LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner announced Wednesday that he will step down at the end of the school year, saying, "I believe that it is fitting that a new superintendent should have the privilege of welcoming students back to school in the fall. I respectfully request that my contract end as planned on June 30. In the meantime, I will remain focused on the task of ensuring that schools reopen in the safest way possible while helping in a seamless leadership transition." Deputy Superintendent Megan K. Reilly will be named acting superintendent while a search is conducted.

Speak UP Parents shared their thoughts on Beutner’s leadership during turbulent times, his decision to leave and what they would like to see in the next head of the nation’s second-largest school district.

After more than a year of campus closures, many elementary school families across the district celebrated a return to campus this week, expressing feelings of jubilation and relief. Other families, however, experienced frustration with logistical barriers and the realization that even some of the youngest LAUSD kids would be receiving Zoom from the room rather than in-person instruction.

Jessica Posada's daughter Zulay was among those brimming with enthusiasm to see her teacher and friends as she returned to first grade at Stoner Avenue Elementary Tuesday. "It’s nice to see her so excited and happy to be back at school," Posada said. "And I think it’s time. It’s been over a year. And it’s been tough on the kids. I think a little normality, little by little, step by step, we’ll get back to how it was.

Bri Giron’s daughter Brianna, 8, was also thrilled to return to Catskill Elementary in Carson, one of 61 schools that opened a week before the full LAUSD elementary reopening this week. But after those fantastic first days back, her excitement turned to dismay when a COVID testing issue forced her daughter and her teacher to stay home from school on Monday.

Parents are responsible for securing a negative COVID test for their kids prior to returning to campus, but LAUSD had promised to take over the weekly testing from there. In Giron’s case, a mobile testing van visited Brianna’s school twice last week but left both times without testing her daughter’s class. The school informed Giron late Friday, and she scrambled to get her daughter a COVID test at CVS over the weekend.

Results were not ready by Monday so she kept her daughter home. Even more upsetting, Giron said Brianna was not allowed to attend school online, either. “She had a perfect school record, and now she has one absence,” Giron said. “It’s been very upsetting. Our children should not be penalized for the district’s inability to be organized.”

Parents also reported waiting in long lines at some school COVID testing sites lasting up to three hours, and some got turned away during the crush in the days leading up to reopening. Some parents faced lost test results or difficulty uploading third party test results to the Daily Pass website, which allows kids access to campus. Culver City Unified also suspended asymptomatic COVID testing on Tuesday after reporting a large number of false positives, and LAUSD staff told the board Tuesday that the district is now developing protocols for false positives, which may be affecting kids who suffered from infections at an earlier date that have since cleared.

Speak UP parent leader Marini Hamilton Smith said her son missed his first day back at Canfield Elementary last week after LAUSD incorrectly coded her son’s test results under the name of her husband, who is an LAUSD employee. After spending hours on the phone trying to sort it out, they scrambled to get a second COVID test, but results did not come back in time. Her son was also not allowed to attend school online that day.

“I made him practice his flute,” Hamilton Smith said.

After an entire year of distance learning, parents being asked to choose whether to send their kids back to campus in April for a hybrid learning program have decidedly mixed feelings on the tentative reopening agreement between Los Angeles Unified and United Teachers Los Angeles. The LAUSD School Board ratified the agreement Thursday, and teachers will vote on it next week.

Working parents of elementary school students who had been advocating for a safe return were pleased to learn that their kids will be welcomed back five days a week in mid-April from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., albeit for only three hours of actual instruction in person with teachers. (The rest of the day will be spent independently online or in enrichment activities, while teachers switch to teaching the kids opting for remote-only instruction.)

“I’m excited just to allow my daughter to have some normalcy and to see what school is,” said Renee Bailey, a South L.A. mom whose daughter in kindergarten has never set foot on campus.

