LAUSD's Daily Pass System Buckles Under First Day Of School Influx Of Students
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — The stringent new safety requirements Los Angeles Unified School District put in place so that students could come back to school full-time and in person led to some first day of school frustrations.
Long lines just to get in the front doors were seen at several campuses Monday, particularly at big high school campuses like John Marshall in Los Feliz and LA High in the Mid-Wilshire area. Some lines wrapped around the block, and some students reportedly missed their first period classes.
"It was really bad. It was a really bad experience for everybody," father Eric Lopez said.
Students returning to LAUSD schools Monday were required to show a daily health pass on their phones as they entered campus. The pass shows that the student has taken a weekly COVID-19 test and filled out the daily health questionnaire.
However, the daily pass system – which first went into use when the district implemented hybrid learning last spring – buckled under nearly all of the district's students returning to in-person learning. Additionally, some families who didn't take part in the hybrid learning schedule last spring were unfamiliar with the system.
And because students were required to show proof of a negative test, but didn't get results in time for the first day of school, some were sent to get a rapid test, adding to the bottleneck.
The second day of LAUSD schools seemed to go more smoothly, with none of the long lines seen on the first day of school. However, another father said he thought the daily health screening was rather onerous.
"I do kind of wish they would allow us to do it the night before so that it's in their backpacks before we go to sleep," he said.
However, he conceded that the effort is worth it to keep students safe and healthy.
"I think safety of the kids is paramount to any frustration that the daily pass might give the parents. I think it's just something we have to get through," he said.
District officials say parents should watch out for emails from their students' schools because some are giving students individual bar codes to use while the daily pass system is smoothed out.
However, the rigorous safety requirements are working as intended. The district says the baseline testing of roughly 81% of the district's students detected 3,255 positive cases between Aug. 2-15, a testing-positivity rate of about 0.8%, according to results released late Monday night. A total of 399 positive cases were found among employees.
