Earlier today, LAUSD announced that the 2020-2021 school year will begin on August 18, as originally planned. Despite some early reporting that this meant the campuses themselves would re-open, LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner made clear that campuses may still be closed, and this could just be the day that remote learning begins for the new school year. Maybe it would help if we all made social distancing hats for our kids.
There have been plenty of false starts and confusion over just when LAUSD would re-open its campuses in the past two months. Even in the past week, Governor Gavin Newsom opined that schools “may re-open” in July, causing UTLA and others to point out that such an opening would be a huge financial hit to districts. Later in the week, President Donald Trump urged states to consider re-opening schools for the rest of the current school year.
Sadly, this affirmation of the school year start date is not the only COVID-19 related news. School districts, LAUSD among them, are warning that massive cuts may be coming as a result of decreased revenue caused by the COVID-19 slowdown. Even as children struggle with distance learning and upheaval in their home lives as parents are laid off or furloughed, school districts could be seeing massive cuts even as Congress seems (maybe – the story is complicated and evolving) to have found money to bail out cruise ships headquartered in other countries and another $500 billion in no-strings-attached “loans” to big businesses.
Superintendents across the country are asking Washington, D.C. for help, and locally the UTLA is urging members to prepare for an “Epic Budget Fight.”
Locally, the political battles over charter co-locations continues. Last week, Animo Westside, a Green Dot Charter School, announced it was declining an offer of fourteen classrooms on the fabled Dorsey High School campus. Dorsey is so culturally central is it located 100 yards from a dedicated stop on the Expo Line. The announcement came after staff and parents mobilized to urge Green Dot Schools to reject the offer. This is not the first time Dorsey High has fought off a co-location, and it will doubtless not be the last.
Last, it’s international Teacher Appreciation Week and lots of people are getting involved. My daughter’s class has dress up days everyday and my son’s class opened their Zoom class today with signs they made telling their teachers how much they love and miss them.
Not to miss a beat, today is also National Principal Appreciation Day. I appreciate the principal at Richland Avenue Elementary School, and hope everyone had a principal as cool and innovative as Mr. G.
And for anyone that missed it, me included, last Friday was also “school lunch heroes” day, celebrating the people who feed our kids. This seems especially poignant as the LAUSD Grab and Go’s have now served over 15 million meals.