Los Angeles school district to close all schools
Los Angeles school officials on Friday voted to shut down the nation’s second-largest school system effective Monday, citing concerns over the rapid spread of the coronavirus. The district has about 900 campuses serving more than 670,000 children and adult students.
The San Diego Unified School District will also shut down effective Monday.
District officials said that they will continue meal programs and offer televised and online lessons in an attempt to help families.
The move came amid mounting pressure for the L.A. Unified School District to take more aggressive action, which officials had resisted because county health officials have identified no confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to a Los Angeles campus.
But the calls to close schools have been growing in number and intensity, including the teachers union late Thursday. An emergency board meeting called for 1 p.m. Friday was moved up to give schools more time to prepare, school board President Richard Vladovic said.
“We are united in feeling that children and staff deserve extraordinary care,” Vladovic said before the vote.
While health officials had supported the district’s decision to keep schools operating, an increasing number of school districts throughout California and the nation have announced closures, including San Francisco Unified and several districts in Ventura County including Simi Valley, Moorpark and Oak Park. Also, governors in four states — Ohio, Maryland, New Mexico and Michigan — ordered the closing of all public schools.
Elk Grove Unified, a large district in Northern California, was the first in the state to shut down. On Wednesday, the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco shuttered all 90 of its schools in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties. They are scheduled CONTINUE READING: Coronavirus school closings: LAUSD closed over outbreak - Los Angeles Times