“I am grateful we are wading back and sorting things out in April rather than August,” added Sarah Reimers, mom of a 4th grade son at Walgrove Elementary in Mar Vista.

Many parents of middle and high school students, however, expressed disappointment that their kids will mainly be attending Zoom classes on campus without in-person access to any adult but their homeroom teacher for short advisory periods providing social-emotional support.

Milliken Middle School parent and educator Maryam Qudrat labeled the plan a “babysitting program,” and many said it wasn’t worth sending kids back without more access to teachers.

“What’s the point? Why even bother?” asked Tiffany Morrison, a South L.A. mom whose 6th grade daughter attends the Girls Academic Leadership Academy. “They’re not really going back to school. They’re going to be learning online. She’d rather just be home where she can get up and go to the refrigerator and be comfortable. I don’t even understand why they would have agreed to that. It makes no sense.”

Parents hoping to get their kids back to school this spring went from celebration to deflation this week after United Teachers Los Angeles threw cold water on the school reopening deal announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday, the same day that teachers started getting vaccinated for COVID-19 en masse at SoFi stadium in Inglewood.

“I feel like I’m on a roller coaster,” said Maggie Pulley, a teacher and mom of three kids from mid-City, including a 6th grader at LAUSD’s Girls Academic Leadership Academy. “I’ll get excited, and then I hear what UTLA said, and I’m like, ‘Oh, there’s no hope.’”

Pulley is one of a growing number of LAUSD parents of color who are publicly calling for schools to reopen for families who want and need in-person learning options. She was upset after hearing UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz say in a Facebook live broadcast Monday evening that “wealthy white parents” are the ones who want their kids in school.

“The reality is the affluent white kids are back in school all over LA County, and LA Unified kids aren’t,” Pulley said. “I’m Black. My kids are Black. I’m an educator. UTLA is not advocating for what’s best for kids. Sitting at home and languishing on Zoom is not what’s best for kids.”

Parents also took exception to Myart-Cruz claiming that she’s protecting children of color and that UTLA "must be the voice of our students and their families.”

“Speaking on my behalf? I don’t like it at all,” said Michelle Corbin, a mom to three Black children: a 3-year-old, a 16-year-old at King Drew Medical magnet and a 6-year-old in kindergarten at Purche Ave. elementary in Gardena. “You don’t know my struggles. You can’t speak for me unless you have actually spoken to me.”

As COVID case rates fall dramatically and teachers start getting vaccinated en masse, parents and community members in some of L.A.’s most disenfranchised Black communities are growing increasingly frustrated with LAUSD’s failure to reach agreement with its teachers union to reopen schools.

“It’s ridiculous how they’re keeping these schools closed,” said Lydia Friend, founder of the organization Women of Watts, which is planning a rally to reopen schools on March 13, the one-year anniversary of L.A. school closures. “Our babies need to be in school, and I got a whole bunch of mamas saying the same thing.”

That sentiment was echoed by Lamar Freeman, coach of LA Rampage, part of Snoop Youth Football League in Watts, Compton and South L.A. “Mostly all of my parents want their kids to get back to school ASAP,” he said. “They’re mostly from single-parent homes. No one is supervising them to make sure they’re doing Zoom classes. Their grades are slipping. Straight A students are getting Cs and Ds.”

Both Friend and Freeman said many of the kids in their community are depressed, not only from isolation but also from the lack of structure that school and sports brought to their lives and from worrying that athletic college scholarship prospects are slipping away.

“For a lot of kids, this is the only way to get to college,” Freeman said. “Them being out of school, there’s no sports. That avenue is taken away. Their social life, period, that’s taken away from the kids. They’re waking up in their room by themselves everyday.”

The L.A. Health Department gave the green light to reopen all elementary schools two weeks ago, and LAUSD is also allowed to serve 25% of the highest-need kids at all grade levels on campus. Nevertheless, as LAUSD prepares to reopen campuses March 4 for voluntary special education services and childcare, as well as some athletic conditioning, LAUSD still has no deal with UTLA to have teachers return to classrooms this school year.

