The letter was signed by officials from a host of community groups, including the Alliance for Children s Rights, AltaMed Health Services, Empowering Pacific Islander Communities, Faith and Community Empowerment, Fulfillment Fund, LA s Best, Meet Each Need with Dignity and New Hope Community Church. Several elected officials also signed the letter, including Carson Mayor Lula Davis-Holmes and Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino, who this week asked the city to explore legal remedies for expediting school re-openings.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Wednesday the county will expand vaccine eligibility to various essential workers in the next two to three weeks, including teachers. But even when teachers become eligible for the vaccine, it will take months to get them fully vaccinated, given the extremely limited weekly allocations of doses the county receives.
By City News Service
Feb 12, 2021
LOS ANGELES (CNS) - With debate continuing to rage locally and statewide about reopening schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic, California health officials today released an interactive map that allows Angelenos and others across the state to track the status of campus reopenings.
The Safe Schools Reopening Map provides data on the status of reopening and safety planning for school districts, charter and private schools in Los Angeles and across California. Officials hope it will help communities and school staff evaluate their own reopening plans.
Schools will update their information every two weeks, and the California Department of Public Health will add data on reported outbreaks in each school district and information about whether schools have partnered with the Valencia Branch Lab for COVID-19 testing.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
These days it seems the news is inundated with increasingly dire projections about how much longer our daily lives will be disrupted as public health officials struggle to get a handle on the global COVID-19 pandemic.
A blip of hope has emerged, though, as most school districts across the country are now on track to return to some version of in-person learning. This news is considered long overdue and welcomed with open arms by weary parents, most of whom found themselves required to suddenly become part-time teachers in addition to their full-time careers.
The only population possibly more excited about the return to the classroom and a sense of normalcy than the parents is the students themselves.
South Whittier schools Supt. Gary Gonzales works seven days a week to move his elementary schools closer to reopening. But the barriers are significant: He’s looking for ways to get vaccines to teachers, negotiating with the union and closely monitoring coronavirus case numbers that show that the virus is still ravaging his community, even as case numbers fall countywide.
Gonzales knows his district’s students, almost all of whom are Latinos from low-income families, are struggling under remote learning. And he knows his community is hurting the pandemic has claimed 118 lives in tiny South Whittier. A date for bringing students back to the classroom is unclear.