Citing surging cases, the Los Angeles and San Diego school districts will be remote-only in the fall.
California’s two largest public school districts said Monday that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers.
The Los Angeles and San Diego unified school districts, which together enroll some 825,000 students, are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August.
More than a third of California’s coronavirus cases are in Los Angeles County and San Diego County has had 18 community outbreaks over the past week, more than double the state’s acceptable threshold.
“There’s a public health imperative to keep schools from becoming a petri dish,” said Austin Beutner, the school superintendent in Los Angeles.
continued to press the Trump administration’s case to quickly reopen public schools, not only for students’ social and emotional development, but so that parents can return to work fully.
The recommendations from the president and Ms. DeVos have been disputed by many public health officials and teachers. On Friday, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and AASA, the School Superintendents Association issued a statement saying that reopening recommendations should be “based on evidence, not politics.”
The groups added that “we should leave it to health experts to tell us when the time is best to open up school buildings, and listen to educators and administrators to shape how we do it.”
With virus case counts differing greatly across the country, there is no single approach to how major urban systems, like those in Los Angeles and San Diego, will operate this fall.
New York City, the nation’s largest school district, hopes to provide one to three days of in-person learning each week, with students working online from home the rest of the time. Seattle has similar plans. That hybrid model is emerging as popular nationwide, among both large and small districts.
Chicago, the nation’s third-biggest district, has not yet announced its plan.
In the Los Angeles and San Diego districts’ joint statement, they noted that while much has been learned about the virus, many recommendations and findings are vague and contradictory.
But “one fact is clear,” the statement said. “Those countries that have managed to safely reopen schools have done so with declining infection rates and on-demand testing available. California has neither. The skyrocketing infection rates of the past few weeks make it clear the pandemic is not under control.”
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So true.
