The Culver City Unified School District, the first K-12 public school system in the nation to issue a coronavirus student vaccination mandate, announced Friday that due to the spike in coronavirus cases, it will close all its schools next week to give students and staff time to “recoup and recover,” the superintendent said.

“Things accelerated too quickly,” Superintendent Quoc Tran said in an interview, referring to the surge of coronavirus cases that have over-taxed the district of 7,100 students and 900 employees. By taking a few days off, he said, “everyone will get the chance to be distant from one another, recoup and recover and come back Monday.”

Several other districts in Los Angeles County have delayed the start of the spring semester or shut down schools amid the surge, including Montebello Unified and two schools in San Gabriel.

The district will be closed Monday and Tuesday due to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and a scheduled instruction-free day. Instead of returning Wednesday, students will stay home for the rest of the week and make up the instructional hours later in the year, Tran said. Students will be sent home with a coronavirus testing kit and they will need to show a negative test to return Jan. 24.

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