Board OKs full return for LUSD students

Just days after a first wave of students returned to campus for the first time in a year, the Lodi Unified School District Board of Education on Tuesday evening gave the go-ahead for a full return for all students on April 12.

The board gave direction to staff to bring all students in kindergarten through 12th grade back for full in-person instruction on a regular schedule, Superintendent Cathy NicholsWasher wrote in a message sent to parents late Tuesday night.

This means that all students will be on campus five days a week with a regular schedule, Nichols-Washer wrote, with a distance-learning option still available for families that don’t feel safe sending their children to school.

Health and safety modifications will remain in place during in-person instruction, she said.

Local students had been distance learning since going on a two-week break in March of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools.

“We are grateful to our Board of Education for their commitment to our students and community,” Nichols-Washer said. “We know that our students will greatly benefit from fulltime, in-person instruction.”

Some primary and priority group students returned to campus this week on a hybrid schedule due to San Joaquin County remaining in the purple tier of the California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy. Elementary students were split into two groups, with one half attending campus two days a week and engaging in remote learning for two days.

If the county had been in the red tier, middle and high school students would also have returned to campus. Currently, San Joaquin County is one of only three counties in the state still in the purple tier.

However, in a March 15 ruling a San Diego judge sided with a group of parents that said pandemic rules unfairly prohibited school districts from reopening for in-person instruction.

The ruling caused the California Department of Public Health to revise its guidelines for school districts, which included changing social distancing between students in classrooms from 4 feet to 3. In addition, districts can offer in-person instruction to any grade level in any tier if their county’s adjusted case rate is less than 25 per 100,000 residents a day.