LAUSD Board Unanimously Passes Childcare, Distance Learning Resolutions, But Superintendent Tells Parents Not to Get Their Hopes Up

Board Member Nick Melvoin sponsored a resolution directing the superintendent to draft a childcare plan within the next three weeks for students in need.

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.”

That request was echoed by Carla Suárez-Capdet, whose child with autism is enrolled in a special day kindergarten class in the San Fernando Valley.  “Since distance learning began, our son, who is normally calm and even-keeled, has begun displaying self-injurious behaviors we haven’t seen in three years,” she said. “He’s slapping his forehead, digging his nails into his palms, kicking and flailing his legs so hard that he has injured me and has begun pulling out his hair. It’s so painful to watch regression take hold after making so much headway in early intervention.” 

Employees from LAUSD’s Beyond the Bell after school program will be on campus supervising the distance learning of kids of employees working on campus starting next week. Melvoin’s resolution asks the superintendent whether these employees can also offer instructional support to district students if the program is expanded to include some high-needs kids. 

That prompted a question from Blevins: “If it’s safe to bring some personnel back to campus to supervise distance learning, why is it not safe to bring back the students’ actual teachers?”  

In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported this week that coronavirus infection rates have fallen low enough in Los Angeles County that some elementary schools may soon begin to request waivers to reopen, which is already happening in Orange County. Beutner, however, suggested that LAUSD is not ready for a wide-scale reopening, and it may not be feasible to bring high-needs kids back for childcare, either.

“We’re still under a severe burden from COVID in communities,” Beutner said. “We’ve been very careful and deliberate about how we bring anyone back to a school facility, making sure it’s safe and appropriate, not just for the children but the adults in that school community. And we’re going to continue to take that approach. This resolution today is not going to change our planning. We can’t leave science behind.”

Beutner said he wants to make sure any move that LAUSD makes is sustainable, and he wants to avoid mistakes made in Indiana, where schools rushed to reopen and then quickly shut down again, turning them into “some haunted house no one wants to return to.” 

Board Member Kelly Gonez sponsored a resolution to measure the effectiveness of distance learning

In addition to the childcare resolution, parents called in to support a resolution from Gonez to monitor the effectiveness of distance learning,  including Speak UP parent leaders Magda Vargas in Southeast L.A., Mayra Zamora in San Pedro and Alberta Moore in South L.A.

“It’s time to do some introspection and measure the learning losses kids experienced when schools shuttered, especially our Black and Latino kids, and our kids with special needs,” said Moore, a leader of Speak UP’s African American Parent Advocacy team, whose son at Dorsey High received no live instruction in the spring and faced technical issues last week that forced him to miss a Zoom class during the first week of school. “We need a strong plan to make up for those losses.”

Millikan Middle School parent Maryam Qudrat in Sherman Oaks called in to express concern that students are receiving only about one-third of the instructional time during distance learning than they normally get in person.

“What is being covered and what is being cut from my student’s education?” she asked. “How will parents know what their child is missing from their subjects so that they can plan to teach it to them after school or during winter break to ensure they don’t fall behind? These are questions that require a quantifiable measurement of student learning.”

The Gonez resolution, which passed unanimously, not only calls for LAUSD to measure students’ academic progress but also their social-emotional well-being. Qudrat suggested all kids should get some free time to socialize and hang out on Zoom, time they would normally have at lunch and recess. “The kids really need to make that contact to feel less depressed and regain some laughter,” she said. “Some teachers are doing this, others are not.”

Finally, the Gonez resolution creates space at all the regular board meetings for a report and discussion about distance learning, which parents want so they can raise issues and provide feedback. The district’s current method of engaging parents through virtual town halls does not allow for an authentic two-way conversation, Zamora said, “and leaves many questions unanswered.”

The board also approved a resolution from Gonez to expand access to ethnic studies, and the board approved a budget plan that continues to have a great deal of uncertainty over whether some costs related to COVID-19 will be reimbursed by the federal government. The district is pushing the county, for instance, to designate LAUSD an emergency responder under FEMA for its role as the county’s main food bank so LAUSD can get reimbursed millions spent serving adult meals.