“We are not there yet folks,” UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said Friday on Facebook live. Instead, UTLA is encouraging its members to support a “refusal to return” unless all teachers have access to full vaccination and case numbers fall even more and other safety conditions are met.

But with the CDC releasing guidance from multiple studies showing that schools can safely reopen with far higher case rates than UTLA is insisting upon, parents and community leaders are increasingly pushing back. Friend especially takes issue with UTLA’s claim that it’s protecting Black kids and the Black community by keeping schools closed.

“That’s not true,” Friend said. “Where I live, school was a safe haven for the kids. You’re making our kids stay home for what? Safety? Half of them are out on the street playing outside anyway. If we keep going, we’re messing their minds up. You know how many kids have suicidal thoughts?”

As state talks on a school reopening plan heated up this week, LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin (BD4) called on LAUSD to immediately start opening preschools and elementary schools and to start serving the highest-need students at all grade levels that the L.A. Health Department now allows on campus.

“Kids should not have to wait any longer,” Melvoin said in an email to parents that also underscored that all families will have the option to keep their kids in distance learning if they choose. "I share your frustration and the frustrations I’m hearing each day from the community. It’s been nearly a year of distance learning, and there is plenty of evidence showing that kids are suffering academically, physically, and emotionally from being out of school for so long.”

Melvoin’s statement represented a clear break from the public position of LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner, who has said that teachers and staff have to be vaccinated before schools can reopen. Melvoin said he has been advocating for months to get teachers quicker access to vaccines, but he agreed with the Centers for Disease Control, the governor, the L.A. County Public Health Department, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and President Biden that elementary schools can reopen safely before all teachers and school staff are vaccinated.

The issue of rapid vaccine access remains a key sticking point in talks with United Teachers Los Angeles, although UTLA has not even agreed to return to campuses after teachers are vaccinated, unless cases also fall to much lower levels than the CDC recommends for reopening schools that have the safety measures LAUSD has in place.

Gov. Gavin Newsom upped the ante Friday, announcing that California would set aside 10% of all first vaccine doses, 75,000 per week, "for those educators supporting our efforts to get our kids back into in-person education."

Newsom did not explain whether or how he would discern which educators are supportive, but when asked, he reiterated the set-aside vaccines are only for "those that wish to go back to in-person instruction."

Key state lawmakers also unveiled a new bill Thursday that would reopen elementary schools in the red tier and schools for high-needs kids at all grade levels by mid-April, while making the vaccine available to those teaching in person.

Newsom immediately threw cold water on that bill, saying that it actually slowed down the reopening of schools for our most vulnerable kids and would make California “an extreme outlier.” Newsom said he wants kids with disabilities and young kids back in school much sooner than April and indicated he would not support the bill if it passes.

“It doesn’t go far enough or fast enough,” Newsom said.

While Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer gave LAUSD permission Tuesday to immediately reopen all of its elementary schools, the district has no plans to do so because United Teachers Los Angeles and Superintendent Austin Beutner still refuse to offer LAUSD’s primarily low-income kids of color the same in-person learning options that kids in more affluent school districts and private schools now have.

The LAUSD Board did take a historic step Tuesday to address concerns of Black students, passing a plan to remove school police from being stationed on campuses and to send funding from police budget cuts to 53 schools that serve at least 200 Black students in order to help lift Black student achievement.

Speak UP parent Renee Bailey, who lives in South L.A., called in to the board to praise the plan to lift Black student achievement, but she also urged LAUSD to reopen schools for her daughter in kindergarten and her son with intellectual disabilities in middle school. (Both are now allowed on campuses, according to the Health Department, but LAUSD has not welcomed them back.)

“The best way for these beautiful Black children of mine to become academically competitive is to be back in school,” Bailey told the board. “The cards are already stacked against them in this world, and the challenges of virtual learning are putting my children and other children of color at risk for long term ramifications that cannot be healed.”

