As the Long Beach Unified School District enters its fifth week of instruction after winter break, there are continued signs that Long Beach schools have put the COVID-19 omicron surge in the rearview mirror.

After weeks of elevated absences for students and teachers due to COVID-19 positives, those numbers have normalized.

Teacher absences hit a high of 500 a few weeks before dropping to 215 last week. And absences among the district’s 3,400 teachers have continued to decline, according to LBUSD spokesperson Chris Eftychiou.

“Teacher absences have returned to their pre-surge level,” he said. “Our student attendance and teacher absence rates have continued to show improvement, coinciding with declining COVID case numbers county-wide.”

Student attendance rates rose to 87% last week, up from a low of 76% a few weeks prior. Pre-COVID, the Long Beach Unified School District averaged 95% attendance.

Last week, Long Beach saw its deadliest week for COVID-19 related conditions since Feb. 2021, but the number of new cases has steadily declined, according to numbers released Monday by the city.

The average rate of daily new cases per 100,000 residents dipped to 214.8, down from 426.8 on Jan. 18. The percentage of people who were positive after testing for the virus also dipped to 23.4%, down from almost 30% about two weeks earlier.

Despite being on the downslope, both those numbers remain drastically higher than almost any other point in the pandemic.

In response to declining cases, the district is transitioning out of some of the elevated COVID-19 restrictions they’d put into place for January as well, as indoor venues are once again allowed to reach full capacity as of this week.

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