COVID Testing of Students to Pause

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Dear Long Beach Unified Community,

The fall semester has brought a successful reopening of schools to in-person learning largely because of the teamwork of students, parents, staff and community partners. You may recall that we began the school year by administering more than 60,000 asymptomatic COVID-19 tests to students, resulting in a positivity rate of less than 1%. In mid-September we shifted to testing representative samples of 10 percent of students at each school. In all, we have administered more than 116,000 COVID-19 tests since the beginning of the school year, and we have consistently seen a low positivity rate of less than 1%.

Asymptomatic testing is just one of many precautionary measures being taken to manage any potential COVID-19 cases in our schools. We continue to maintain various COVID-19 safety protocols such as wearing face masks, screening for symptoms and staying home when sick, optimizing ventilation, maintaining hand hygiene, case reporting, contact tracing and when necessary, temporary home-quarantining.

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 winter break. We conducted this testing as an extra precaution for the first weeks of school, but it is not required. Most school districts are no longer implementing such testing. Keep in mind that athletes and 菠菜网lol正规平台 staff will still be required to test depending on vaccination status, as well as select students who must test as part of the modified quarantine process. 

As you know, our school district does not currently have a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students. However, we encourage all eligible people to be vaccinated. COVID-19 vaccinations have recently become available for students ages 5 to 11, and a list of November vaccination clinics offered by Long Beach Health and Human Services is available here.

Again, we’re thankful for the tremendous community effort that has helped us to bring students back to classrooms this fall.

With deep appreciation,

Jill

Jill A. Baker, Ed.D.