COVID Outbreak Among Students Forces Closure of LA School

LOS ANGELES—Students astatine View Park Preparatory Accelerated Charter High School were expected to acquisition a caller circular of COVID-19 investigating Oct. 21, aft a abrupt spike successful cases among students past week prompted the school to instrumentality to distant learning—the archetypal known virus-related field closure successful the region since schools welcomed students back.

According to a study successful the Los Angeles Times, the schoolhouse astatine 5701 Crenshaw Blvd. switched backmost to virtual learning this week aft results from past Thursday’s circular of COVID investigating showed infections among 15 students, including 1 shot player, on with 1 unit member.

That was much infections among students than the schoolhouse had detected implicit the full schoolhouse year, The Times reported.

Although the investigating was conducted past Thursday, the results of the tests didn’t travel backmost until Saturday, and successful the interim, the View Park shot squad played a crippled Friday nighttime against Crenshaw High School, according to The Times.

That forced players connected the Crenshaw High squad to spell into quarantine this week owed to imaginable exposure, and the team’s crippled against Locke High School this week was canceled, the insubstantial reported.

The View Park field has undergone a heavy cleaning, but students person been learning remotely this week.

“In an abundance of caution, we are successful virtual learning this week,” Parker Hudnut, CEO of Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF) Public Schools, which operates View Park and six different charters successful South Los Angeles and Inglewood, told The Times successful a statement.

“We are besides utilizing this clip to enactment with the region to recognize if determination is thing other we should beryllium doing. To me, it is an illustration of however insidious COVID tin beryllium contempt masks, screenings, play investigating and vaccines for staff.”

According to the paper, ICEF has mandated vaccines for unit members, but not for students. Under Los Angeles Unified School District guidelines, each students and unit are taxable to play COVID testing.

View Park has 408 students, and 345 of them were tested past week, erstwhile the 15 pupil cases were detected, The Times reported.

“Every pupil presently has a laptop, entree to a hotspot, if needed, and uses their machine astatine location each night,” Hudnut told the paper.

“Teachers usage their laptops, and we person our built-in video cameras successful each ICEF classroom. Therefore, switching from in-person acquisition to online acquisition is technically not overly complicated. However, the social-emotional toll of returning to virtual learning and feeling similar we are ne'er going to beryllium escaped from this pandemic is the bigger issue.”

The insubstantial reported that this was expected to beryllium homecoming week for the school, but this week’s shot crippled had to beryllium canceled and different activities delayed. The homecoming creation had already been scrubbed owed to information concerns, The Times reported.