As the novel coronavirus has upended the school year for students and teachers, the Los Angeles Unified School District is feeling its effects financially, spending nearly $200 million in emergency costs related to the crisis, Superintendent Austin Beutner said Monday.
Beutner detailed the financial impacts to the nation’s second-largest school district during his weekly news conference, in which he emphasized how it important it was to increase spending on eduction during these difficult times.
“It’s necessary,” he said, “unless we’re prepared to sacrifice a generation of boys and girls who are counting on a great education as a path out of poverty.”
The additional costs include $31 million in training for educators, $23 million to address the digital divide, and $9 million for safety equipment and supplies. An extra $50 million has also been allotted for summer school, which will take place strictly online.
One recent positive from this effort is that the number of high school students who are not connected online has dropped significantly in the past few weeks, from more than 15,000 down to 3,000, Beutner said.
LAUSD also plans to help students recover what they missed during the absence of in-class learning, particularly for those who face more difficulty from working independently, like younger students. To that end, the superintendent anticipates more resources at elementary schools, including math teachers at each grade level.
“We are far enough into this crisis we can begin to estimate the cost for our schools,” Beutner said. “At the outset, we said we were going to do the right thing for students and families and the
right thing for our employees who serve students and families. That remains our objective.”
The district has received contributions totaling about $6 million from businesses and individuals.
In the past week, it received $1 million from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and $300,000 from T-Mobile, according to Beutner. A retired teacher also donated $20, while a senior woman offered three gently used computers, showing that no donation is too small and that anyone can pitch in to help, he said.
The L.A. school board is set to meet in the coming weeks to review budgetary issues and and make decisions regarding the coming school year, which formally starts July 1.
While it’s not immediately known where exactly the additional funding will come from, the superintendent said students will remain the priority.
“We are all aware that in the long run there’s no economy without education and in the short run there’s a much smaller economy without the childcare and safety net public schools provide to working families,” he said.
One of the biggest expenditures for the district has been feeding students to ensure they don’t go hungry during the crisis.
Since shuttering its campuses last month, LAUSD has spent $78 million to provide meals for students and adults in need at 63 food distribution sites.
Beutner toured two of the centers prior to holding the weekly briefing — one at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, the other at San Fernando Senior High School — as LAUSD reached the milestone of providing 10 million “grab n go” meals since the March 16 closure.
LAUSD partnered with the American Red Cross to set up various food distribution sites at schools across the city so that students in need could still get nutritious meals during the temporary closure.
The food centers, which are open Monday through Friday and staffed between 8 and 11 a.m., have been handing out meals since March 18. Each student is allowed to take home two free meals: breakfast and lunch.
Prior to the weekly briefing, Beutner said the “grab n go” meals will go on as long as necessary, particularly since it’s still unclear when campuses will reopen.
“The return to school will not be so simple. There’s a lot of conversation, a lot of speculation about what might occur,” he said as he toured the site outside Garfield High School. “The when, simple: as soon as we can. The how, more complicated, because we’ve got to make sure the testing is in place, and that testing connects to those who have been identified with the virus … and that we understand the implications for reopening our schools, which we know will be different.”