LA Schools Inch Toward Reopening Amid Pressure From Parents

LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles Unified schools will start reopening some schools on a limited basis next week amid increasing pressure to get students back into their classrooms, Supt. Austin Beutner announced Monday.

LAUSD will resume some childcare programs, athletic conditioning and in-person teaching for students with special needs, but the vast majority of students in Los Angeles still have no date for returning to their classrooms. Frustrated parents in West Los Angeles staged a demonstration and "Zoom blackout” to boycott online classes. Over the weekend, another group of Los Angeles parents and teachers held a caravan demonstration to protest Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to reopen schools before teachers are vaccinated. The dueling protests highlight the stakes facing hundreds of thousands of students and teachers in Los Angeles.

Gov. Gavin Newsom attempted to thread the needle Monday at a press conference in Long Beach, praising the City of Long Beach as a "demonstrable leader" in vaccinating teachers against COVID-19. While arguing that schools can safely reopen without vaccinating all teachers, he nodded to the reality that the state’s largest school district has been steadfast in insisting upon vaccinating teachers before reopening classrooms. Newsom advanced measures to prioritize vaccinations for teachers -- announcing recently that 10% of the all first-dose vaccines the state receives will be set aside for educators and childcare workers. Long Beach was one of the largest cities to prioritize teacher vaccinations, paving the way for Long Beach elementary schools to try to reopen at the end of March.

Teachers in Los Angeles will be allowed access to the vaccination in March, but the vaccine shortage makes it unlikely that all teachers will have access to the shot for several weeks.
United Teachers Los Angeles continues to insist that shots should be required and the state should reach a lower case-transmission rate before in-person classes resume.

Newsom framed the reopening of schools as integral to the health of students and parents — especially mothers who have born the brunt of childcare while schools remain closed.

"It's foundational in terms of getting this economy open," Newsom said. "And if you care about women, you care about moms, particularly single mothers, there's nothing more essential and more important we can do to support working women and single moms in particular than getting our youngest kids back into school in cohorts where we can do it safely. And Long Beach is not waiting around to do that. This mayor has been doing that for weeks and weeks. Thirty- five counties have been for weeks now administering doses of vaccines to teachers, but none at the level that Long Beach is doing. ... I just want to applaud that. I want to recognize that and I want to encourage that to be replicated all throughout the state of California."

Newsom has been pushing a $6 billion school-reopening plan in Sacramento, but negotiations with state legislators have stalled. The governor balked at plan announced last week by legislative leaders, saying it would actually slow the pace of school reopenings.

The debate over schools is raging across the state. In West Los Angeles Monday, dozens of parents and supporters rallied outside the federal building, calling for Los Angeles Unified School District campuses to reopen. Those parents said they were taking part in a "Zoom blackout," which amounted to a boycott of students attending online classes.

Over the weekend, however, another group of educators and parents held a car caravan in downtown Los Angeles saying it's still not safe enough to reopen campuses.

Los Angeles County school districts were officially cleared by the state last week to reopen when the county's average daily rate of new COVID cases fell below 25 per 100,000 residents. Under state guidelines, school districts and individual private schools in counties that meet that threshold can submit safety plans to health officials, and once those plans are approved, they can resume in-person classes for students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. Classes in seventh grade and higher cannot resume until the case rate falls to seven per 100,000 residents.
About a dozen Southland school districts quickly had their plans approved, including Saugus Union, which began a hybrid of remote and in-person classes Monday for students in first- and second-grades. LAUSD also had its safety plan approved, but its campuses remain closed as the teachers' union pushes for vaccinations and a delay until case rates drop.

Superintendent Austin Beutner has set a goal of reopening preschools and elementary schools by April 9, depending on the availability of vaccines.

So far, teachers are not eligible to receive COVID vaccinations in areas overseen by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Long Beach and the city of Pasadena have their own health departments, so vaccinations are already available for teachers in those cities.

The county will make teachers eligible for the shots beginning March 1, along with other essential workers such as those in foodservice and law enforcement. The LAUSD has proposed operating a mass vaccination site beginning that day at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood dedicated to inoculating school workers.

The problem is the continued limited supply of vaccines, but with a new Johnson & Johnson vaccine possibly receiving federal approval this week. Newsom anticipated supplies will dramatically improve by April.

"I'm very confident with J&J, the end of March, April, we're going to start seeing things really ramp up. May/June/July: game-changer, all of a sudden we're at a completely different level. So I ask people, -- mindful again of being optimistic but not overly optimistic -- that over the course of the next number of weeks we're still going to be in a constrained supply environment, but over the course of the next few months, you're going to see throughput and opportunity to expand these tiers and expand availability and access."

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.