Bailey’s son has been injuring himself and becoming more reclusive as a result of school closures, and because her daughter is struggling academically, Bailey has talked to her teacher about retaining her to repeat kindergarten next year. School closures are also placing a huge burden on her, as a parent, and on her entire family’s mental health.

“I work from home full-time, and as the breadwinner of my family, I’m now tasked to be a financial provider, primary caregiver, teacher, behavioral specialist and advocate, all while trying to manage my own mental health,” Bailey said. “This is unhealthy, and I’m on the verge of breaking…We battle everyday with hopelessness, depression, frustration and fear.”

While L.A. parents are divided on whether to send their own kids back to school when campuses reopen, three-quarters of parents that Speak UP surveyed at the start of the COVID surge last year supported giving families the option once the Health Department said it was safe. Many families of kids with disabilities and younger children have been clamoring to get kids back.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Joe Buscaino, a father of two LAUSD kids who is married to a veteran Los Angeles Unified teacher, wants the city to follow in San Francisco’s footsteps by suing Los Angeles Unified to reopen schools.

San Francisco took the unprecedented step of suing its own school district this week to try to force a reopening. Buscaino plans to bring a resolution to the city council to have Los Angeles do exactly what San Francisco did — “initiate legal action against the LAUSD for their failure to reopen schools.”

“I stand with the 1500 pediatricians in Southern California as well as the Director of the CDC who are calling for the reopening of schools,” he said in a statement released Thursday. “It has been nearly a year since our students attended classes in person…I feel obligated to take a stand.”

Buscaino’s two kids – a son who is a senior at San Pedro High and daughter in 8th grade at Dana Middle school – are “thirsting to get back,” he told Speak UP Thursday.

“I’m concerned for the mental health of our students,” Buscaino said. “My daughter broke down the other day and said, ‘I just miss seeing my teachers and my friends.’ And my son, he’s had a shitty senior year. He’s worked so hard to get to this point.”

With United Teachers Los Angeles refusing to make a deal to have teachers return to campus even when the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health allows it, Los Angeles Unified has closed its doors entirely to students, failing to even offer federally mandated services to students with disabilities.

Despite the fact that COVID case numbers have plummeted in the past two weeks, UTLA and LAUSD say it’s unsafe to have any kids served on campus, even the 25% of the highest-needs kids the Health Department is currently allowing on campus to receive services and instruction.

Nevertheless, LAUSD opened its doors Thursday to a group of child actors filming a show for Apple TV at Kester Ave. Elementary in Sherman Oaks, which Buscaino described as “outrageous, irresponsible and unfair.”

With the head of the Los Angeles County Health Department predicting COVID rates could decrease enough to meet the state threshold for reopening elementary schools within the next 2-3 weeks, parents are pushing LAUSD and United Teachers Los Angeles to reach a reopening deal and share a detailed hybrid plan now.

“LAUSD should offer an in-person option to families as soon as the Health Department determines that it's safe, with a priority placed on bringing back the youngest and highest-needs kids first,” said Speak UP Founder and CEO Katie Braude. “Cardrooms, malls, gyms and salons are all open, while schools remain closed. The Centers for Disease Control recommends the opposite. Kids should come first in any reopening decisions, given the massive academic and social-emotional harm and inequities students are facing.”

COVID cases dropped from 75/100,000 to 45/100,000 in a single week, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. If this trend continues, cases could fall to the new 25/100,000 elementary school reopening threshold set by the state next month.

While some parents remain wary of sending their kids back so soon after L.A.’s deadly COVID surge, others are anxious to have their kids return. Parents of students with disabilities have been especially vocal about wanting that option, flooding public comment at Tuesday’s LAUSD board meeting to demand that the district start offering in-person services and instruction to students who cannot learn through a screen or to allow contracted service providers to do so in kids’ homes.

