BOSTON/CHICAGO: Hundreds of students in Boston and Chicago walked out of classes on Friday in protests demanding a switch to remote learning as a surge in COVID-19 cases fueled by the omicron variant disrupted efforts at returning to in-person education around the United States.
In Chicago, the nation’s third-largest school district, the walkout came two days after in-classroom instruction resumed for 340,000 students who were idled during a five-day work stoppage by unionized teachers pressing for tougher COVID-19 safeguards.
Protesting students said they were dissatisfied with the additional health protocols the teachers union agreed to earlier this week, ending its standoff with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) district and Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
“I think CPS is listening, but I’m not sure they’ll make a change,” said Jaden Horten, a junior at Jones College Prep High School, during a rally at district headquarters that drew around a thousand students.
The demonstration followed student walkouts at various schools around the city.
About 600 young people from 11 Boston schools participated in student walkouts there, according to the school district, which serves nearly 52,000 pupils. Many protesting students returned to classrooms later, while others went home after taking part in peaceful demonstrations.
An online petition started by a Boston high school senior branding schools a “COVID-19 breeding ground” and calling for a remote learning option had collected more than 8,000 signatures as of Friday morning.
The Boston Student Advisory Council, which organized the walkout, posted a series of demands on Twitter, including two weeks of online instruction and more stringent COVID-19 testing for teachers and students.
The latest wave of infections has renewed the debate over whether to keep schools open, as officials seek to balance fears about the highly contagious omicron variant with concerns that children could fall further behind academically after two years of stop-and-start instruction. The result has been a patchwork of COVID-19 policies around the country that has left parents feeling exhausted and bewildered https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exhausted-parents-navigate-patchwork-us....
Ash O’Brien, a 10th-grade student at Boston Latin School who left the building with about a dozen others on Friday, said he didn’t feel safe staying in school.
“I live with two grandparents who are immune-compromised,” he said. “So I don’t want to go to school, risk getting sick and come home to them.”
In a statement, Boston Public Schools said it supports students advocating for their beliefs and vowed to listen to their concerns.
Earlier this week, students at several New York City schools staged a walkout to protest what they said were inadequate safety measures. Mayor Eric Adams said on Thursday his administration was considering a temporary remote learning option for a significant number of students who were staying home.
Nearly 5,000 public schools across the country have closed for at least one day this week due to the pandemic, according to Burbio, a website that tracks school disruptions.
The omicron surge appears to be slowing in areas of the country that were hit first. In the last week, the average daily tally of new cases has risen only 5 percent in Northeastern and Southern states compared with the prior seven-day period, according to a Reuters analysis. In Western states, by contrast, the average number of infections documented every day has climbed 89 percent in the past week compared with the previous week.
Overall, the United States is still tallying nearly 800,000 new infections a day amid record numbers of hospitalized patients with COVID-19.
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As omicron fuels surge, US students stage walkouts to protest in-person classes
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As omicron fuels surge, US students stage walkouts to protest in-person classes
- About 600 young people from 11 Boston schools participated in student walkouts there, according to the school district, which serves nearly 52,000 pupils
New crew set to launch for International Space Station after medical evacuation
- They will be replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January, a month earlier than planned
- The space station has been a rare area of continued cooperation between the West and Russia
PARIS: Four astronauts could blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) next week, after setbacks including a mysterious medical evacuation of the previous crew, last-minute rocket problems, and some scheduling conflicts with NASA’s Moon mission.
The crew was scheduled to launch on February 11, Elon Musk’s SpaceX company said this week it was grounding all flights on its Falcon 9 rocket while it investigates an unspecified issue.
This late uncertainty is just the most recent twist for the SpaceX Crew-12 mission, which includes Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
They will be replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January, a month earlier than planned, during the first medical evacuation in the space station’s history.
NASA has declined to disclose any details about the health issue that cut the mission short.
However, the scientific laboratory, which orbits 400 kilometers above Earth, has since been staffed by a skeleton crew of three.
Because of the medical evacuation, NASA moved the date of the Crew-12 launch forward a few days.
