LAUSD Requires COVID Tests As Districts Grapple With Surge

LOS ANGELES, CA — Thousands of children returned to school after the winter break Monday even as Los Angeles County is hit with some of its highest coronavirus transmission rates of the pandemic.

However, some new safety precautions will be instituted in the coming days as more schools reopen. At the same time, district leaders are wondering if the measures do enough to keep students, staff and their families healthy.

Los Angeles Unified on Monday announced all of its students and employees must be tested before returning to campuses next week.

To help accommodate the testing requirement, the LAUSD announced the start of the spring semester for K-12 students will be pushed back to Tuesday, Jan. 11. District employees will return to campuses Monday for a "Pupil Free Day."

The changes were announced hours after the LAUSD Board of Education held an abruptly scheduled closed-door meeting Monday morning.

According to the district, students and employees can get tested at district sites starting immediately, with appointments available online at lausd.net/covidtestingappt or by calling 213-443-1300. Walk-in testing is also available at district sites, and at-home testing kits will be available for students beginning Friday.

Students and employees can also get tested at non-district sites, but they must upload results onto the district's Daily Pass system no later than Sunday.

Students and employees at LAUSD campuses and all other schools in the county will also be subject to stricter COVID safety protocols, which were announced on New Year's Eve by the county Department of Public Health.

Late Friday, the county health department sent new guidelines to school districts tightening mask and social distancing guidelines. The county recorded nearly 45,000 new cases over the weekend, and each infected person is spreading the coronavirus to about two other people on average, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

The last time cases surged like this, schools across the region were shut down, but now officials believe the widespread availability of vaccinations, testing and proper masking will help keep schools stay open through the worst of it. However, the situation remains fluid.

Since schools closed for winter break, COVID-19 cases in the county shot up by 644 percent, according to the New York Times COVID tracker.

This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will consider an FDA panel's recommendation that children 12 and older be allowed to get booster shots.

Among the districts resuming classes Monday was the Burbank Unified School District, where parents didn't learn until late Sunday whether their children would be returning to campus. The district's Board of Education held a 3½-hour emergency meeting Sunday night to consider delaying the start of classes for a week in light of the surge in infections.

Schools districts across Orange and Los Angeles County have been debating additional measures from vaccine mandates to a temporary return to online classes. Last month, the Los Angeles Unified School District pushed its student vaccine mandate back to next fall. The decision was made before the current omicron-fueled surge and at a time when the district would have been forced to bar 30,000 unvaccinated students from in-person learning.

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said as recently as last week that school outbreaks have been limited with about 10 or so small outbreaks each week among thousands of LA County schools. But hospitalizations have been climbing countywide, and officials signaled a willingness to revisit health orders if hospitals become overwhelmed as they did last winter.

Late last week, the county Department of Public Health notified districts across the county of the new safety regulations for schools resuming classes. The rules require all students and staff to wear masks outdoors "where physical distancing is not feasible," and employees must wear upgraded surgical or higher-level masks instead of cloth ones.

The new rules recommend, but do not require, students to wear non- cloth masks "with a nose wire." The requirement for upgraded masks — which must be provided to staff by districts — will take effect two weeks after schools reopen.

The revised protocols from the county also include a "strong recommendation for all eligible staff and students to receive a booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in addition to their primary vaccine series."

COVID-19 testing is also required "for all close contacts who are permitted to remain in school immediately after exposure, regardless of vaccination or booster status."

The largest district in the county, Los Angeles Unified, does not resume classes until Jan. 11. The district has a roughly 87 percent vaccination rate.

The district will continue to require baseline and weekly testing of all students and staff, regardless of vaccination status, through January. Beginning in February, only unvaccinated students will be required to undergo weekly testing.

LAUSD's COVID-19 testing centers reopened Monday with extended hours, offering tests by appointment and on a walk-in basis. The state is also making at-home COVID-19 tests available to all students in California.

In a Twitter post Friday, district officials wrote that LAUSD "maintains the highest COVID-19 safety standards of any public school district in the nation: weekly testing of all staff and students; universal masking, indoors and outdoors; comprehensive sanitizing efforts; frequent hand-washing; upgraded air-filtration systems; regular, ongoing COVID-19 testing and community engagement; physical distancing as much as possible; and collaboration with health partners and agencies to support free COVID-19 vaccinations."

"We will adapt our safety standards as needed in order to remain responsive to the changing conditions of the pandemic," the district said.

In Burbank, where school officials wrestled with reopening classrooms late into the night Sunday, Superintendent Matt Hill announced on the district's Facebook page the decision to restart classes as scheduled, writing, "After a robust discussion, the Board of Education decided that schools remain open."

That district's administrators will consider changes in its COVID-19 safety plan this week, including possible mandatory testing for students and staff and enforcing a vaccine booster requirement for all employees by April 1.

Similar measures are being discussed across the county's 80 school districts.

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