1,893 students in Los Angeles, staff tested positive for coronavirus last week, group report

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Northridge, CA-August 11, 2021 --- Liza Touch will test his son Skyzel Touch 6 for COVID-19 at Northridge Junior High School in Northridge on August 11, 2021. Skyzel will be attending the first grade from Monday. Some parents have also been tested for COVID.  LAUSD features California's most robust COVID-19 testing protocol, which requires all students and teachers to be tested weekly. California could be the first state in the United States to require teacher vaccination. Governor Newsom announced today that all teachers and school staff in the state need to be vaccinated or tested weekly.  (Jennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

First graders are tested for coronavirus before starting school. The parent teacher group created their own test results report dashboard based on district data. (Jennaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

A local group of 1,893 Los Angeles Unified students and employees Coronavirus infection In the first week of school, based on a new dashboard created using school district data.

The number of cases compiled by the Parents Supporting Teachers group was based on adding individual numbers for more than 1,400 district sites and was up to date until Sunday night. School district officials did not disagree with the number, but said the total could change as the processing of test results for the first week continued.

“These numbers seem to represent the sum of the incidents as they were released late Sunday. Test results and incident details are continually updated,” said district spokesman Shannon Harbor. , The dashboard information should be considered as a point-in-time report. “

The 1,893 figure is compared to a total of approximately 451,000 students in early childhood education up to grade 12 and nearly 60,000 employees.All students and employees Weekly coronavirus test As part of the country’s largest school district-based program. This infection rate is equivalent to about 4 out of 1,000 people.

Officials declined to comment further before the school board meeting on Tuesday.

Parental leaders supporting teachers said they were dissatisfied with the complexity of the district Report dashboard Put together Own database Use district information. The group, including parents and teachers, not only summarized the total for the entire district, but also presented the data in a way that facilitated access and sorting.

Some schools reported no infection, but it was a difficult week for the Sherman Oaks Concentration Research Center with 18 active infections, according to both databases on Monday afternoon.

Jenna Schwartz, a district guardian and co-founder of Parents Supporting Teachers, said the external data effort was “intended to be temporary and we hope that the district will encourage it to do it itself. I have requested from. ” “If I could put it all together in a day with technical insight, there’s no excuse for why the district didn’t set this from the beginning.”

The problem with the LA Unified Dashboard is that parents need to move to school from a dropbox that contains a list of over 1,400 names. This is one for each individually managed school on approximately 1,000 campuses in the district. This format also allows you to view only one school at a time. There is no way to compare schools or regions, nor is there a total or cumulative number of schools as a whole.

The district has also not decomposed the data to separate staff and student cases. Also, information on how many students have been quarantined or quarantined at school due to suspected close contact with infected individuals has not yet been released. However, the school district does provide data on the number of suspected cases of infection on campus. So far, there are zeros.

LA Unified does not need to do anything more from the state or county health agency. The district is only required to warn infected individuals and their families, determine close contact information, and notify close contact information in quarantine instructions. Still, authorities have admitted that it’s difficult to use the first iteration of the active case dashboard. Mr Harbor said the district is developing a simpler revision.

There are other school systems that disclose information that is not LA Unified. Santa Monica Malibu Unified It provides information on the number of students currently quarantined and the number of students quarantined at each school. Long Beach UnifiedIf the academic year has not started, categorize the cases into Student, Employee, Visitor / Vendor categories. Glendale Unified Includes the number of students and employees on each campus, and the active cumulative number of cases between each group.

LA Unified outperforms most other school systems in the scope of coronavirus testing missions. This seems to be appreciated by most parents and is the envy of many in other school districts.

LA district Required baseline test As a condition to return to campus and for all students and staff needed Weekly test, regardless of Whether the individual is vaccinated.. LA Unified is doing more testing, so you will almost certainly find more cases.

When an infection is discovered, students and staff are likely to be quarantined, resulting in further interruptions in schoolwork.

“It’s now clear enough that no live instruction plan for these isolated students has been implemented,” Danna Rosenthal, leader of the Parents Group California Student United, wrote to district officials. “Like last year, LAUSD allows students to lag behind.”

Infected students or staff should typically be quarantined at home for at least 10 days. Quarantine at home for 8-10 days required close contact, but the district changed its policy on Monday. Closely vaccinated contacts do not need to be quarantined unless symptoms appear, but according to district policy, “as a precautionary measure, they should be tested 5 days after exposure.”

The district defines close contact as an individual who has been in close contact within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 24 hours, for a total of 15 minutes or more, or who has had “unprotected contact with body fluids” such as an infected student sneezing. I am. Another student with the mask removed.

“Every quarantine situation is unique and determined by the community engagement team,” the district said. COVID-19 FAQ..

The quarantine turmoil has already raised concerns among parents who had to scramble to arrange childcare while their children’s school education was reduced to work parcels. If you are in quarantine, you will not be able to use the online instruction program.

Times staff writers Melissa Gomez and Laura Newbury contributed to this report.

This story was originally Los Angeles Times..

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