Starting Thursday all Los Angeles campuses will shut down completely due to an explosion of coronavirus cases, Superintendent Austin Beutner announced Monday.
The move includes in-person tutoring and special services.
The second-largest school district, with 4,000 students, is looking further away from a full reopening in 2021.
“Because of the extraordinary high level of COVID-19 in the Los Angeles area, it is no longer safe and appropriate to have any students on campus,” Superintendent Beutner said. “We will also be asking those who are currently working at schools to work from home if at all possible for the rest of the semester.
“This is greatly disappointing to all who have been working so hard to build a proper foundation for students’ return to campus. Clean schools, proper health protocols and COVID-19 testing for all at schools make a difference but they don’t provide immunity to the virus,” he continued. “We can’t create a bubble for the school community. When things are so dangerous in the communities we serve, it has implications for schools as well.
“My hope is this action today will not only protect the health and safety of all in the school community but will keep the focus where it needs to be – getting the spread of COVID-19 down to levels where schools can safely reopen.”
Los Angeles Unified’s Grab & Go Food Centers, which have provided more than 85 million meals along with 10 million items of need supplies as part of a nation-leading, school-based relief effort, will continue to operate at school sites. The district will also continue its free COVID-19 testing program at schools, which is helping protect the health of all in the school community and will also provide important information needed to reopen schools when it is safe and appropriate to do so.
“The dire situation faced by schoolchildren deserves the same extraordinary response we have come to expect after floods, wildfires and hurricanes in order to help return students to schools as soon as possible in the safest way possible,” Superintendent Beutner said. “Our country needs to address the ‘national emergency’ in schools before it becomes a national disgrace that will haunt many children for the rest of their lives.”