Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austen Beutner detailed how the district plans to get students back in classrooms, emphasizing the need to increase vaccination rates.
“In addition to providing vaccinations in 26 sites in underserved communities, mobile teams of clinicians are visiting 250 secondary schools before this school year ends,” said Beutner in an update today.
As well as getting students vaccinated, Beutner said regular testing will continue in the fall for students and educators in the classroom.
Last month, Beutner announced LAUSD plans to return to full-time in-person learning in the upcoming school year. Currently, the second largest school district in the nation is using a hybrid of in-person and virtual learning. Even with the vaccination push, Beutner could not guarantee the district will return to in-person teaching.
“August is still three months away, and we can’t predict what standards health officials will tell us are appropriate at that time,” said Beutner.
United Teachers Los Angeles president Cecily Myart-Cruz said that teachers are still feeling the effects of the pandemic in an interview at Playa Vista Elementary.
“People are genuinely exhausted,” Myart-Cruz said, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
Myart-Cruz remains unclear on what August will bring for teachers and students.
“Your mind always wants to think of optimism and so forth, but there’s a lot of variants. Are those variants coming here? I want to be very cautious in how we proceed,” she said.
The union has a number of requests for the reopening plan, such as maintaining current health and safety protocols in the fall and smaller class sizes.
According to Buetner, LAUSD is taking more safety measures than any other school district in the county.