The launch had also overlapped with NASA’s first mission to fly astronauts around the Moon in more than half a century.
The launch window for the Artemis 2 mission had been set for February 6-11 — until leaks detected this week during final tests pushed the date back to March 6.
‘One day, that will be me’
Once the astronauts finally get on board, they will be one of the last crews to live on board the football field-sized space station.
Continuously inhabited for the last quarter century, the aging ISS is scheduled to be pushed into Earth’s orbit before crashing into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2030.
The ISS, once a symbol of warming post-Cold War relations, has been a rare area of continued cooperation between the West and Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
However, the space station has not entirely avoided the tensions back on Earth.
In November, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev — who had long been planned to be a member of Crew-12 — was suddenly taken off the mission.
Reports from independent media in Russia suggested he had been photographing and sending classified information with his phone. Russian space agency Roscosmos merely said he had been transferred to a different job.
His replacement Fedyaev, has already spent some time on the ISS as part of Crew-6 in 2023.
During their eight months on the space station, the four astronauts will conduct many experiments, including research into the effects of microgravity on their bodies.
Meir, who previously worked as a marine biologist studying animals in extreme environments, will serve as the crew’s commander.
Adenot will become the second French woman to fly to space, following in the footsteps of Claudie Haignere, who spent time on the Mir space station.
When Adenot saw Haignere’s mission blast off, she was 14 years old.
“It was a revelation,” the helicopter pilot said recently.
“At that moment, I told myself: one day, that will be me.”
Among other research, the European Space Agency astronaut will test a system that uses artificial intelligence and augmented reality to allow astronauts to carry out their own medical ultrasounds.
The mission is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 1100 GMT on February 11. If called off, launches can also be attempted on the following two days.
The crew was scheduled to launch on February 11, Elon Musk’s SpaceX company said this week it was grounding all flights on its Falcon 9 rocket while it investigates an unspecified issue.
This late uncertainty is just the most recent twist for the SpaceX Crew-12 mission, which includes Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
They will be replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January, a month earlier than planned, during the first medical evacuation in the space station’s history.
NASA has declined to disclose any details about the health issue that cut the mission short.
However, the scientific laboratory, which orbits 400 kilometers above Earth, has since been staffed by a skeleton crew of three.
Because of the medical evacuation, NASA moved the date of the Crew-12 launch forward a few days.
The launch had also overlapped with NASA’s first mission to fly astronauts around the Moon in more than half a century.
The launch window for the Artemis 2 mission had been set for February 6-11 — until leaks detected this week during final tests pushed the date back to March 6.
‘One day, that will be me’
Once the astronauts finally get on board, they will be one of the last crews to live on board the football field-sized space station.
Continuously inhabited for the last quarter century, the aging ISS is scheduled to be pushed into Earth’s orbit before crashing into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2030.
The ISS, once a symbol of warming post-Cold War relations, has been a rare area of continued cooperation between the West and Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
However, the space station has not entirely avoided the tensions back on Earth.
In November, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev — who had long been planned to be a member of Crew-12 — was suddenly taken off the mission.
Reports from independent media in Russia suggested he had been photographing and sending classified information with his phone. Russian space agency Roscosmos merely said he had been transferred to a different job.
His replacement Fedyaev, has already spent some time on the ISS as part of Crew-6 in 2023.
During their eight months on the space station, the four astronauts will conduct many experiments, including research into the effects of microgravity on their bodies.
Meir, who previously worked as a marine biologist studying animals in extreme environments, will serve as the crew’s commander.
Adenot will become the second French woman to fly to space, following in the footsteps of Claudie Haignere, who spent time on the Mir space station.
When Adenot saw Haignere’s mission blast off, she was 14 years old.
“It was a revelation,” the helicopter pilot said recently.
“At that moment, I told myself: one day, that will be me.”
Among other research, the European Space Agency astronaut will test a system that uses artificial intelligence and augmented reality to allow astronauts to carry out their own medical ultrasounds.
The mission is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 1100 GMT on February 11. If called off, launches can also be attempted on the following two days.
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