The teachers are sick, but you know, send your kids to school anyway:
[New Mexico] Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Wednesday announced the initiative, which encourages state workers and National Guard members to volunteer to become licensed as substitute teachers or child care workers, to support New Mexico’s schools and child care facilities, which “like those in the rest of the nation, are facing extreme staffing shortages due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.”
This is happening in other states, too, as the story tells us:
And New Mexico isn’t alone in employing less-than-traditional substitute teachers. In September, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced he was making 250 National Guard personnel available to transport students to school as the school year began amid a bus driver shortage. And earlier this week, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt announced a program to allow state employees to volunteer as substitute teachers to supplement the state’s staffing shortage without reduction to their current pay or benefits.
Other states have made their substitute teacher licensing more accessible, like in California where Gov. Gavin Newsom last week signed an executive order temporarily relaxing some state regulations around the hiring of substitute teachers, and in Kansas where some substitute teacher positions have recently been opened up to certain individuals without college experience.
We need mask/vaccine mandates. This is a public health crisis on every level.
Mock Paper Scissors 
An online friend (I think in Ohio) recently got herself transferred from an in-school job to a school-bus job in hopes there would be less stress and less risk. She’s been talking about people showing up to work sick, but it’s just a little cough until the COVID test comes in positive. Last week she talked about three different students on her bus alone that got sent home sick, one of them never wears a mask.
Yeah those mask and vaccine mandates would be very helpful. As it is, she is beyond stressed out, even wearing double masks. No way she wants to bring that crud home.
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Hiding under a desk from an atomic bomb doesn’t feel so stupid anymore.
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And in the Terrible Sand Kingdom of Arizonastan, MAGA AG Brnovich is blustering about how tyrannical the Federal
Tyrant Dictator MeaniesGovernment is because it’s threatening to withhold Pandemic Relief Funds for schools because Gov. “Il’ Deuce” Ducey wants to spend it all on only schools that do NOT mandate any masks.His legal argument, I swear, is that the US Government is overstepping it’s constitutional authoritah by [checks notes] telling Arizona how to spend the money the Federal Government is giving it.
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