Nearby districts in Los Angeles County have been serving kids with disabilities in person on campus since mid-September, although some took a three-week January pause recommended by the Health Department. LAUSD, however, has been unable to reach any agreement with UTLA to deliver federally mandated services and instruction in person to kids with Individualized Education Plans and recently missed its self-imposed Jan. 24 deadline to do so. They also missed their deadline to reach an agreement on an eventual hybrid reopening plan.

Parent Carla Suarez-Capdet, whose son has autism, said UTLA had “abandoned us and our children” after parents supported teachers during their strike two years ago. “UTLA has continuously moved the goal post. They wanted more funding for special education students. It has been offered. They wanted PPE and health and safety protocols. They got it. They demanded robust COVID testing and contract tracing. It was delivered. They wanted an hourly premium added to in-person services. It was granted.”

Now UTLA is asking its staff to be fully vaccinated before returning to campus to offer special education assessments and services. That’s a process that will start in mid-February but likely won’t be completed for a couple of months, even with teachers being placed near the top of the priority list and LAUSD set to help with the vaccination process.

Moreover, UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said full vaccination of staff was not sufficient to trigger a complete reopening of schools -- a statement that upset many parents and prompted the Los Angeles Times editorial board to write that teachers should be moved down the priority list if they don’t agree to return.

United Teachers Los Angeles wants its teachers and special education service providers to be fully vaccinated before they’re required to return to campus to serve high-needs students. However, “we don’t believe that all employees being vaccinated is a sufficient trigger on its own for the full reopening of schools,” UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said Friday in a Facebook Live broadcast.

That comment did not go over well with some parents who are seeking an in-person option for their kids, especially given that school employees are receiving vaccine priority ahead of many essential workers who have been working outside their homes for months. “If teachers aren’t prepared to go back to in-person teaching once vaccinated, they should step aside and let others be vaccinated,” said Speak UP member Pam Schmidt. “Maybe those who are actually working face to face with the public.”

UTLA’s stance also puts the union at odds with national teachers union leader Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, who argued in a Sunday op-ed that schools can safely reopen before vaccines are widely available with testing and other precautions in place.

LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner on Monday acknowledged the importance of getting staff vaccinated and is pushing hard for LAUSD schools to be vaccination sites. LAUSD, however, has not agreed that staff vaccination should be a condition for teachers to return to serve the highest-needs kids. Instead, LAUSD is asking for special education teachers and service providers to return "upon approval by the superintendent when permitted to do so by state and county guidelines."

In a town hall Monday, Board Member Nick Melvoin (BD4) said the decision on when to reopen “won’t be dictated by a labor partner but rather by a health entity.”

The Health Department currently allows 25% of high-needs kids to be served in person on campus in small cohorts, although Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer also asked schools to institute a voluntary three-week shutdown until Feb. 1 because of the current surge.

LAUSD and UTLA were unable to meet their self-imposed Jan. 24 deadline for the two sides to reach an agreement on terms of schools reopening to serve high-needs students, as well as terms for a broader hybrid reopening when the LA County Department of Public Health says it’s safe. They remain far apart on key issues, based on LAUSD’s Jan. 22 proposal for serving high-needs students, as well as UTLA’s counter-proposal, both of which UTLA posted on its website. UTLA’s president said the union is not bargaining the hybrid reopening until after it reaches an agreement to serve high-needs kids.

Superintendent Austin Beutner released a statement Monday indicating that talks would continue and would not be finalized until the governor and state legislature set guidelines and conclude budget talks intended to incentivize the reopening of schools. “We urge the Governor and the State Legislature to complete their work and provide clear and consistent standards,” Beutner said.

Beutner told parents at a town hall Monday that “we are ready” to return kids to campus as soon as the state and local health officials say it’s safe. Right now, COVID rates in Los Angeles remain at three times the new 25/100,000 case rate the state has set for a full reopening.

