Los Angeles campuses will shut down completely beginning Thursday for all in-person tutoring and special services, as prospects for fully reopening the nation’s second-largest school district recede further into 2021 amid a dangerous coronavirus surge, Supt. Austin Beutner announced Monday.
The move immediately affects some 4,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade and outdoor conditioning for athletes. Beutner’s emergency order comes on the first day of a sweeping stay-at-home order across much of California and as Los Angeles County’s coronavirus rates reach unprecedented numbers.
“My commitment has been throughout to protect the health and safety of all in the school community,” Beutner said in an interview with The Times. “We have an imperative to get kids back to school as soon as possible the safest way possible. But all that comes through the front door, and the front door is what is COVID in the overall Los Angeles community. Right now it’s at extraordinary and quite dangerous levels.”
The superintendent’s remarks follow those from teachers union president Cecily Myart-Cruz, who said Friday on social media that it has become a question of “if” rather than “when” campuses would reopen for the spring semester. And opening in January, she said, appeared to be out of the question.
On Monday, the union supported Beutner’s decision, calling it the “right step.”
“This deadly virus surge is heartbreaking,” Myart-Cruz said in a statement. “Educators wanted to be closer to a physical return that reunites us with our students, but instead we are moving farther away. The challenge now is for society and our elected leaders to take stronger action to bring the virus under control.”
California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas called for all California districts to shut down until January.
“We think every school district in the state should be following suit because of these dire numbers,” Freitas said. The number of new cases is twice as high as any level during the summer spike — and we aren’t necessary seeing the Thanksgiving surge yet.”
The new shutdown will fall hard on students with special needs — those who had made it back to campuses for services. Improving online instruction is paramount, said Seth Litt, executive director of the local advocacy group Parent Revolution.
“With LAUSD choosing a hard shutdown of the limited in-person services it was offering students, it is even more important that the superintendent share details about how LAUSD will improve its distance-learning program for the second semester, rather than just offer families and students more of the same.”
The superintendent offered few details on this front, but he said he recognized the need to keep students engaged and to track how well these efforts are working. He also said the district may need to provide students with relief in grading practices to prevent them from being further harmed by the pandemic.
Beutner is not alone in pulling back from campus-based services, but there’s been a range of responses across California.
The school board in San Bernardino City Unified, which serves about 47,000 students, voted Nov. 17 to keep campuses closed in that district, the state’s eighth-largest, for the remainder of the school year.
In northwest L.A. County, Las Virgenes Unified, with about 11,000 students, has expanded in-person instruction — bringing back third-graders to campus on Monday. About three-quarters of students in transitional kindergarten through second grade had already returned under a county-approved waiver that is available to any school.
The poverty rate in San Bernardino City Unified is about 88% compared with about 12% in Las Virgenes Unified, reflecting a broader trend of campuses being more likely to reopen in more affluent communities. This divide separating the poor from the more prosperous also is reflected in infection rates. Lower-income areas have been hit harder.
In counties adjacent to Los Angeles, campuses had been been allowed to open while infection rates were lower — and they can stay open under state guidelines. However, campuses that had not reopened must stay closed.
The picture across the nation also is varied. Campuses in Philadelphia are closed. Meanwhile, parents in New York City on Monday dealt with another roller coaster twist — as elementary campuses reopened in the nation’s largest school system.
Beutner said a similar scenario could have been happened in Los Angeles if infection rates were as low as in New York City.
L.A. Unified was barely beginning to unlock the schoolyard gates — with fewer than 1% of students receiving any in-person services. In early October, the district began offering one-on-one tutoring. And it later began instruction for groups as large as three and providing other services, such as assessments for students with disabilities. The goal was to prioritize the most vulnerable students.
Negotiations are underway with the teachers union to extend a distance-learning agreement set to expire at the end of the year.
In remarks prepared for a Monday broadcast, Beutner said the crisis necessitates a “Marshall Plan for Schools,” alluding to the all-in, high-cost program by the United States to rebuild Europe after World War II, an effort that was perceived as promoting the common good.
The latter-day plan, he said, should contain four essential elements: creating a safe school environment; school-based coronavirus testing and contact tracing; mental-health support for children; and funding for in-person instruction next summer.
L.A. Unified, he added, already is planning “for a summer session like no other” to help students “recover lost learning opportunities, add enrichment to their lives and help them deal with the anxiety and trauma this crisis has brought into their homes.”
Well over a billion dollars in federal COVID relief has flowed to the nation’s schools already, but Beutner said the need is much greater.
“The nationwide cost of a school-relief program like I’m proposing would be about $125 billion,” less than 20%, he said, of the total earmarked for the Paycheck Protection Program that has provided ultra-low-interest loans to businesses. “That’s a small price to pay to give millions of children a shot at the American dream and their families a chance to get back to work.”
He also called for teachers and other school staff to be near the top of the list for receiving vaccines.
In the interview, he said, schools should be prioritized for reopening ahead of card rooms, bars, gyms, indoor malls and even restaurants.
“Schools must come first, not last,” Beutner said.
At the same time, he added, idled employees should receive government subsidies until their work can resume.
The district on Monday also released some results of a parent survey, indicating that more than a third of parents wanted to send their children back to campus. Those who responded more recently, said Beutner, were less eager to return to campus, opting instead to remain with distance learning.
Advocacy groups had questioned whether the district was working hard enough to reach parents regarding this high-stakes decision.
In the interview, Beutner made it clear that the survey had evolved to serve as a snapshot and a planning tool. Parents, he said, would be surveyed again later. At that point, he said, more details would be available about the district’s plans to offer a modified, in-person schedule when it becomes safe to do so.
December 08, 2020 at 01:15AM
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-07/lausd-total-campus-shutdown-amid-pandemic-surge
Alarming COVID-19 surge prompts shutdown of L.A. schools - Los Angeles Times
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment