Editor’s note: A district spokesman originally provided incorrect information for this article. The third school with a classroom closed because of COVID-19 cases is Webster Elementary, not Carver. The article was updated when the district provided corrected information Thursday afternoon.
The Long Beach Unified School District has been mostly able to avoid blanket COVID-19 closures since students returned to in-person learning, but the virus has continued to be a lingering presence—recently shutting down several classrooms at the same time.
Three LBUSD elementary school classrooms are currently quarantined at home following multiple positive tests among students. The classes at Longfellow, Lowell and Webster are learning remotely until their quarantines lift and students return to their physical classroom.
Overall, there have been between eight and 10 classwide closures at the elementary-school level this school year, according to LBUSD officials, who were not immediately able to provide an exact number.
“None of the students at the elementary level have had the opportunity to be vaccinated, so you have more potential for the close, unvaccinated contact with a positive case that the Health Department is concerned with,” said LBUSD assistant superintendent Brian Moskovitz.
Three classrooms being simultaneously closed for COVID is the largest number the district has experienced so far. On the whole, Moskovitz said, the district has been happy to see those closures occurring rarely.
“We obviously take every case seriously but the virus has been less impactful than we feared,” said Moskovitz. “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.”
Moskovitz pointed out that the district has 1,500 elementary-level classrooms, with three currently on Zoom and the rest in person, and the 8-10 closures so far over the first two-plus months of the school year.
“From the beginning of the year as we’ve been screening students we’ve been well under 1% positivity which I think is lower than the Health Department expected and lower than we expected,” said Moskovitz.
The district has well-developed protocols for when a single student tests positive for COVID-19 and needs to quarantine at home. Throughout the school year, the district has had 1,139 confirmed cases, with 1,053 students and 83 employees (as well as three visitors) testing positive.
Decisions to shut down a classroom, however, are more fluid. Moskovitz said in the instances where there’s been a cluster of cases in a single classroom, the district is working with the Health Department.
“Any time there’s a positive COVID case in any of our classes we communicate with the Health Department, and we’ve had a few instances where the Health Department recommends we close a class,” said Moskovitz. “In those cases, the class reverts back to a Zoom setting.”
Positive cases can be tracked by date and school campus on the district’s COVID-19 dashboard.
Currently, the district is only spot-testing 10% of unvaccinated students at each campus on a weekly basis.
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