Downey Unified closes schools for two weeks
Photo by Alex Dominguez
DOWNEY - Downey Unified schools will be closed to students for two weeks in response to COVID-19.
As a result of overnight events in Sacramento, as well as a conference call with Los Angeles County Office of Education, DUSD’s Board of Education met for over an hour in an emergency closed session meeting Friday.
The following statement was released shortly after the meeting’s conclusion.
“Based upon the strong advice from the Superintendent of Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) and coming out of an Emergency School Board Meeting held at noon today, our Board of Education unanimously voted to close all of our schools and programs for students starting on Monday, March 16 through Friday, March 27.
While there will be no school for students during this period, plans are in place for students to continue to learn during this time. Our dedicated staff have worked tirelessly over the past week to create educational experiences that our students can access while our students are not at school. Our intent is to have resources to be accessible for all students. As of today, all of our schools have prepared for continuity of learning. For our TK to 5th grade students, both digital and paper have been created. Packets have been prepared at all sites in conjunction with digital options. Teachers are prepared with their communication for families that they have been using all year.
Our middle and comprehensive high schools will receive a separate communication from your school on how to access instructional material through email and the schools’ websites. All middle and the two comprehensive high school teachers are utilizing Google Classroom as a way to disseminate instruction and communication. Students will be given codes by the end of the school day to access instruction. All materials will be available and disseminated digitally as well as in hardcopy for those who need it. Columbus High School will be providing instructional packets for all students by the end of the school day.
A full statement with additional details will be released later today.”
Teachers and staff will still report on Monday and Tuesday as final details on how to proceed are still figured out.
According to Superintendent Dr. John Garcia, it is not anticipated that the closure will trigger an extension of the school year.
“We don’t have the final details because a lot of that is dictated by the state, and so we’re waiting for guidance for that,” said Garcia. “We anticipate that we will be able to get waivers from the state of California because it is a statewide issue, and so at this point I’m not anticipating the school year will be extended.”
Teachers and staff will continue to be paid during the closure.
“We’ve been engaging and working collaboratively with not only our department heads, but all of our associations; we have three different unions that are involved in our district,” said Garcia. “We’ve been working with the presidents of each of those unions pretty closely over the course of the last couple of weeks, continuing to make them part of our conference calls, part of our deliberation process, all of those things.”
“Right now, as was announced, the Board wants to make sure that all of our staff knows they’re going to be in paid status for these next two weeks. We’ll continue to communicate with our staff and the community over the course of the next two weeks to make sure people know exactly where things are.”
It’s still too early to know if traditional end-of-year events – such as prom and graduation ceremonies – will also be affected.
“Today’s board meeting covers the next two weeks,” said Garcia. “We sent out communications yesterday to address activities through spring break; that’s the farthest we have outlooked at this point. Because this situation is changing so rapidly, we still have to continue to wait to see where things are in two weeks, three weeks, before we start looking past April 19 which is when we return from spring break.”