The Los Angeles Unified School District opened 60 “Grab & Go” food centers Wednesday to provide students with meals during the district’s coronavirus-prompted closure, but it was unclear exactly how long the program will continue.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday said schools across the state could potentially remain closed for the remainder of the school year.
Speaking to reporters at one of the LAUSD’s food centers at Dorsey High School, Superintendent Austin Beutner said he expects to give an update on long-range plans early next week.
“We’ll be sharing with our school community on Monday what we believe the path forward is,” he said. “Our goal today, tomorrow is to make sure that we provide as much support (for) our families that we can.”
The district had originally planned to open 40 Family Resource Centers, offering more complete services for families of students, including child care. But Beutner said Monday the district was unable to secure needed health and public safety approvals.
“At this time, state and local health and public safety officials cannot assure us it will be safe for the children and adults at the Family Centers for us to provide care for children at these sites,” Beutner wrote in a statement Monday.
“We are deeply disappointed — we had an outpouring of support from the community and many thousands of employees signed up to serve at the centers,” he said. “But we said from the outset we would only open these if we could be certain it would be safe and appropriate to do so and, unfortunately, health authorities cannot give us that assurance. I cannot ask anyone to work at one of the centers, or open them to children, unless we can be assured of their safety.”
With the Family Resource Centers derailed, the district instead opened 60 “Grab & Go” food centers, which will provide students with two meals daily. The centers will be open each day from 7 to 10 a.m.
A full list of the center locations is available on the district’s website, lausd.net.