Kendall Tietz
A California activist group calculated that students in Los Angeles County missed over 90,000 school days in the span of a month, Fox News reported.
In about a month a total of 92,455 in-person school days in Los Angeles County were lost, which Jonathan Zachreson, the founder of Reopen California Schools called “astounding,” Fox News reported Monday. Quarantine measures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic kept kids home from school, which led to the learning loss that Zachreson said “could have been avoided” if school officials hadn’t intervened in public health matters.
Many students were able to stay in school because of “Test to Stay” programs, which allow unvaccinated students who are exposed to the virus to stay in school as long as they are asymptomatic, wear a mask and take two COVID-19 tests a week, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
“I don’t know why they weren’t doing that to begin with,” Zachreson told Fox News. “All of this shows what we’ve parents have been advocating since last summer is that it’s safe to be at school. Schools should have never closed. And it’s that, you know, government officials have taken a year and a half to get to a point that we should have been, you know, at the opening of schools in 2020.”
Chronic absenteeism rose from 11.5% in 2019 to 28.6% in 2021 due to what Reopen California Schools said is “excessive & unnecessary quarantine policies.
Out of the 2,067 schools within Los Angeles County, only 432 schools used the “Test to Stay” strategy, Fox News reported.
“The California Department of Education or leaders of the state, the state legislature, even Governor Newsom could just issue a statement that says, ‘Hey, stop quarantining, kids. Follow this test to state guidance,’ at least asking, and they’re not even bringing it up,” Zachreson told the outlet.
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