Elementary school campuses in Los Angeles County may be eligible to reopen in two to three weeks if infection rates across the county continue to drop, County Department of Public Health director Barbara Ferrer told the LA City Council. on Wednesday.
Ferrer’s comment, made during a briefing by the council, referred to the rates of coronavirus cases that the state recently began using as a threshold to determine whether schools would be eligible to reopen for face-to-face education.
“I think that if we continue to decline, you can reach that number in two or three weeks,” said Ferrer. “We decreased significantly in just one week. I think we had 75 cases per 100,000 a week ago. And I think we are now 45 years old – these are adjusted rates that the state uses ”.
Even though case rates continue to decline, however, campuses may not all be able to reopen immediately. In the unified school district of Los Angeles, for example, the teachers’ union and district officials continue to negotiate on how to return to campus. Trends in health improvement may bring new urgency to these negotiations.
According to state guidelines, campuses that serve students from kindergarten through sixth grade may reopen when the seven-day average of daily cases is 25 or less per 100,000 residents. For high school students, the health standard is more stringent, seven cases or less per 100,000.
The news is likely to renew the hope of parents eager for their children to return to school. Most public school students in LA County have been stuck with distance learning from home since the campuses closed last March.
In recent days, attention has focused on efforts to vaccinate teachers against COVID-19, but infection rates and other measures of spreading the virus are also part of the picture.