LAUSD superintendent urges precautions over spring break

With spring break set to begin next week, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho on Friday stressed the need for students and staff to make use of the take-home COVID-19 tests that the district has distributed before everyone returns to the classroom after vacation.

His remarks came a day after the county reported a rise in COVID-19 outbreaks in schools, which the public health director said was most likely due to the presence of the highly contagious omicron BA.2 subvariant and the recent lifting of masking mandates by many school districts.

“We have made great strides in terms of conquering the effects, the impacts of COVID-19, but we are not out of the woods yet,” Carvalho said. “So we need to make sure that as we go into the spring break vacation, we remain watchful and we embrace the best protective protocols.”

Although the district has instructed every student and staff member who work or attend school in person to take the home rapid antigen tests before returning from spring break, it is only requiring those who test positive to report their results to the district.

Of the 14 schools throughout the county that experienced outbreaks between March 30 and April 5, the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, a school in the L.A. Unified district, logged the most cases among K-12 campuses, with 60 students and three staff members testing positive for the coronavirus.

Carvalho assumed his position as superintendent in February. The Los Angeles Board of Education selected him in December by unanimous vote. He had been head of Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida for 14 years. He was born in Portugal and is the only one among six siblings to finish high school.