LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday will debate whether to give public school districts and private schools the ability to apply for waivers which would allow them to reopen campuses to students and resume in-person instruction.
Sharon Drobka, associate executive director with the YMCA, looks over students who participate in a Zoom lesson during a class overseen by the YMCA at the Anza Elementary School campus in Torrance on Sept. 17, 2020. (Genaro Molina/ Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)
County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said the board on Tuesday will discuss accepting waivers from schools or districts to offer in-person classes. The state created a waiver system months ago allowing schools in areas with low virus activity to seek permission to offer in-person instruction on some restricted level. But L.A. County opted not to accept such requests.
That could change based on the board’s discussion. If approved, those waiver applications would go to L.A. County Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer.
“Hopefully we can come to some conclusion as it relates to putting something together that’ll allow school districts to at least submit a waiver to Dr. Ferrer then have it go up to the state so that some school districts can have some sort of hybrid for in-class training,” Barger said.
On Monday, L.A. Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner acknowledged that while the challenges posed to students by virtual learning were significant, LAUSD schools were still not close to reopening campuses, and noted that LAUSD would not resume in-person instruction until Nov. 1 at the very earliest.
“Schools cannot open until the overall level of the virus is much lower,” Beutner said. “We’re dependent upon state and local health authorities to put in place and maintain the appropriate guidelines to manage this.”
The issue could become heightened if L.A. County is moved up on the state’s four-tiered coronavirus recovery roadmap. Currently, L.A. County is in the highest-risk category, purple, but it could be moved up to red as early as Tuesday, which would allow houses of worship, movie theaters and more businesses to reopen.
To be downgraded from the purple tier, a county must have less than 7 new daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 population, and have a positivity rate of less than 8%. It must maintain those levels for 14 straight days. So if the county falls short on Tuesday, it will be at least another two weeks before the county could advance in the matrix.
In nearby Orange County, which moved from purple to red earlier this month, all school districts were given permission to reopen campuses last week.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)
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September 29, 2020 at 08:50PM
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