District 6 Board Member Kelly Gonez, a Millennial Latina mom of two young kids and former charter school teacher, was unanimously elected president of the LAUSD board Tuesday, marking a changing of the guard to a new kids-first board majority dominated by younger members focused on equity, as well as racial and social justice.

“This board must be relentlessly focused on student learning and work efficiently and urgently to meet the holistic needs of our kids and families,” said Gonez, who is the first in her family to graduate from college. “Equity and anti-racism ought to be the through thread.”

In the No. 2 leadership spot is fellow Millennial Board Member Nick Melvoin (BD4), who beat out District 5 Board Member Jackie Goldberg on a 4-3 vote for the Chair of the Committee of the Whole, who also serves as the vice president of the board. Both Gonez and Melvoin were elected in 2017, the last time the majority of board members were elected without the financial backing of United Teachers Los Angeles.

Joining Gonez and Melvoin in the kids-first majority are veteran board member Monica Garcia (BD2) and newly elected District 7 Board Member Tanya Ortiz Franklin, who replaced retired Board President Richard Vladovic.

Ortiz Franklin, the third Millennial on the board, was sworn in Tuesday by President Avenue Elementary first grader Caleb Ebo, a loud and clear indication of her commitment to put kids first. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond swore in the other returning board members who won reelection, all retired educators: Goldberg, George McKenna (BD1) and Scott Schmerelson (BD3).

“The fact that the two youngest board members are in a leadership position is a significant generational shift,” Melvoin told Speak UP. “Kelly and I were more recently in classrooms, we have been aligned on what I would call a kids-first agenda. I think it’s exciting. Having a board president who is the first in her family to go to college and who looks like the students we serve, I know will be motivating to students.”

One day after LAUSD shut down its campuses to the small number of high-needs students who were receiving in-person special-education services, the Alliance for Children’s Rights and the Learning Rights Law Center filed a lawsuit against LAUSD and Superintendent Austin Beutner asking the court to compel the district to reopen and start serving the 25% of high-needs kids that the Los Angeles County Health Department has allowed on campuses in small cohorts since mid-September.

“In Los Angeles County today, shopping malls and retail stores are open, at up to 20% of their capacities,” attorneys Alex Romain of Milbank LLP, Valerie Vanaman and Alexis Casillas wrote in the lawsuit. “But for students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, their schools – all of them – are closed.”

The lawsuit, filed in the California Supreme Court, claims that LAUSD’s blanket policy to shut down campuses this week violates the SB98 law, which requires schools to offer in-person instruction whenever possible. The failure to offer in-person instruction, special education assessments and services and “will irreparably harm thousands of LAUSD students who simply cannot access the educational curriculum through distance learning,” the suit said.

In a recent Speak UP survey, 76% parents of kids with disabilities reported that their kids could not learn effectively via distance learning, and 74% reported that their kids were regressing.

“There is no question that severe learning loss has already occurred, is ongoing, and will lead to irreparable harm for these students,” the suit added. “This slow-motion catastrophe—with potentially irreversible and life-long negative consequences for students—can and should be immediately addressed, consistent with state and local public health guidelines.”

As COVID-19 cases surge in Los Angeles, Los Angeles Unified School District is shutting its doors to the handful of high-needs kids that it had begun to welcome back to campus for after-school tutoring and special education services, as well as for athletic conditioning and childcare for employees’ kids. Campuses will close this Thursday at least until January.

The implications will be minimal for most of LAUSD’s 650,000 students because a mere 3,000-4,000 of the district’s 650,000 students were receiving any services on campus as of this week, and none of them were getting regular in-person instruction. The LAUSD school day has been entirely online since March.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health started allowing L.A. schools to serve 25% of high-needs students on campus for instruction in mid-September, but United Teachers Los Angeles never agreed to allow its teachers to do so. All after-school services offered to students on campus have been provided by individual teachers and service providers willing to volunteer for this extra paid work.

