LOS ANGELES _ Los Angeles school officials on Friday voted to shut down the nation's second-largest school system effective Monday, citing concerns over the rapid spread of the coronavirus. The district has about 900 campuses serving more than 670,000 children and adult students.
The San Diego Unified School District will also shut down effective Monday.
District officials said that they will continue meal programs and offer televised and online lessons in an attempt to help families.
The move came amid mounting pressure for the L.A. Unified School District to take more aggressive action, which officials had resisted because county health officials have identified no confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to a Los Angeles campus.
But the calls to close schools have been growing in number and intensity, including the teachers union late Thursday. An emergency board meeting called for 1 p.m. Friday was moved up to give schools more time to prepare, school board President Richard Vladovic said.
"We are united in feeling that children and staff deserve extraordinary care," Vladovic said before the vote.
While health officials had supported the district's decision to keep schools operating, an increasing number of school districts throughout California and the nation have announced closures, including San Francisco Unified and several districts in Ventura County including Simi Valley, Moorpark and Oak Park. Also, governors in four states _ Ohio, Maryland, New Mexico and Michigan _ ordered the closing of all public schools.
Elk Grove Unified, a large district in Northern California, was the first in the state to shut down. On Wednesday, the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco shuttered all 90 of its schools in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties. They are scheduled to reopen March 25.
In L.A. County, numerous private schools have closed and public school districts were moving in that direction.
L.A. Unified on Wednesday announced that all gatherings of groups would be canceled until further notice _ curtailing events such as proms and the state academic decathlon. And sports events would continue, if at all, without spectators.
But the district had resisted a complete shutdown.
LAUSD enrolls about half a million students in kindergarten through 12th grade, 80% of whom rely on free or reduced-price lunches and 18,000 of whom are homeless.
"They're relying on us for meals, for child care," school board member Nick Melvoin said Thursday afternoon. If schools close, parents who have to go to work may be forced to take their children with them. Also, children in middle school and high school might congregate in public areas anyway, as teenagers tend to do, he said.
"The school environment is one we can control right now," Melvoin said.
On Friday morning, in an interview before the meeting, Melvoin raised the possibility of keeping schools open on a limited basis to provide child care for parents who need it.
Board member Scott Schmerelson said the district should consider using pick-up points on bus routes for the distribution of meals that students would normally receive in schools.
He added that those parents and staff expressing opinions on social media overwhelmingly were calling for the schools to close.
Superintendent Austin Beutner has had the task of preparing for what would happen after a shutdown. Moving to online education would be difficult: One-fourth of students don't have adequate broadband at home and the district could provide computers to only about half of its students. Many teachers have little experience with online platforms.
In a move that was both resourceful and desperate, Beutner entered into a partnership with PBS to provide educational programming on three different public television stations. KCET would offer high school-level programming. KLCS _ which is operated by L.A. Unified _ would offer content for grades 3 through 8. And KOCE would manage preschool through grade 2.
Beutner said the service would be available to other school systems as needed and he welcomed their collaboration to make it better.
Disaster planning is going on in schools and school districts across the county.
Las Virgenes Unified, for example, will close for two days next week for "staff in-service time to prepare for the likelihood of a districtwide closure," the district's Superintendent Dan Stepenosky said in a letter to families Thursday.
The Santa Monica-Malibu district is closed Friday and Monday for a deep cleaning and staff meetings after "a community member with children in our schools" was exposed to the coronavirus, according to a Thursday afternoon release from Superintendent Ben Drati. No decision has been made on whether schools will reopen Tuesday.
"We have noticed a higher than normal absentee rate on our campuses today and will take this time to determine if students are ill, with what type of illness, or if parents are keeping students home during the coronavirus pandemic," Drati said in his statement.
"This allows us time to consult with our local agencies and consider the status of this health emergency in L.A. County and the communities we serve," he said. "Staff and teachers will prepare for possible school closures next week."
