LOS ANGELES (KUSI) – The SDUSD on Monday issued a joint statement with the Los Angeles Unified School District, which also announced it will start the school year with online-only courses. In the statement, the districts acknowledged that schools have successfully reopened in some parts of the world, but said the conditions are different locally.
Officials from the district say they don’t have the resources to safely reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic while critics cite the data that shows children have very low risk to the virus.
But in Los Angeles, the decision has to reopen schools has become political.
The Los Angeles Teacher’s Union is one of the largest in the state, and the “United Teachers Los Angeles” say public schools should not reopen unless their demands are met.
Their demands include implementing a moratorium on private schools, defunding the police, increasing taxes on the wealthy, implementing Medicare for all, and passing the HEROES Act, which allocated and additional $116 billion in federal education funding to the states.
The unions demands also took aim at charter schools.
The United Teachers Los Angeles union says these policies must be implemented on both the state and national level before reopening schools.
Opponents, mainly Republicans, believe these demands prove that San Diego Unified and Los Angeles Unified School District’s decision to conduct classes online is a political one, not driven by the data.