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The nation’s leading infectious disease expert said that the U.S. should try to keep children in schools “as best we possibly can” while the country sees a spike in coronavirus cases rivaling numbers that previously saw the nation shut down. Dr. Anthony Fauci, during a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum, said the data does not show widespread transmission of the virus in schools. “Our default position – there will always be exceptions ... there is never one-size-fits-all – our default position should be to try to keep the schools open and get children who are not in school back in school as best as we possibly can,” Fauci told Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who moderated Wednesday’s discussion. (Hein, 12/9)

Full-time employees of an Alabama school system are getting a $1,000 bonus except for its superintendent. The funds will be issued to employees of Baldwin County Schools on Dec, 18, WKRG-TV reported. The money is coming from local funding, primarily sales tax dollars, a spokesman for the school system said. (12/9)

County Commissioner Dennis Frazier, R-District 3, posed a question to Nick Shockney, director of special education for Carroll County Public Schools, during the Dec. 2 board of education meeting. “You’re still satisfied that it’s safe for everyone involved in those programs?” Frazier asked, referring to special education programs that have continued with in-person learning in small groups amid the recent spike of COVID-19 cases. (Griffith, 12/10)

Texas Southern University will be one of eight historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, in the country to become a COVID-19 testing hub for other Black higher education institutions thanks to a $25 million gift, according to a university release. Thermo Fisher Scientific gave the multimillion-dollar donation of supplies, test kits, and technical assistance to launch The Just Project. It will enable HBCUs to expand their laboratories and provide assistance during the pandemic by processing thousands of COVID-19 samples from other historically black institutions. (Britto, 12/9)

Colleges and universities that taught students in person this fall found no evidence that the novel coronavirus spread in any significant way in classrooms, laboratories and lecture halls, according to numerous school leaders, easing what had been one of their greatest fears during a deadly pandemic. A far larger public health problem for higher education, these leaders and other experts say, arose in the off-campus student housing and social scene. Trouble emerged wherever students mingled without protective distance and masks, and faced less peer pressure to curb unsafe behavior. (Anderson and Svrluga, 12/9)