The Los Angeles Unified School District will close down all in-person tutoring and special services on Wednesday amid a growing coronavirus surge.
The move will affect about 4,000 students from kindergarten to 12th grade in the nation’s second largest school district. It also dims prospects that the district will fully reopen before 2021.
On Sunday, Los Angeles County reported over 10,500 COVID-19 infections, a record high.
“My commitment has been throughout to protect the health and safety of all in the school community,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “We have an imperative to get kids back to school as soon as possible the safest way possible. But all that comes through the front door, and the front door is what is COVID in the overall Los Angeles community. Right now it’s at extraordinary and quite dangerous levels.”
On Friday, L.A. Teachers Union President Cecily Myart-Cruz said that reopening schools in the spring would be a matter of “if” rather than “when.”
School closures go against the advice of Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Today, there is extensive data that we have gathered over the last two to three months to confirm that K-12 schools can operate with face-to-face learning. and they can do it safely, and they can do it responsibly,” Redfield said in November.
