L.A. Schools Begin Ambitious COVID-19 Initiative for Students, Staffs

The Los Angeles Unified School District announced Sunday that they would launch an ambitious COVID-19 initiative for all students, staff, and families.

The COVID-19 initiative will cover both testing and contact tracing for the said groups in L.A. schools.

It aims to make sure L.A. schools are safe from COVID-19. This school district is the second-largest one in the whole U.S.

If this COVID-19 initiative unfolds as described, it would be the most detailed and ambitious plan for an American school district. It involves nearly 500,000 students and 75,000 staff members.

Until New York City schools clear out the details of their own testing and contact tracing initiatives, the L.A. school district plans is the most sizable one yet, according to Los Angeles Times.

ABC 7 said in a report that LAUSD would kick off its COVID-19 initiative on Monday. They said they would start the program in a "measured fashion with a focus on carefully fine-tuning systems and operational logistics as the new school year starts."

Also part of the plan, research will start to look at the impact and effects of reopening. The data will be available to the public, LAUSD Supt. Austin Beutner said in an NBC Los Angeles report.

Beutner said testing and contact tracing is "necessary and appropriate" to respond to the first-time online school reopening.

Who will get tested first?

The first ones to get tested will be school staff members who already went back to school. The program will also cover their children who are in L.A. Unified child care programs.

Over time, the tests will move on to all staff and students.

The district said that the goal for the program's early phase is to "establish a baseline."

Periodic testing of staff and students will come after. Schedules on the tests are not yet polished out and will only be set after the first phase of the testing "based on epidemiological modeling."

COVID-19 is still spreading in the Los Angeles area. It is still far from the state's guidelines for a possible on-site school reopening.

Beutner also stressed this, saying it is not safe to come back to school campuses, even as the new initiative is launched.

"The level of new cases in Los Angeles is still two and a half times the state guidelines," Beutner said. He added that the county's numbers are still higher than those set by the World Health Organization.

Can Los Angeles Make it Happen?

Beutner noted that in a recent survey for district employees, 88% of them wanted a system for testing and tracing. Their new initiative is expected to cost the district about $150 million, which is about $300 per student.

The initial testing will be done at 42 regional school facilities across the entire district. It will include about 2,000 children.

Family members who show virus symptoms will come in for testing, but logistics are still not planned. Student testing, on the other hand, will be done at neighborhood schools.

Apps developed by Microsoft will help manage self-screening, tracking, and record-keeping for the program said New York Times.

Beutner knows that the district lacked in testing to get ahead of the virus in January and again in May due to lack of capacity. But he is hopeful that as students have to stay at home, California will have another chance.

"We must be ready with a robust system of testing and contact tracing so the third time can be the charm," he said.

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