Los Angeles School Year To Start August 18, On Campus Or Not

Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent Austin Beutner said Monday that the 2020-2021 academic year will start as planned August 18, regardless whether campuses in the nation’s second-largest school district will be reopened by that time.

LAUSD schools have been shut down since March 16 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Students in the district, like most of the rest of the country, have been completing the 2019-2020 school years via online distance learning.

“We’ve made no decisions about the opening of school facilities by that date, and will not until the science and health authorities tell us it’s safe and appropriate to do so,” Beutner said in a video Monday.

Beutner also said summer school will start in mid-June and be offered to all of the district’s more than 600,000 students for the first time. That includes no in-person graduations.

In the current virtual learning environment, no student will receive a failing grade this spring, given difficulties with remote learning and access to classes for some, though they can improve their grade.

Three weeks ago, Beutner confirmed that all LAUSD schools will be physically closed for the rest of the current academic year, a move that had included shuttering the in-person portion of summer school.