Los Angeles County elementary school campuses could reopen within two to three weeks if infection rates in the country continue to fall, Barbara Ferrer, director of the Department of Public Health, told LA City Council.
Ferrer’s remark, made during a council presentation, referred to the coronavirus case numbers that the state recently began using as the threshold for determining whether schools would be eligible to reopen for personal education.
“I think if we continue to decline, you will reach the number within two to three weeks,” Ferrer said. “It simply came to our notice then. I think we were like a week ago 75 cases per 100,000. And I think now we’re 45 – these are adjusted rates that the state uses. ”
Even if rates continue to fall, campuses may not be able to reopen all of them right away. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, the teachers’ union and district officials continue to negotiate what a return to campus looks like there. Improving health trends can again urgently result in these conversations.
Under state guidelines, campuses serving kindergartens to sixth-grade students can reopen when the average of seven days of daily cases is 25 or less per 100,000 residents. For high school students, the health standard is stricter, seven cases or less per 100,000.
The news is likely to give new hope to parents who are eager for their children to return to class. Most public school students in LA County have been closed since the campuses in March last year over distance education at home.
Attention has been drawn over the past few days to efforts to get teachers vaccinated against COVID-19, but infection rates and other measures of the spread of the virus are also part of the picture.