Back-to-School Beginnings and COVID-19 with LA County Board of Supervisor Kathryn Barger & LA County Office of Education Superintendent Dr. Debra Duardo.
Posted on March. 23. 2021
Date: 3/11/21
SPEAKERS:
Back-to-School Beginnings and COVID-19 with LA County Board of Supervisor Kathryn Barger & LA County Office of Education Superintendent Dr. Debra Duardo.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger | kathryn@bos.lacounty.gov
Supervisor Kathryn Barger serves the residents of Los Angeles County’s 5th District.
Los Angeles City Council District 5 is one of the 15 districts of the Los Angeles City Council. Kathryn was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2016, and served as Chair of the Board in 2020. Kathryn serves on the boards of Metrolink, Los Angeles
County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, North County Transportation Coalition, High Desert Corridor Joint Powers Authority, National Association of
Counties’ Large Urban County Caucus, Southern California Association of Governments, and Los Angeles County Mental Health Commission, among others.
Eloisa Gonzalez | elgonzalez@ph.lacounty.gov
Eloisa Gonzalez, MD, MPH, is the Director of Integrative Medicine at the Wellness Center at LAC+USC Historic General Hospital, Director of Cardiovascular and School Health at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and the spokesperson for the COVID-19 vaccine for Spanish-language media. She received her Doctor of Medicine from Stanford University School of Medicine, her MPH in Health Services Administration from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and her BS in Biochemistry from California State University, Long Beach.
Dr. Debra Duardo | duardo_debra@lacoe.edu
Debra Duardo was appointed Los Angeles County Superintendent of School in
2016, designating her as the top education leader of the nation’s most populous
and diverse county. Her unique life experience as a high school dropout able to
overcome obstacles and rise to the position of County Superintendent drives her
passion to ensure that all students receive an good education and are
college-prepared. She holds a master’s degree in Social Work from the University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a doctorate from UCLA’s Graduate School of
Education and Information Studies.
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Nathan Kuo |
minecki_margo@lacoe.edu (contact: Margo Minecki)
Nathan is currently a senior at Arcadia High School. He is involved in student government, academic teams, and service organizations. He is Taiwanese American and enjoys spending time with his extended family on the weekends and during the holidays. His hobbies include photography, reading, and playing with his shiba Lacey. He is passionate about transforming the criminal justice system and
addressing homelessness. Nathan hopes to contribute to advancing equality and engaging in philanthropy in the future.
Supervisor Cathryn Barger:
The state is giving the green light to reopen all classrooms in LA COUNTY. Let’s mention that, amid all communities in LA County, there is the largest concentration of Armenians in the world outside of Armenia.
So to reopen the schools in LA County, 5 strategies should be followed:
- Wearing Masks
- Physical Distancing
- Washing your hands
- Cleaning facilities and improving ventilation in classrooms and school buildings.
- Maintaining Tracing, isolation, and quarantine program should anyone taste positive.
Actually, schools are developing remarquable efforts to keep students, teachers, and staff safe and healthy.
Parents expressed frustration with the online learning.
And students are looking eagerly, enthusiastically to go back to school, to see their friends, and their teachers, but they want to come back safely.
Eloisa Gonzalez:
- Declining numbers in hospitalizations and deaths.
- Decreasing daily death which continues to decline.
But there are still high suffering, and high hospitalizations.
Public Health is working with the Board of Supervisors to plan additional re-opening.
They are vaccinating their residents, 65 years and older. These residents continue to have the highest vaccine rate.
They are improving some progress in vaccination rate in the hard hit communities ( Black- African Americans).
They are making progress in all communities in all races ( ethnicities):
-American Indian
-White
-Alaska Native
-Asian
-Latinx
The vaccination rate
Increases in all communities.
They are prioritizing that hard hit communities have access to this vaccine.
They are employing sites vaccination.
Strategies that they are using to ensure that happens are :
1) having site vaccination in areas that they are the most impacted by pandamic.
2)collaborating with based communities and partners to make appointments for communities residents.
3) create ways to solve transportation and registration barriers. Make sure that everyone have access to the vaccine.
There is still hesitation in people to be vaccinated. the most community that would like to be vaccinated are the black and the Latin ethnicity.
The supervisors are in cooperation with community leaders to give accurate informations about the vaccine. They understand their hesitation but vaccines prevent illnesses and deaths.
They are keeping partnerships with their community leaders, community organizations. Even if they are vaccinated they should still maintain social distancing, masks, sanitizers, cleaning.
They should keep always precautions.
They should control the spread of the virus. By end of May, all adults can be vaccinated.
Phone number for assistance: 8335400437
They also have Promotoras Program. They have their Promotoras health workers who made vaccination sites, and they help people
to schedule appointments.
Dr. Debra Duardo
They are the larger organization who serve schools, education in LA County.
Schools have lost the academic loss, and students experienced traumas after one whole year of closing schools because of pandamic.
They need to reach a quality education.
Since schools closed, district schools were preparing to reopen them.
They served all their district schools.
Schools have been opened and others yet to open.
Schools are receiving vaccines. Some schools are already vaccinated. They are providing resources to schools like training etc… Six billion dollars have been provided to schools district to make sure they purchase PPE that they need, the masks, hiring more people, and hiring counselors for mental health.
They made a lot of work to reach LA Districts, to talk about what they can do to keep schools safe.
They have safety plans to make sure teachers and students come back to schools safely. They are assessing the needs of their students.