Carla Suárez-Capdet has a child in kindergarten with autism, and after weeks of advocating, she finally got her son’s special education teacher and his occupational therapist to agree to help him on campus in the San Fernando Valley after school last week. “It was amazing,” she said. “He was so excited.”

While she understands the reasons for the latest shutdown, she questions why private schools with TK-2 waivers still have campuses open as usual. (Governor Gavin Newsom and the L.A. Health Department are allowing schools to remain open during the latest round of closures). “If it’s truly a public health issue, everyone should be sent home. If it’s not that bad, let my son continue to get what he needs.”

More than a third of the parents surveyed by LAUSD told the district they want to return next semester for hybrid instruction, despite taking the survey in the midst of the latest surge. “To put that in some context,” Beutner said in his weekly address, “those students alone would represent the seventh largest school district in the country.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said Los Angeles public schools could reopen for 10% of its highest-needs kids back in mid-September, a figure that was expanded to 25% last week after Speak UP released a survey showing that two-thirds of kids with disabilities are regressing during distance learning.

The Health Department is also accepting waivers for K-2 elementary schools to open, with priority given to low-income kids who have experienced severe learning loss during distance learning.

So why hasn’t Los Angeles Unified opened its doors to these high-needs kids, including English Learners, kids with disabilities and the youngest learners for whom distance learning not only isn’t working but is causing, in many cases, tremendous suffering?

As The New York Times reported Thursday, it all goes back to a clause that LAUSD agreed to in the deal it struck with the United Teachers Los Angeles union right before the start of the school year. A little-noticed clause in that deal (see No. 1 under Compensation, Evaluation, Benefits and Leaves) specified that no employees could be required to return to campus until it was deemed safe for all employees to return or unless a new bargaining agreement was reached.

LAUSD Board members are now saying campuses will not reopen before January in large part because that agreement with the teachers extends until the end of the calendar year.

Much could hinge on the outcome of Tuesday’s school board elections. UTLA is now bargaining with LAUSD on the terms of reopening and is claiming that it’s unsafe to reopen for small groups of high-needs kids, despite the Los Angeles County Health Department saying otherwise.

UTLA funded the campaigns of the current four-member school board majority, including current Board President Richard Vladovic (BD7), but Vladovic is retiring, and Scott Schmerelson (BD3), another of the four, is running to keep his seat.

If teacher/attorney Tanya Ortiz Franklin wins Vladovic’s open seat, or if parent and Granada Hills High employee Marilyn Koziatek unseats Schmerelson in the San Fernando Valley, then the balance of power on the school board could shift.

A new board, without a majority of members whose campaigns were funded by UTLA, would be more likely to have arms-length negotiations with the union and, perhaps, more willing to balance employee interests with those of students and parents.

Both Ortiz Franklin and Koziatek, who are endorsed by Speak UP, have voiced support for allowing the highest-needs kids to return to campus.

Distance learning has not been working at all for Carla Suárez-Capdet’s child who is enrolled in a special day kindergarten class at an LAUSD school in the San Fernando Valley. As soon as the new school year began, her typically mild-mannered son, who is on the autism spectrum, started regressing and injuring himself in ways she had not seen in three years.

“I don’t even recognize him,” said Suárez-Capdet, who serves on Speak UP’s Special Education Task Force. “He started slapping his forehead, pulling his hair out, and he kicked me with all his strength. It takes three adults to keep him on those Zooms. We’re like a pit crew.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health opened the door Wednesday to some relief for students like Suárez-Capdet’s son. Los Angeles County will allow schools to start offering on-campus instruction Sept. 14 to “small, stable, cohorts of K-12 students who need learning support,” including kids with disabilities who have Individualized Education Plans and English Learners. Schools are not required to file waivers to serve these kids.

