LCUSD cancels out-of-state school trips amid coronavirus concerns
La Cañada Unified officials on Tuesday canceled all upcoming district-sponsored out-of-state trips and explored a worst-case scenario plan for shifting students and teachers to remote learning in response to the swiftly spreading novel coronavirus and potential impacts to health and travel.
School board members already assembled for a regular meeting added a discussion item to Tuesday’s agenda to provide immediate direction to Supt. Wendy Sinnette to act in advance of several trips being planned out of state.
Parents of Crescenta Valley High School students are considering suing the travel company currently not issuing monetary refunds for a spring break trip to Japan canceled over coronavirus precautions.
As a result, Paradise Canyon Elementary School’s annual fifth-grade Valley Forge trip and the La Cañada High School concert choir trip to New Orleans — both scheduled for late March — will not take place as planned.
An LCHS instrumental music trip to New York City as well as a world-level FIRST robotics championship in Houston and a WGI percussion and color guard world championship in Ohio, all planned for April, may also be canceled as the suspension remains ongoing until further action is taken by the district.
“What we’re concerned about now is air travel,” said LCUSD Supt. Wendy Sinnette. “Some of the concerns are that we can’t mitigate factors at airports, and we do run the risk of exposure in those highly impacted environments.”
Officials described fears of elementary school students being held in quarantine out of state and away from their parents and the possibility of students being stranded at airports or rerouted with just a chaperone to guide them.
“The situation right now with airline travel is very dicey,” said school board member Ellen Multari. “There’s a real chance that our students could be somewhere and find their flight is canceled or that all of our kids cannot come back on the same flight — there are a lot of variables.”
Officials vowed to help spread the word throughout the community about the cancellation of travel plans.
While Freedoms Foundation, the nonprofit organizer of school trips to Valley Forge, has offered to allow Paradise Canyon students to visit in the fall of their sixth-grade year as an alternative, there was no promise airfare or expenses for other trips would be returned to parents.
In a statement to parents on the district’s website, Sinnette said Wednesday the district was working with field trip vendors to help recoup costs or possibly postpone trips.
Meanwhile, LCUSD aims to encourage “social distancing.” The high school’s spring choral festival at United Methodist Church in Pasadena, which officials considered livestreaming, has instead been rescheduled for May 20 according to choral director Jeff Brookey.
La Cañada Educational Foundation officials announced Wednesday the group’s 29th annual Spring Gala fundraiser, scheduled for March 21, had been canceled to minimize health risks of the novel coronavirus.
School board member Dan Jeffries said Tuesday the district had two priorities — keeping kids safe and protecting community members from the virus.
“There are very, very different views of where we are on this,” he said. “I think our actions will be judged after the fact on how well they turn out.”
At Tuesday night’s meeting, Sinnette and LCUSD Chief Technology Officer Jamie Lewsadder told board members the district was already preparing for the event of possible school closures, should new COVID-19 cases from the novel coronavirus come to La Cañada.
“We’d work with families, so they’d have what they needed and we could continue our learning seamlessly,” she said.
Lewsadder explained the district’s recent tech upgrades created an infrastructure robust enough to support remote instruction. With 162 school closures already announced nationwide, LCUSD teachers have been offered up to five hours of planning time to develop remote lessons to recreate classrooms online.
Several area colleges and universities announced this week plans to shift classes online, while Los Angeles and Pasadena unified school districts announced similar suspensions of district-sponsored trips out of state.
Sinnette promised Tuesday to provide weekly community updates on coronavirus mitigation efforts every Wednesday following a superintendents’ teleconference held by the Los Angeles County Office of Education and Department of Public Health.
“There are a lot of difficult decisions that will have to be made,” she said. “But there’s some excellent planning and infrastructure that’s gone on … and we’re in a strong position.”
