High coronavirus infection rates in the Los Angeles area will keep schools closed for the time being in the nation's second-largest district.
Los Angeles Unified District Superintendent Austin Beutner says infection rates for Covid-19 are still too high to have students safely return to classrooms.
"Covid isn’t going away any time soon, and there’s a lot that has to happen to get schools reopened," Beutner says.
In an update to the school community Monday, the superintendent said infection rates in the Los Angeles area are still well above the level that must be met to reopen schools—"more than three times the proposed new state standard and 10 times the standard from December," he said.
Beutner says four criteria need to be met for the district to safely resume in-person instruction: Community spread of Covid has to be at an appropriate level; the state of California needs to provide clear, consistent and well-understood standards for what constitutes a safe school; schools must put in place health practices and protocols to mitigate risk; and health authorities must provide vaccinations for school staff.
The superintendent also expressed frustration at the inconsistent standards being applied to different businesses.
"It’s been 10 very long months, and the Los Angeles area has yet to meet the state Covid standards for schools to reopen," Beutner says. "If schools are truly a priority, why are malls and cardrooms being allowed to reopen when the Los Angeles area is nowhere close to meeting the state standards for schools to reopen?
"It’s hard to be confident we’re somehow safer today than we were back in December, when health authorities told us similar virus levels put us in dire straits."
To prepare its campuses for an eventual return of students, the Los Angeles district has upgraded the air-filtration systems in more than 80 million square feet of buildings; reconfigured facilities, office spaces and classrooms and marked restrooms, halls, cafeterias and other common areas to keep people safely apart; and provided personal protective equipment and masks at every school and in every classroom.
"The final piece to reopen classrooms," Beutner asserts, "is vaccinations for all who work in schools. This will not only protect the health and safety of school staff but will provide enormous benefit to children and their families with a faster reopening of schools and of the economy more broadly by enabling the working families we serve to go back to work."
Beutner says Los Angeles Unified is ready to operate vaccine sites at school campuses to take the pressure off "crowded, makeshift vaccination mega centers."
