“There’s great learning happening. There’s great teaching happening. And it’s our job to make sure they have the support they need to keep doing that work.”
Austin Beutner, Superintendent of L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD), said he’s grateful for teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I can’t imagine a society where we don’t have educators on the frontlines juggling all the demands they have in their families and at the same time, taking care of their kids at home and taking care of their kids in the classroom,” he said. “I think gratitude is probably the overwhelming thought, but I’m amazed at how people have risen to the occasion.”
Until the end of this school year and during summer school, learning will continue virtually. LAUSD will start the 2020-2021 school year on August 18, but Beutner doesn’t know if campuses will be open by that time. If not, students will continue taking classes online.
“We closed schools [in March] with no occurrence of coronavirus in our school community. Zero. None. We did that so our school community didn’t become a petri dish where the virus was brought into schools and shared and sent out to other parts of the communities that we serve,” Beutner said. “We were very purposeful in helping stop spread of the disease, and it seems to have worked. We don’t want to be hasty and return to school and have a setback in those efforts.”
Beutner said science will determine whether or not LAUSD campuses open in mid-August.
“Returning to school is going to be a combination of the science and what practices we might have to adopt to adapt to the science,” he said.
There are dozens of questions that come to Beutner’s mind when he thinks of campuses reopening. On an ordinary fall day, there are one million people on LAUSD campuses between students, teachers, staff, family members at football games or music performances, etc. Does that mean all one million need to be tested? Who’s going to test them? How much does it cost?
Beutner said he’ll start evaluating how campuses could reopen in the fall when there’s a better understanding of the novel coronavirus. Right now, the Superintendent’s priority is keeping the school community safe.
“Once we have a better sense of the science, we’ll be able to lay out what would work, whether it is distance in schools, fewer kids in the classrooms, staggered lunches. Those things are workable, but the piece that we’ve all been waiting on quite anxiously -- us, you, and I’m sure many of your viewers --is what the scientists tell us about testing and contact tracing, if there are treatments or antidotes and those types of things. And until we know more about those, we’re not going to spend much time conjecturing, at least publicly, about how we might go back because the science is going to guide us.”
Still, Beutner recognizes that online learning is not comparable to classroom learning.
“There will be no substitute for being in a school setting, we know that,” he said. “And some of the challenges will be made harder at home. But the challenge of making sure each student understands an assignment... that’s what a great teacher does every day. And more often than not, every student doesn’t understand it the first time they’re presented with it.”
If you mix together remoteness, technology difficulties, and less time to synchronistically solve problems with teachers, Beutner said it creates a “bumpy situation” for some students who are trying to navigate online learning.
“We’re not asking parents to be proctors, we’re not asking them to be substitute teachers, we’re asking them to be supportive and understanding as we are of our educators and everybody’s family lives that have been turned upside down,” Beutner said. “Your daughter is going to have a day where she’s frustrated. You’ll have a day where you’re frustrated. And I know that our teachers on the frontlines are doing the best they can to help sort that out, but that’s one of the things that comes with distance learning is that challenge.”
Beutner said the DNA of public education is helping every child. During the COVID-19 pandemic, LAUSD teachers have participated in training programs to make sure they can effectively teach from home. There’s also a tech hotline that families and students can call for help.
“We’re all being asked to use tools and technologies that we’re not fluent or conversed in,” Beutner said. “But I think we’re going to get through this period where all of us learn a little bit more about the tools and technologies and simplify our use of them.”
Beutner said online learning will get better gradually. As far as addressing the pandemic in class, the Superintendent said it’s not being discussed between teachers and elementary students, but it has been discussed in high school classes.
“There might be a decision at a high school level to say, ‘Let’s dig in on the science; let’s understand; let’s be testers ourselves; how would we develop a test.’ That would be appropriate for high school students in having that conversation, so we tried to strike that balance,” he said. “We tried to strike it in the communication and the information that we offer, but it’s going to be age-appropriate and not omni-present in the conversation between students and their teachers.”
LAUSD is still operating its Grab & Go Food Centers. Volunteers will serve anyone who is hungry, even if he or she is not associated with LAUSD. Beutner said this is the right thing to do.
“If people are hungry in our community, we all have responsibility to make sure we help them. And as schools we serve the community, we help children learn, we take care of students and families most in need. Our school facilities are still working now. We’re still helping to make sure students learn, and we’re trying to help students and families most in need,” he said.
Beutner said there have been significant donations to the Grab & Go Food Centers.
“We’ve also had tremendous community support from individuals and institutions donating to this. We’ve raised more than seven million dollars to help support it and we think if we can connect all those pieces, we are going to keep it going as long as there’s a need for it,” he said.
Teaching students and feeding the hungry requires a lot of time, effort, money, and hard work. Beutner said he and his 75,000 LAUSD colleagues are “mission-driven to provide every child with opportunity.” While he said there’s a new struggle every day, he’s seen the LAUSD community “rising to the challenge.”
“I joined [LAUSD] because I thought my collective experience and commitment to those students and in particular those most in need, together with the great people in the school district, could make a difference. And I think today we are making a difference; we’ll continue to do that. And I’m committed to the mission.”
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