LOS ANGELES — Anticipating that thousands of Los Angeles Unified students may not be vaccinated when the district mandate kicks in this fall, educators are preparing a significant expansion of online learning options, taking preliminary steps Tuesday to establish up to six new transitional-kindergarten-though-12th-grade virtual schools that could enroll up to 15,000 students.
The move, approved by the Board of Education on Tuesday, acknowledges that the district must prepare to accommodate a potential crush of unvaccinated students who will be barred from entering campuses in fall 2022 as well as families who intend to keep their children in independent study next year. To date, nearly 90% of LAUSD students 12 and older have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or have obtained a rare medical exemption. But even that high compliance rate translates to about 20,000 unvaccinated students in the nation's second-largest school district.
The vote authorizes the district to apply for so-called county-district-school codes from the state, which assigns a unique number to a school for data keeping and other tracking, a number required for all new schools. District officials said they will later decide whether they will need all six online schools, but are aiming to open enrollment in March.
