The Long Beach Unified School District is suspending most COVID-19 testing of students for at least the next month and a half, Superintendent Jill Baker announced in a letter to students and parents Friday evening.

The district had been testing a percentage of students at each school on a weekly basis, but, “In light of the consistently low positivity rate in our schools, we will be pausing the asymptomatic testing of our 10 percent student representative samples starting Monday, Nov. 15, and going at least through the end of the winter break,” Baker said in her letter.

Athletes and LBUSD staff who are unvaccinated will have to continue to test, as well as students who’ve been exposed and are in modified quarantine.

When the school year began, the district was testing all unvaccinated students and staff, then scaled that back to 10% of unvaccinated students in late September. That move and this one were driven by a low positivity rate in the district’s student population, with less than 1% positivity throughout the school year.

“We conducted the original asymptomatic testing process as an extra precaution for the first weeks of school, but it was not required,” wrote Baker. “In fact, most school districts are no longer implementing such testing.”

Baker emphasized that the district will continue other mitigation measures including face masks indoors, air filters and contact tracing. The district has not mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for its students, but they are encouraging it.

The decision to suspend testing comes as the district recently closed three elementary school classes due to multiple COVID-19 cases. This is the first time this school year that three classes have been closed at the same time.

But Brian Moskovitz, the district’s assistant superintendent in charge of the elementary level, pointed out last week that very few of the district’s 1,500 elementary classes have had to close due to COVID-19 outbreaks. The district estimated 8 to 10 such closures since in-person learning resumed.

“We obviously take every case seriously but the virus has been less impactful than we feared,” said Moskovitz in an interview. “The vaccine is now available to students at the elementary level and the city is rolling out those opportunities. All of that is going to help mitigate as we go through the winter season.”

LBUSD temporarily closes 3 elementary school classes due to COVID-19 cases