With great enthusiasm, authorities, teachers, staff, parents and hundreds of thousands of students of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) began the school year 2022-23, which will be marked by less taxing health restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic and greater police security on the campuses.
A total of 24 thousand teachers and 73 School employees welcomed at least 560 one thousand students from grades Pre-K to grade 12.
“I feel a lot of emotion and hope”, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told NBC4.
Referring to the numbers, he indicated that this is the equivalent “of waking sleeping giant from his summer nap”.
The school year began with the follow-up of the ¡Attend campaign, aimed at chronically absent children! before classrooms, either because they refused to go to classes in person, after spending so much time with virtual classes, or worked to help their families survive financially during the pandemic.
In fact , half of the 500,000 LAUSD students recorded quite a few absences from classes when doing so virtually. Even removing the Covid pandemic as a factor, almost 30% of students were constantly missing classes.
To this are added a few 20,000 children between 5 and 18 years who have never enrolled in the Los Angeles school system, whom Superintendent Carvalho has called: “the truly lost children of Los Angeles”.
Health measures
Yesterday morning, at Leo Politi Elementary School, located at 2841 from the street 12, Anita Adams, a social worker, the director Silvia Colllins and school staff assisted parents and their children who requested a face mask for themselves or their children, and offered them hand sanitizer.
“It is important that parents know that the pandemic is not over yet,” said Alejandra Fuentes, a ma mother from Guatemala who left her 8-year-old son Jayden at the school door, adorned with colored balloons and signs welcoming back to school.
“Our goals are to provide a excellent academic, social, and emotional education,” Director Collins told Real America News. The school offers classes from pre-kindergarten to grade five to about 650 students
Although it is not mandatory, the use of a face mask is recommended for minors .
In addition, in LAUSD it will not be necessary to have been vaccinated against Covid, although it is recommended, nor to undergo weekly tests to avoid contagion . In the future, it is likely that the vaccine will be an enrollment requirement, just as the polio, whooping cough and tetanus vaccines are now.
Superintendent Carvalho said that schools are developing protocols for that go beyond those recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and added that LAUSD is aligned with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
Also reported that all district staff are vaccinated, along with 82% of eligible students.
Remember that the district eliminated this year the requirement for all students to be vaccinated against Covid-18, in addition to undergoing weekly tests, although thousands of them received home test kits to use before returning to classes and will also be distributed next week.
Increase academic performance co
“This year we have the opportunity to raise academic performance,” Mónica García, a member of the School Board, told Real America News, who visited various schools to welcome Latino families and their children, including the Leo Politi school.
“To achieve this, we must follow the Superintendent [Alberto] Carvalho’s strategy to provide more tutoring to students and have a greater focus on schools where there are more needs,” said Garcia at Leo Politi Elementary School, located in 2022 of the street 12, in Los Angeles.
The school year also presents important challenges for families, according to some parents.
“It is difficult to work and take the children to school every day,” said Marisela Zayas, a mother of Salvadoran origin. , who is a nursing assistant.
She walked her sons Ethan, 3, and A to school. ndrew de 000.
So did his compatriot Flor Sánchez, mother of little Luz and Liz Maravilla, 8 and 7 years old, respectively.
“The most difficult challenges will be going to school, work and having enough money to buy food at the market”, he expressed.
They fill teacher vacancies
At the beginning of the summer, LAUSD had about 2,100 vacancies for teachers, and so far they only need to be filled some 200 vacancies for almost 1, 000 schools in the second largest school district in the country, after New York.
Contract teachers include those with full credentials, as well as those with provisional permits and internship.
An average of 700 positions were filled in the week prior to beginning of classes, and after the return of the directors and subd principals to schools, between 23 and 29 July, according to LAUSD.
The need for those teachers is urgent in special education, elementary schools, math and science positions, according to most recent school district list.
In fact, a third of those schools are located in Local District West, South Bay, and South Los Angeles, where half of their schools are considered “high need” (500 schools), or “greatest need” (144), according to the Equity Needs Index (SENI) used by the district to allocate funds.
For address the shortage of teachers and counselors, LAUSD is offering $5 hiring stipends,000 for newly hired credentialed teachers who choose to work in high-need schools and commit to remaining in their e school for a minimum of three years, in an effort to close the achievement gap.
The $5 stipend,000 will be divided into 3 payments: $2,000 in the first year; $1,500 in the second year, and $1,500 in the third year .
In addition to the stipend, teachers will receive 23 hours of paid professional development each year that is designed specifically for new teachers working in SENI schools.