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Los Angeles County residents rate education among the worst of several factors affecting their quality of life, displaying one of the biggest drops in recent years among parents of children in public schools, according to a UCLA survey.
More than three-quarters of parents in the county with children ages 5 to 18 believe their children have been “substantially hurt” academically or socially by being away from school and taking part in distance learning for months.
“It’s a big number,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, which publishes an annual Quality of Life index in partnership with the public-opinion firm FM3 Research. “It’s not counterintuitive; it’s intuitive, but the number surprised most of us and it was across all the demographics.”
Los Angeles Schools Remain Closed and Families Wonder: How Much Longer?
Even amid signs of a deal with the teachers’ union, the district is still probably a month or more from resuming in-person learning.
Kahllid Al-Alim talks to his daughter Shamael, a high school senior, about her homework.Credit.Mark Abramson for The New York Times
Published March 8, 2021Updated March 12, 2021
It has been almost a year since the coronavirus pandemic virtually emptied public schools in Los Angeles and sent Shamael Al-Alim home to take classes from her bedroom.
She does not miss rising at 6 a.m. to catch a bus and a train to her high school. But there is so much that, at 17, she does miss: The prospect of an in-person prom and graduation. The history teacher who ran the social justice club. Pickup basketball in the gym after school and the coach “who made everybody feel safe there.” A real senior year.