California Public Schools are still recovering from the pandemic as schools across the state experience a decline in student enrollment since returning to in-person classes.
California was the first state to close all in-person classes at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
Many students were immediately learning from home over “Zoom school” with local administrators struggling to provide online classes in the best ways possible as the lockdown affected students, faculty, and staff.
Many parents had to stay home from work to help their children with their class assignments, along with many parents who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. This put extra strain on students’ success rate from virtual learning.
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent Alberto Carvalho outlined a plan to help students recover from in-person education loss in his 2022–26 Strategic Plan. The plan includes summer school, more available tutoring, and hiring additional counselors and mental health workers to assist students with their educational and mental health needs.
Improving Enrollment Rates
Carvalho, in an article on Education Week published in December, outlined his approach to improving enrollment rates and student learning outcomes for 2023.“School districts are still facing a barrage of challenges from pandemic disruptions, and many leaders find themselves in a paralyzing predicament where solutions are no longer straightforward or even accessible,” Carvalho wrote.
Carvalho acknowledged the difficulties brought on by the pandemic while adding that LAUSD has been focusing on attendance for the 2022-23 school year and outlined some of the measures taken.
“We implemented a student outreach and -attendance initiative called iAttend for which we have dedicated staff members calling and visiting families to ensure students are in classrooms learning,” he said.
Carvalho said the initiative “successfully identified reasons for chronic absenteeism and implemented intervention efforts. Just within the past year, this has helped us decrease chronic absenteeism by 5 percent and increased ‘excellent’ attendance by 3 percent over the previous year.”
He also listed fully leveraging pandemic funding, closing the digital divide, expanding tutoring opportunities, and boosting instructional time as areas his district is focusing on.
Despite the challenges that children faced during virtual learning, Gov. Gavin Newsom insists it was the best decision for children during the pandemic.
“While California’s students experienced less learning loss than those in most other states during the pandemic, these results are not a celebration but a call to action—students are struggling academically and we need to keep getting them the resources they need to thrive,” he said.
“That’s why we’ve made record investments in education, created a new pre-K grade, implemented universal free meals, expanded before and after school programs, bolstered mental health, and more.”