We are proud to announce that LAUSD has agreed to all three safety criteria voted by an overwhelming majority of UTLA members (91% yes) as the necessary conditions for a safe return to in-person teaching and learning.
LOS ANGELES — UTLA members have voted overwhelmingly to resist a premature and unsafe physical return to school sites. Over five days of voting March 1 through 5 conducted by Integrity Voting Systems, 24,580 ballots were cast, with 91% Yes ballots (22,480) and 9% No (2,100).
From Washington DC to Sacramento to LA, the failure by our elected officials to get this deadly pandemic under control has brought COVID-19 to our doorstep. LA is the epicenter of both the virus infection rates and the return-to-school debate.
Watch and read the UTLA Facebook Live Transcript for February 26, 2021.
LOS ANGELES — Let’s be clear: the pressure building to return to schools is political. It is not science. Returning to schools without proper health and safety protections will expose our children and our educators to COVID-19, putting families at risk of illness and death.
With Women's History Month coming up, we plan to highlight the powerful women in UTLA and provide inspirHERation to our students, families and communities.
Watch and read the UTLA Facebook Live Transcript for February 19, 2021.
We are deeply concerned about comments by members of the LA Board of Supervisors calling for in-person elementary instruction while LA County remains in the deep purple tier. Doing so would almost certainly lead to an increase in infections and school closures, creating even more instability and frustration.
We applaud the CDC’s efforts for a national strategy to return to in-person instruction, but the new guidelines released on February 12 do not do enough to address the specific challenges of large urban school districts like LAUSD. And most troubling is that it does not require vaccinations for school staff, six-foot distancing in all schools, nor improved ventilation as a key mitigation measure.