The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education unanimously approved resolutions from Board Members Nick Melvoin (BD4) and Kelly Gonez (BD6) to consider offering childcare on campus to high-needs students and to monitor the effectiveness of distance learning. Speak UP parents from across Los Angeles advocated for both resolutions and successfully pushed for amendments addressing the needs of kids with disabilities and English Learners.

In response to “huge concern and anxiety about childcare” from working parents, Melvoin’s resolution directs the LAUSD superintendent to report back within three weeks on the feasibility of expanding the number of kids receiving childcare on LAUSD campuses during distance learning beyond just the 3,200 kids of LAUSD employees.

Melvoin asked the superintendent to prioritize homeless and foster youth and the kids of essential workers. After listening to calls from Speak UP parents, however, he accepted an amendment from Gonez to add English Learners and kids with disabilities to that priority list. Gonez, who is a mom of two young kids, also asked the superintendent to consider adding early learners ages 2-5.

LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner, however, warned parents not to get their hopes up. “I hope this isn’t misconstrued or misinterpreted by the public to expect a program of scale that we would need to be able to offer in the next few days or weeks," Beutner said. "That’s not going to be possible.”

Parents, already pushed to their limits by dire economic and health stresses, are clamoring for more support. Speak UP’s Director of Advocacy for Equity and Diversity Sharnell Blevins called in to speak about Keesha Hollier, a single mom and nurse in Carson who is struggling to oversee distance learning for her two sons with autism.

“While wealthier parents with neurotypical kids are forming private pods, parents like Keesha need help,” Blevins said. “We hope you consider a waiver to bring back kids with severe disabilities, who have a harder time participating in distance learning and need more in-person support.”

In response to parent concerns, Board Members Nick Melvoin (BD4) and Kelly Gonez (BD6) have introduced resolutions that will come up for a vote Tuesday. Melvoin’s encourages LAUSD to create public childcare pods on campus for homeless and foster youth and kids of essential workers, while the Gonez resolution seeks to measure the effectiveness of distance learning.

Gonez told Speak UP that the district has done an excellent job offering support to families, but it’s not yet clear whether those supports are “sufficient to make sure every student has their needs met and continues to progress academically at this time. Our ultimate job as board members is to make sure our kids are educated and well taken care of academically, socially and emotionally.”

Likewise, Melvoin told Speak UP that a lack of childcare during distance learning is placing a huge burden on working parents right now. “At every school, when I talk to parents about the issues they are having, this rises to the top of the list,” he said.

Melvoin praised the district for providing childcare on campus to the children of employees that are working on campus this fall. About 3000 kids are expected to have their distance learning supervised on campus starting this week. Some of those employees’ kids, however, do not attend LAUSD schools, and “our core constituency is district students,” Melvoin said. “Can we bring more kids back?”

Mayra Zamora, parent of two LAUSD students in San Pedro, spent most of the first week of virtual school on hold.

Her kid’s district-issued Wi-Fi hotspot did not work so she spent multiple hours over multiple days calling the LAUSD helpline, LAUSD’s IT department and Verizon. She wound up getting a new hotspot from her school, but that also didn’t work so she started the process all over again.

“I was on hold for almost an hour and a half [Wednesday],” she said. “We watched three episodes on Netflix [while waiting on hold] only to be transferred to the IT department to be put on hold another 50 minutes. His response at 4 p.m. was, ‘I’ll put in a ticket for you for tomorrow.’ They got inundated with so many phone calls.”

Unfortunately, Thursday, the first regular day of instruction, was equally frustrating. LAUSD’s learning management system, Schoology, “went down,” she said. “At 10 a.m., we got the message from both of their schools that they’re having issues.”

In addition, her younger son’s school-issued iPad could not connect to the Internet because of the privacy protection software installed. “My poor child can’t even log into some of his classes,” she said.

Eventually, her older son helped fix the issue, but for many parents, the first week was a morass of technical difficulties and long wait times for help.