In an ambitious effort to restart safe schooling, Superintendent Austin Beutner announced the launch of a massive program of testing and tracing for students and staff in Los Angeles.
Laura Newberry and Howard Blume report in the Los Angeles Times:
The Los Angeles Unified School District on Sunday said it was launching an ambitious coronavirus testing and contact tracing program for all students and staff aiming to create a path to safely reopening campuses in the nation’s second-largest school district.
If the plan comes to fruition as described, it would be one of the most extensive to date for an American school district. It remains unclear, however, how quickly it would be implemented and when in-person learning could resume.
L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner outlined the plan in an opinion article in the Los Angeles Times published Sunday, saying “the goal is to get students back to school as soon as possible while protecting the health and safety of all in the school community.”
Beutner said the district hopes to be able to test all students and staff as part of a partnership that includes UCLA, Stanford and Johns Hopkins University, Microsoft, Anthem Blue Cross and HealthNet, among others. He said the testing would cost roughly $300 per student over a year.
“We are currently fine tuning systems and operational logistics. Then we will begin providing tests to staff currently working at schools as well as to any of their children participating in childcare provided for Los Angeles Unified staff,” he wrote. “Tests will then be provided for all staff and students over a period of weeks to establish a baseline. On an ongoing basis, sample testing based on epidemiological models will be done for each cohort of staff and students.”
The move comes amid growing concerns from parents about a fall semester of online learning for the district’s 700,000 students. A Times survey published last week showed poor students generally fare much worse than more affluent students.
Last week, the Los Angeles Board of Education unanimously approved a plan that will restore structure to the academic schedule while also allowing for an online school day that is shorter than the traditional one.
The plan leaves some parents and advocates in the nation’s second-largest school system wanting more teaching hours. There also are parents who want fewer mandatory screen-time hours for their young children — a reflection of the complexities of distance learning and the widespread parent angst over the start of the school year next week at home, online.
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This is exactly what needs to be done. When we can test EVERYONE going into a school and have contact tracing and isolation in place for those who test positive, we can safely reopen schools AND NOT UNTIL THEN.
Bob, your proviso is well-taken, but it also assumes the tests are reliable and that test results are timely. This is not yet a norm at the national level. Perhaps the vendor(s) LA will be using will have publishable contracts indicating costs per test per day, who administers these, costs for contact tracers and other details.
If this scheme is viewed as a model for other large districts, more detail would be helpful.
I wish the press would stop referring to online learning. What students are getting is online INSTRUCTION, not learning. The instruction is often formulaic with imbedded tests and algorithms determining which instructional modules should be delivered to the student.
Superb point about the difference between Instruction and Learning, Laura!!! We can always count on you to be thinking carefully and clearly!
Uh, sorry, but this proposal is a pig-on-a-poke.
LAUSD is proposing to run a testing program that will cost $150 million. Where will that money come from? LAUSD is supposed to get roughly $300 million from the CARES Act. Is that where these funds will be blown instead of ensuring PPE for essential workers and materials and services to ensure that distance-learning is implemented? Why should LAUSD be running its own program? Shouldn’t the “elected” officials (city, county, state, federal) be responsible for this? And even if LAUSD were to test every single student and employee (where will they hire the personnel?), and they do the contact tracing they claim will happen (again, where is that army of tracers going to be found?), who is going to ensure that quarantine is implemented? (BTW, if you expect LAUSD to run an effective contact tracing when they can’t run a good PSA counseling system, then you are much more… optimistic than me).
But wait, there’s more! Arne Duncan will manage the effort because, according to LAUSD’s press release, “Former Secretary of Education Duncan brings extensive experience in overseeing the creation and implementation of effective education policy at the local, state and national levels. Secretary Duncan will help ensure the effort coordinates with relevant government agencies and that public policy implications are shared with the appropriate policy makers.” If you still believe that this testing program will deliver what is supposed to under Mr. Duncan, then you are really really really much more… optimistic than me.
The devil is in the details, too. This is what is supposed to happen today: “Los Angeles Unified begins the program Monday in a measured fashion with a focus on carefully fine-tuning systems and operational logistics as the new school year starts. Tests first will be provided to staff already working at schools and their children, utilizing childcare Los Angeles Unified is offering to staff at schools.” The first sentence is a word salad that implies this is a well-thought-out plan. But the only students who are on any school campus today Monday are those who have been brought in by LAUSD employees because they need the child-care offered to them in order to perform their duties. In other words, these students are, in essence, a set of unwilling guinea pigs. Where is evidence that human subject protocols have been followed for this? LAUSD cannot authorize this massive testing program and then pass along the data to its partners in academia without meeting the federally-mandated requirements. Is anybody out there paying attentionto this?
This plan is indicative of numerous problems. I’ve only highlighted a few. I hope you, dear reader, will note the veritable cornucopia of issues raised in the entire press release available at https://achieve.lausd.net/covidtesting
Thank you.
Right now, all of LAUSD is frantically trying to pull together a million details to get online instruction right. We need direction, we need resources, we need supporting services, and we need respect. Meanwhile, the superintendent is trying to get us back in school with likely a dreaded blended model as soon as possible. We want to go back to school, but first we have to make staying home and safe as educational as possible. I have one question: How is Superintendent Beutner much different from Secretary DeVos?
The difference is that DeVos has never run for Mayor of the City of Los Angeles. Superintendent Beutner has.
