The Department of Education has released FAQs answering important questions about how the EANS program will work. Here are some key excerpts:

To read the FAQs in their entirety (which are issued for the sake of clarity and do not have the force of law), click here.

As reported in the Washington Post:

“'The preponderance of available evidence from the fall school semester has been reassuring,' wrote three CDC researchers in a viewpoint piece published online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 'There has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.'"

A different CDC study "looked at 17 rural K-12 schools in Wisconsin and found just seven out of 191 coronavirus cases resulted from in-school transmission."

Meanwhile, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters during a White House news briefing on COVID-19 that "there is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated." However, White House press secretary Jen Psaki later said that Walensky was speaking in her “personal capacity.”

The CDC is expected to unveil new guidance on school reopening in the coming days.

According to a story in the AP, "Enrollment in Roman Catholic schools in the United States dropped 6.4% from the previous academic year amid the pandemic and economic stresses — the largest single-year decline in at least five decades."

Additionally, "Between the 2019-2020 school year and the current year, nationwide enrollment dropped by 110,000 to about 1.6 million students."

The closures "disproportionately impacted urban communities where significant numbers of Black children, including many from non-Catholic families, attended Catholic schools. Indeed, some of the largest enrollment losses were in big-city dioceses, including 12.3% in Los Angeles, 11.1% in New York and 8.2% in Chicago."

The Cato Institute continues to track COVID-related private school closures, that site can be viewed here.

On February 3, President Biden's nominee for secretary of education faced senators from the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee in what turned out to be a mostly uneventful hearing. Mr. Cardona generally declined to give specifics in his answers to questions on controversial issues such as school choice, COVID relief, and vaccination requirements before public school reopening.

However, the hearing did take a more contentious turn over the issue of sports participation and transgender students.

According to a January 18, 2021 press release from the Office of the Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of New York:

"Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza continue to deny students in non-public schools the same Covid testing services that are being provided to public school students, despite being required to do so by New York State Education Law and two consecutive court decisions."

The release quotes Michael Deegan, Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of New York, as saying, "the fight continues." While the city has appealed, “We will continue our efforts to ensure that all students, regardless of which school they attend, are treated fairly and equitably by the City of New York during this health crisis, as the law and basic decency demand.”

In response to President Biden's call for another round of COVID relief, the House Education & Labor Committee has approved legislation that would provide $129 billion for K-12 emergency assistance. Roughly $26 billion of those funds would be allocated for addressing "learning loss through the implementation of evidence-based interventions, such as summer learning, extended day, or extended school year programs." That $26 billion in learning loss funds would be subject to an equitable services requirement for private schools.

The Senate has not yet put forward its version of K-12 relief.

From BDO:

"The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, signed into law on December 27, 2020, contains significant enhancements and improvements to the Employee Retention Credit (ERC). The ERC, which was created by the CARES Act on March 27, 2020, is designed to encourage employers (including tax-exempt entities) to keep employees on their payroll and continue providing health benefits during the coronavirus pandemic. The ERC is a refundable payroll tax credit for wages paid and health coverage provided by an employer whose operations were either fully or partially suspended due to a COVID-19-related governmental order or that experienced a significant reduction in gross receipts."

Click here for information on the changes to the program.

The College Board has announced that it will discontinue the optional essay-writing section of the SAT as well as SAT subject tests. For more information, click here.

From Bill McGurn:

"Amid all the pain and disruption, a year of coronavirus has given Americans a new respect for those working to keep daily life as normal as possible, from the frontline nurse to the Amazon delivery man. Near the top of this honor roll is an especially unsung hero: the Catholic-school teacher.

"In ordinary times their teachers do an extraordinary job, especially for their poor and minority students. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor once said, 'Catholic schools have been a pipeline to opportunity' for people like her—poor, Latina, raised by a single mom. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, Catholic-school administrators have moved heaven and earth to keep their classrooms open to new generations of Sotomayors.

"During the pandemic, America’s Catholic schools are providing a similar lifeline to hundreds of thousands of children who would otherwise be out of class and losing ground."

Read it all here. Kathy Mears, CAPE board member and Interim President/CEO of the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), is cited.