At long last, schools are officially being reopened in L.A. County. For most students, this one year of remote learning has felt like decades of isolation. According to The Los Angeles Times, middle and high schools are eligible to reopen by late April, with elementary schools aiming to open on the 19th of April. Yet there are still many steps that need to be taken until we reach this point. Firstly, school staff must be vaccinated with both doses of either Covid-19 vaccine. Secondly, a consensus must be reached between all school staff and teachers on a set schedule for the reopening of schools and working conditions. L.A. Times states that in order for schools to open, L.A. County must reach the red tier in our pandemic, which means that we have improved from higher coronavirus cases such as in the purple tier. L.A. Times also states that the L.A. Unified School district is one of the school districts that is approaching opening their school slower, as compared to others, and that they are on track to vaccinating teachers and staff in order to open.
Even though schools are reopening, things will not return to the way they were pre Covid-19, and there will be new procedures implemented. Namely, schools will proceed in a hybrid mode, where students attend schools in person 2-3 times during the week, and the remainder will be in an online format similar to the current learning system. For younger children in elementary school, students would attend schools in the morning or early afternoon around 5 days a week. For older students in middle and high school, the schedule changes more drastically. Students would return to campus 2-3 days a week, as mentioned before, and will stay in their advisory/homeroom class the entire day as they proceed to learn on the Zoom platform. The advisory teachers will also teach their own classes via zoom. In order to avoid disturbances and distractions, noise cancelling headphones will be given to the students and teachers on campus. Of course, all students and school staff are required to wear a mask at all times while on school campus, and some districts plan to require daily checks to be taken, such as daily temperature checks.
L.A. Times also stated that school districts are “doubling cleaning staff, at a cost upward of $60 million.” They also stated that districts have already “spent more than $25 million on personal protective equipment and nearly $10 million to upgrade air-filtration systems.”
Parents have expressed different opinions and views on whether to ease back into opening places up, or to open immediately. Ultimately, students and parents are able to make the decision on whether to attend school in the hybrid mode, or to continue distance learning as they currently are.
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