Culver City Students Return To School After Shutdown

CULVER CITY (CBSLA) — Students in Culver City returned to classes Monday after a surge of COVID-19 cases forced the district to cancel classes for a week.

"We went from every three days a new case reported to an average of 52 new cases per day," said Culver City School District Superintendent Quoc Tran. "That's 140 times more than the return of school after the winter break."

Culver City schools were not saved from the Omicron surge as cases increased threefold as students returned to school after their winter breaks. From August 2020 to Jan 3, the distract reported about 180 cases of coronavirus. Since the start of the new semester three weeks ago, the school district reported 600 cases after just 10 days of instruction.

According to Tran, following the week-long stoppage the daily case rate dropped by about a third. He also said that families can now pick up free medical-grade masks and take home COVID test kits at school.

"The safer the home, the safer the school," Tran said. "And the safer the school the safer the home."

Students must show a negative test result to come back to class. Tests could be done on campus or through the at-home test kits the district is distributing.

"We've become professionals at doing the test at home the last couple weeks," said parent Tim Jacobsen. "I think that's the way to go."

The superintendent said the days that were missed last week will be made up before the summer break.