Some LAUSD schools see smoother return to campus after long lines, delays on first day
Things went a lot smoother at Los Angeles Unified School District campuses on Tuesday after several issues made for a hard first day of school.
On Monday, long lines were seen wrapped around several school campuses, including North Hollywood High School, as students waited to get the all-clear to enter the classroom.
On Tuesday morning, smaller to almost no lines were seen.
One of the factors that contributed to the first-day frustrations was the Daily Pass app, which is used by the district to screen students' health and verify their negative COVID-19 test. All students and staff are required to be tested weekly in order to be on campus, regardless of vaccination status. Baseline testing in the past two weeks uncovered more than 3,600 positive cases.
District officials say the app created delays because about 400,000 people were trying to use it at the same time.
On the second day of school, parents and students felt much better.
"The line was down the street, the entire length of the school yesterday and I was ready to turn around and go home. But today is looking much better. ," said parent May Mallari.
District officials are advising parents to log onto the app before arriving on campus and take a screen shot or print out a hard copy of the test results to smooth out the process.
One LAUSD school board member said for the second-largest school district in the nation, things are always going to be chaotic, and the pandemic was bound to create more bumps along the road.
"Some of the challenge was unrelated to the app, some was kids were coming to enroll and so we actually had to enroll new students. Others didn't have their baseline testing," said board member Nick Melvoin, who added that they are working on kinks in terms of entrances and exits on campus.
The district also said they spoke with the makers of the app at Microsoft to make sure it can handle the capacity they promised, and were told the issues should be resolved.
