Families Struggle as LAUSD Refuses to Reopen Elementary Schools, Despite Green Light from Health Department

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Renee Bailey (left) and her family, are struggling during distance learning and want schools to reopen and give families an option to return.

Renee Bailey (left) and her family, are struggling during distance learning and want schools to reopen and give families an option to return.

While Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer gave LAUSD permission Tuesday to immediately reopen all of its elementary schools, the district has no plans to do so because United Teachers Los Angeles and Superintendent Austin Beutner still refuse to offer LAUSD’s primarily low-income kids of color the same in-person learning options that kids in more affluent school districts and private schools now have.

The LAUSD Board did take a historic step Tuesday to address concerns of Black students, passing a plan to remove school police from being stationed on campuses and to send funding from police budget cuts to 53 schools that serve at least 200 Black students in order to help lift Black student achievement.

Speak UP parent Renee Bailey, who lives in South L.A., called in to the board to praise the plan to lift Black student achievement, but she also urged LAUSD to reopen schools for her daughter in kindergarten and her son with intellectual disabilities in middle school. (Both are now allowed on campuses, according to the Health Department, but LAUSD has not welcomed them back.)

“The best way for these beautiful Black children of mine to become academically competitive is to be back in school,” Bailey told the board. “The cards are already stacked against them in this world, and the challenges of virtual learning are putting my children and other children of color at risk for long term ramifications that cannot be healed.”

Bailey’s son has been injuring himself and becoming more reclusive as a result of school closures, and because her daughter is struggling academically, Bailey has talked to her teacher about retaining her to repeat kindergarten next year. School closures are also placing a huge burden on her, as a parent, and on her entire family’s mental health.

“I work from home full-time, and as the breadwinner of my family, I’m now tasked to be a financial provider, primary caregiver, teacher, behavioral specialist and advocate, all while trying to manage my own mental health,” Bailey said. “This is unhealthy, and I’m on the verge of breaking…We battle everyday with hopelessness, depression, frustration and fear.”

While L.A. parents are divided on whether to send their own kids back to school when campuses reopen, three-quarters of parents that Speak UP surveyed at the start of the COVID surge last year supported giving families the option once the Health Department said it was safe. Many families of kids with disabilities and younger children have been clamoring to get kids back.

Bailey’s son, who has a disability, has been injuring himself during distance learning because of too much screen time.

Bailey’s son, who has a disability, has been injuring himself during distance learning because of too much screen time.

LAUSD Deputy Superintendent Megan Reilly sent an email to employees last week saying that LAUSD would reopen campuses soon to resume services to high-needs kids on a voluntary basis. When LAUSD implemented a similar program in the fall, so few UTLA members volunteered that only about 800 of LAUSD’s 67,000 kids with disabilities received any in-person services or tutoring, and none received their regular school day instruction.

LAUSD originally set a Jan. 24 deadline for UTLA to agree to serve high-needs kids, but the deadline lapsed, and UTLA still refuses to serve even kids who cannot learn on a screen. Despite the Centers for Disease Control and the Health Department saying it’s now safe to reopen to serve kids with disabilities and students in elementary school, UTLA put out a statement Tuesday calling any reopening “reckless.”

So far, Superintendent Beutner has not pushed back on UTLA, which prompted the LA Times to call on him to “put on his big-boy pants” in an editorial published Wednesday.

Beutner sent out a statement Wednesday showing no willingness to reopen classrooms until teachers are vaccinated. That process won’t begin until March and could take months to complete, even though LAUSD is setting up a mass vaccination center for private and public school staff at SoFi stadium. While Gov. Gavin Newsom indicated last week that a state deal on school reopening was imminent, progress appears to have stalled, as the statewide teachers union launched an ad campaign to keep schools closed.

In her presentation Tuesday, Ferrer told the board “you actually are permitted to open as of today” for TK-6th grade, but she acknowledged that teachers needed to agree to make that happen. She said that schools that have already opened had “very, very low cases” until the surge, which is now over, and very few cases among students in school at any point during the pandemic.

About 2,200 schools in L.A. County have reopened since September, and “there’s very little actual transmission in the school environment,” Ferrer said.

“It’s not that people don’t test positive. It’s that they’re not spreading it,” Ferrer said. All of the rules keeping kids in small cohorts and infection control “is really making it pretty hard for the infection to get transmitted in the school environment.”

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, LAUSD disclosed that 1,200 kids had not logged onto classrooms at all since August and have missed out entirely on any live teaching because of WiFi issues. Even those with district hot spots are facing Internet speeds that are half the rates of those with broadband, making it hard to participate fully in online classes. 

— Sign Speak UP's petition to give parents a voice in school reopening plans. http://speakupparents.org/petition-to-lausd-parent-demand-voice-reopening-lausd