Dear friends and partners,

To say that the 2019-20 school year was unprecedented would be an understatement. For the first time in LA Unified history, school was in session while campuses were closed. And although it was difficult at the time, I believe our decision to close was the right one that minimized the spread of COVID-19 and saved lives.

And although we physically closed, our work did not stop. Over the last few months, we’ve provided supports to students and families in ways we never imagined we’d need to, including by running the nation’s largest food bank, bridging the digital divide, and providing new summer learning programs to every student. And this is on top of transitioning overnight to distance learning, training tens of thousands of educators in virtual instruction, and supporting this unimaginable effort for employees and families. The transition was not perfect, but the resilience of our school communities was remarkable.

This crisis has also exacerbated existing crises and the last few months have exposed underlying inequities in our system, including racial disparities in the impact of this pandemic and beyond, and have challenged all of us to take action toward justice.

I’m proud that, throughout all of this, my office has provided support to families and schools and continued to push for improvements in the District. LA Unified will start online on August 18, but I will continue to fight to improve the quality of distance instruction. I know we need to do better by our students—and although there is no substitute for face-to-face interactions, I will continue to push for higher expectations and to do all we can to catch students up, meet their social-emotional needs, and get them back in the classroom as soon as we can do so safely.

Amidst this uncertainty, my commitments to you remain unchanged: I will continue to put students and families at the center of our decision-making, ensure that school communities have transparent updates and the support they need, and cut red tape to foster innovative solutions in this unprecedented moment.

Scroll down (or click here) to take a look at what we’ve overcome and what we’ve accomplished together, apart.

Despite these challenges, we hit the ground running to continue meeting the needs of our families and school communities during this unprecedented moment.

As the magnitude of the pandemic’s impact began to unfold, we relied on the core values we’ve always upheld to guide our response: transparent and frequent communication, centering student voices, supporting the social safety net and helping our community, highlighting innovative instruction and sharing best practices, celebrating student achievements, and keeping our commitments to schools.