Twenty-five more schools will be able to open their classrooms for transitional kindergarteners to second graders after Los Angeles County officials announced Tuesday that the schools had been granted waivers to reopen. This is the second week that the county has approved waivers, after the first four schools were approved on Oct. 21.
While most schools in L.A. County are still online as the county remains in the state’s most restrictive coronavirus tier, some schools have been able to reopen classrooms through either the waiver process or through providing “specialized services” to small groups of students with high need for in-person education — such as students with disabilities, students who are experiencing homelessness or students who are learning English.
Through the county’s waiver application process, Holy Angels School in Arcadia, Kadima Day School in West Hills, Los Encinos School in Encino and Rabbi Jacob Pressman Academy of Temple Beth Ann in Los Angeles were given the green light to reopen last week. Transitional kindergarteners (essentially, pre-kindergarteners) through second-graders will be able to return, but the older grades will have to stay home.
These approvals for reopening came over seven months after schools shuttered under initial lockdown orders from the state of California. Since March, online education has been the primary replacement for K-12 students, but L.A. County started issuing waivers after officials recognized younger children have more difficulties with online learning.
Margo Pensavalle, a professor of clinical education with expertise in early education at the USC Rossier School of Education, said that online education can be difficult for younger children because of how they best learn.
“Developmentally, they are really about them and they’re about learning with their whole body, and they’re learning through interaction with other people. That’s what we know about this age group. And when the other people are inside of a screen … I think it’s an incredibly difficult thing to have meaningful learning taking place,” Pensavalle said.
Danielle Keisari, the parent of a second-grader at Kadima Day School said she noticed the difficulties of online learning weighing on her daughter.
“The beginning of the year was somewhat still exciting and she was happy to be on Zoom, but now I see that it’s harder for her to log on,” she said.
But the difficulties haven’t just been hard on the students. Keisari said she felt the weight of online learning as a parent as well.
“It’s just constant juggling between making food, cleaning up, helping them with their schoolwork,” Keisari said. “There’s not any break, and there’s a lot of frustration for everybody involved.”
While Keisari continued to balance this new reality, Steven Lorch, the head of Kadima Day School, said he had been working on the school’s reopening protocols since July. For months, he met with teachers individually and used their input to form a safe reopening plan. The plan currently includes an 8-foot plexiglass wall in each classroom, upgraded ventilation and front-facing desks to minimize students breathing on each other.
Lorch said that these are all precautions to ensure that their small cohort of twelve students remains safe.
“Our goal is, if and when infection comes into the school, we will stop it there and minimize the spread to anyone else,” Lorch said.
To guarantee safety, schools that reopen are required to follow the County’s Public Health checklist on reopening protocols.
In a statement to Annenberg Media, Erica Rothblum, head of Pressman Academy in Los Angeles, said, “Since March, our decision-making has been guided by two core values: protecting the health and safety of our staff and students, and doing what’s best for kids. These values will continue to be our north star as we enter this next chapter, and we will approach reopening with care, compassion, intentionality, and humility.”
The other two schools, Holy Angels and Los Encinos, declined Annenberg Media’s request to comment on their plans, although the latter did release a statement to their website on Oct. 21.
Of the first 110 applicants who requested reopening classrooms, 87 were private schools, like Kadima Day School. Although L.A. County said it would prioritize schools with a higher number of low-income students for reopening, the amount of private school applications could be explained by private schools being more likely to lose students in the long term, Lorch said.
“Parents in private schools looking at paying a hefty tuition might say, you know what, until this is over, I’m just going to homeschool or I’m just going to enter a pod and will pay for a private tutor,” Lorch said.
Unlike in public schools in the L.A. Unified School District, private school teachers don’t form unions, so administrators like Lorch only needed to secure the support of each individual teacher to approve their reopening plans.
“My understanding is that the requirement that was hard for other schools was getting the majority of their teachers to sign on to supporting the school reopening,” he said.
Preparations for as safe of a reopening as possible have taken great efforts, Lorch said, but the recent approval for reopening classrooms is a welcome reward for private school students, parents and faculty alike.
When Keisari told her daughter she’d return to her classroom, her daughter jumped “up and down out of joy, just for the mere fact that she got to see her friends again.”
“Everybody is excited, the parents are happy, and our community feels so thankful and grateful for our school being so on top of it,” Keisari said. “We feel super privileged and lucky and grateful.”