Now in its third week of second semester, COVID-19 test-positivity and student attendance rates are trending in the right direction in the nation’s second-largest school district, though conditions still aren’t back to pre-winter surge levels.
The week before second semester began on Jan. 11, when students and staff underwent baseline testing, the percentage testing positive for the coronavirus was 16.5% in the Los Angeles Unified School District. That number dropped to 9.8% during the first week of school and to 7.8% last week, district staff reported during the Tuesday, Jan. 25, school board meeting.
And on Monday, the seven-day test-positivity rate was 6.9%, according to the district’s COVID-19 dashboard.
In terms of staff absences, the district received 2,877 requests for substitute teachers on Tuesday, according to a district spokesperson. This is a decrease compared to the past two weeks, the district reported, and more in line with the number of daily requests over the course of the pandemic.
Attendance for students in transitional kindergarten through the 12th grade is also improving: During the first week of school, the attendance rate was 66.2%. It rose to about 74.8% last week. On Monday, 79.9% of students were in class, according to Veronica Arreguin, the district’s chief strategy officer. These figures do not include students in City of Angels, the district’s online independent study program.
“I’m confident that we’re going to continue to see those numbers increase,” Arreguin said.
Typically, LAUSD’s cumulative student attendance rate, which is a weighted average, is about 90%, a spokesperson for the district said.
It’s unclear how many of the 20% of students who were absent Monday were out because they’ve been instructed to isolate or quarantine at home and how many were out for other reasons, including still being hesitant to return to in-person learning in the midst of this latest coronavirus surge.
On Tuesday, L.A. County’s public health director said the omicron variant-fueled surge appears to have passed its peak in the area, though transmission is still at one of the highest points in the pandemic.