Beverly Hills Elementary School Students Return To Campus

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — It’s finally here. After nearly a year of false starts, stormy contract disputes, impassioned debate, and lots of computer screens, Beverly Hills elementary school students are returning to campus. Students in grades TK-2 returned Monday, and third and fourth graders are returning Tuesday.

“Behind these masks we are smiling from ear to ear! We are absolutely thrilled to hear laughter again in our schools after almost an entire year. Congratulations everyone!” the district said in a Facebook post.

Unsurprisingly, students will experience a very different set of rules and regulations than they did the last time they were in class. First, they will be split into separate morning and afternoon cohorts. They will only spend two hours and twenty minutes a day on campus, except on Wednesday, when they will be on campus for an hour and thirty minutes. For the remainder of the day, students will take virtual classes in gym, music, science lab, art, and MakerSpace. Between cohorts, custodians will sanitize each classroom, and the school will undergo a deep clean every night.

Before entering school, students must complete a health screening through an app every day. In order to enter, students must enter the designated portion of the campus - the schools have different pickup and drop-off locations to avoid crowds - and show a staff member their screening results, and have their hand stamped if they clear. In a video sent to families, Hawthorne Elementary Principal Sarah Kaber said that students are encouraged to wash their hands so often that the stamp will be gone by the time they leave school each day.

The school is also equipped with invisible scanning machines that take student temperatures. If the at-home screening or scanners show that a student is displaying one or more symptoms of COVID-19, they will be sent home and asked to consult with a doctor. If the student tests negative for COVID, they must stay home until they’re fever-free without the aid of any fever reducing medication for 24 hours. If they test positive, parents must notify their principal and the school’s Department of Health Liaison. The student must then stay isolated at home until 10 days after the onset of symptoms and once they’re fever-free for 24 hours. If the screening shows that a student has been exposed to someone with a confirmed case of COVID, they must be tested, and then quarantine for 10 days from the last exposure.

If a student develops any COVID-19 symptoms throughout the day, they will be taken to an on-campus isolation room and given a surgical mask and an optional COVID test before they are sent home.

Students are advised to bring two masks and stay six feet away from each other at all times. Each classroom is equipped with bags of PPE and cleaning supplies like face shields, disposable masks, vinyl gloves, different size masks for adults and children, tissues, sanitizers.

Teachers, meanwhile, can receive vaccinations through schools via a partnership with AMWest Ambulance. 50 BHUSD staff were vaccinated Friday, and the district says vaccination clinics will be held each week until every employee that wants to be vaccinated has received both doses.

The Beverly Hills Education Association, the union representing district teachers, was initially against reopening schools to elementary school students before the adjusted case rate in Los Angeles County had reached 10 per 100,000. When the district announced in mid-February that elementary school students would return on March 4 and 8, the union filed an Unfair Practice Charge with the California Public Employment Relations Board, arguing that the district had violated an addendum to their original Memorandum of Understanding. The union also filed for an injunction to prevent students’ return. On Feb. 27, the district and the union settled the dispute in mediation, agreeing to a later start date and expanded access to vaccines, testing, PPE and cleaning equipment, and more flexible accommodations for teachers with health risks.

As of last Tuesday, the county case rate is 7.2 per 100,000 - below the number agreed to in December - and the case positivity rate was 3.5 percent. That means that the county may enter the less restrictive Red Tier very soon. Per the agreement, grades 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9 can return once the case rate is at or below 7 for 29 days, and grades 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12 can return after 35 days. However, given what happened in February, it is possible they may return sooner.