, my Democratic friends, it has been stated 
unequivocally, several times today that mask mandates in 
schools definitely work despite the fact the CDC's own studies 
looking specifically at the student mandates found no specific, 
statistic significant benefits to the student mask mandate. Let 
me just repeat that. The CDC's own study looking specifically 
at the student mask mandate found no significant benefit to the 
student mask mandate. As a result, Republicans believe States 
and school districts should have the freedom to adopt the 
policies they believe are most appropriate to their State. In 
contrast, the Biden administration has admitted a novel low 
interpretation related to mask wearing and is applying it to a 
politically selective way to investigate only a handful of 
States that the administration does not like.
    Finally, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Zweig has made this point 
repeatedly. Republicans believe the CDC owes Americans much 
more transparency than it provides to date. What is the science 
the CDC is using for its recommendation? And why do these 
recommendations differ so significantly from the 
recommendations of other countries. And what are the metrics we 
should be using to determine when COVID mitigation strategies 
should be unwound? The CDC has not said.
    Finally, I want to address another issue. One of the 
Democratic witnesses, Mr. Zweig, is peddling misinformation. To 
be clear, if that is true, so is the World Health Organization, 
and many other health authorizations around the world. Those 
are the facts. If we learn nothing else about this pandemic, 
clearly, you must have learned that the spirit of good faith, 
informed debate doesn't accomplish anything and, in fact, does 
tremendous harm. Mr. Chairman, again, we owe our children 
better than that.
    And I yield back.
    Mr. Sablan. Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Owens. Before I 
go to my own closing statements. I don't recall anyone 
questioning--suggesting that Mr. Zweig--David was giving 
misinformation. The plan of questioning was on the particular 
achievements that is received for his specialty or whatever, 
but I think we all respect our witness testimonies and 
responses equally.
    I want to thank all our expert witnesses for their 
testimony and for all that you have done to support our schools 
and our children's education. Today's hearing has made it clear 
schools can only reopen and stay open safely if they implement 
science-based strategies to mitigate the spread of COVID. This 
is especially true as we experience a resurgence of this 
pandemic. Students and educators have not been shielded from 
Delta variant's devastating and horrific impact. However, 
schools who are enforcing masking policies and taking 
precautions are experiencing far fewer and far less severe 
COVID-19 outbreaks.
    Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, schools have the 
funding and guidance they need to prevent and navigate 
outbreaks. As our witnesses shared, many schools are using the 
funds they received from the American Rescue Plan to purchase 
PPE, update ventilation systems, and make up for lost time in 
the classroom through evidence-based intervention like 
intensive tutoring and after-school and summer-learning 
programs.
    Unfortunately, too many Republican-led States and school 
districts are ignoring the science, leaving students and staff 
at risk. As I shared at the beginning of the--hearing, this is 
the third-year students are going to school under the cloud of 
a pandemic. If we want our students to succeed in a healthy 
environment, we must put their well-being and education first. 
We must put students first.
    I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues to 
help schools reopen, stay open, and build a more equitable 
education system for our students.
    Seeing that there is no further business, without 
objection, the Subcommittee now stands adjourned. Thank you 
everyone. And have a wonderful day.
    [Questions submitted for the record and the response by Dr. 
Jara follow:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    [Questions submitted for the record and the response by Ms. 
Forte follow:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    [Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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