For all we know, Mr. Duncan is being brought in and, if everything works right, the program is a smashing success. Then Superintendent Beutner has saved LAUSD, resigns to run for Mayor, and Mr. Duncan is named Superintendent by acclamation. It is a bright new day for LAUSD as Mr. Duncan’s leadership skills are legendary.
If that sounds like a disaster to you, then contribute with your labor (everything is now done remotely so it doesn’t matter where you are located) or your money (it is, after all, the mother’s milk of politics) to the campaigns of Patricia Castellanos and Scott Mark Schmerelson. If CCSA puts even one of its candidates on the Board, they will have 4 votes out of 7 and Mr. Duncan (or someone of his ilk) will be LAUSD’s next Superintendent.
Powerful. It’s crunch time. https://scott4lausd.com/
I had forgotten to donate, with how crazy everything became. Thank you for reminding me.
I don’t see what the point is.
LA County already has free testing for ACTIVE Covid-19; it tests17,000+ people per day and it would not be any problem to simply take three days to test all teachers and staff.
So, what? You find out that 1-2% of the adults have active Covid…big deal. A month later it will be a different group that constitutes 1-2%. The disease is not dying out in California…it’s been spreading at a linear rate for the last 120 days and will continue to do so for 3-4 more months.
$200 or $300 a pop means antibody testing. For what purpose? The same group of pundits are just going to say that the disease will mutate, or that having caught it is not indicative of immunity. So, what’s the point? We know that 30-40% of the students in LA County have already faced the disease [we’re ahead of Florida in that regard]…why do you need to test every kid?
Three months from now we’re going to be exactly at the same point as we are right now.
It’s a farce. In the meantime, literally a hundred thousand K-3 students in this region have not been learning how to read.
This nation is going to be a cesspit in 30 years…
I don’t get the reactions to this. THE ONLY WAY to stop the inevitable surge in transmission resulting from reopening schools is to test and do contact tracing and isolation of every person entering school buildings.
Yes, it does not inspire confidence that an incompetent like Duncan is being put in charge of this, but it’s important not to indulge in the genetic fallacy. If Hitler once said, “Yes, I like mustard,” this doesn’t mean that mustard is evil.
Initially, Mr. Sheperd, I thought you were referring to the trolling just above your response. But then I noticed that you wrote “reactions” and that you referred to the incompetence of Mr. Duncan. My understanding of the English language compels me to conclude that you are including my comment in those “reactions” you refer to.
Not to be confrontational or argumentative, but you don’t seem to appreciate the amount of maneuvering that has taken place at LAUSD during the last few months in order to pretend that its administration is fighting to deliver education to the masses and, in the process, to beat up on teachers for refusing to accept “teaching distance learning from school sites” (and that is why they tacked a nice statement at the end of the press release from the Teamsters and not UTLA).
They are doing a good job of pretending and that is why I concentrated on noting that the proposal may look golden but is, in reality, pyrite (aka fool’s gold). If you choose to concentrate on the benefits of testing, that is your prerogative. After all, we all know that testing is necessary to identify the vectors, that contact tracing is essential to isolate the contagion, and that quarantine is absolutely mandatory in order to contain the disease. Indeed, that’s what countries that have successfully (but not perfectly, to be sure) controlled COVID-19 have done.
But what LAUSD intends to do is go through a testing programs that has no guarantee of success because its initial population will be a small fraction of the total number of enrolled students. At its core a public relations exercise designed to present its promoters in a good light by collecting data that will then be transferred to an academic group for epidemiological “massaging” (human-subject consent and privacy regulations be damned). In essence, it is no better than a Potemkin village. I don’t know about you, but I like to be aware of when it is truly raining, not having some liquid of indeterminate origin sprayed upon my back.
Seriously–I know you were just using Arnie as a metaphor (he’s too entrenched in his cushy job w/the Emerson Collective in Chicago– where his kids, of course, attend the University of Chicago Lab School which, I would wager to guess, is going 100% remote, although I’m sure the facilities are much cleaner & conducive to learning than most other schools that have, indeed, opened.)
However, I wouldn’t put it past Paul Vallas to come a knockin’.
Remember, after ruining New Orleans & Philadelphia & carpetbagging w/pal Arne after the earthquake in Haiti, and getting kicked out of Bridgeport, CT, he had the gall to apply for the superintendent’s job in Louisiana. (Oh, & he ran for 3 political offices in Chicago & IL & lost, all, badly.) So now he’s a commentator (“our friend, Paul Vallas!”) on Chicago’s Progressive Talk Radio & writing op-eds about what a terrible job Mayor Lightfoot is doing (he had run against her), as if he could actually do better.
So–beware Former LAUSD Parent!
You might check with the radio station to ask what qualifies him to be a commentator on a progressive show
I see. Thank you for explaining this, LAUD Parent! Aie yie yie.
You are welcome. Glad to be of service.™
If Hitler said he liked mustard, it doesn’t make mustard evil; it just makes you wonder why Hitler said it. Investment banker Austin Beutner is the superintendent. If Austin Beutner says mustard is tasty, I like ketchup better.
LOL. Understood.
I heard a rumor last night that some charter schools in my area are using online schedules with far less crisis distance instruction time than LAUSD. I don’t know if it’s true, but I know for a fact that Ben Austin’s charter attack force of astroturf lawyers, Parent Revolution is berating LAUSD for not having enough crisis distance instruction time. Interesting if the rumor is true.
And the private religious schools in my district went right back to normal. Their day care programs have been (quiety) going full swing since April.