Los Rios colleges start semester with online classes due to COVID surge in Sacramento area
Los Rios Community College District officials on Monday announced they decided to temporarily move most in-person classes, labs, and services online for the start of the semester because of the “skyrocketing” number of COVID-19 cases throughout the Sacramento region.
The move to remote classes is for all four Los Rios colleges, including American River College, Cosumnes River College, Folsom Lake College and Sacramento City College. The college courses will remain online until Jan. 31.
“As we prepared to welcome you to a new semester, we had hoped to be resuming a much more normal schedule of on-campus activities, classes, and services,” district officials wrote in an email to students Monday afternoon. “Unfortunately, we find ourselves again at the mercy of this tenacious pandemic, with the highly contagious COVID-19 omicron variant surging throughout our region, state, and nation.”
Career education programs that cannot be converted to online and were held in-person during the last year will continue to be held in-person, district officials said. Traditional lecture classes, science labs, arts and ESL classes will move online for the first two weeks of the 2022 spring semester, which was scheduled to start Jan. 15.
“While we are fortunate to know that our employees and students are vaccinated, the sheer volume of cases has led to concerns about serious breakthrough cases, rising hospitalization rates in our region, and the operational impacts of large-scale staff and student absences,” district officials wrote in the email to students.
As of Oct. 1, the Los Rios colleges have required that all students taking in-person classes or using in-person services meet the COVID-19 vaccination requirement, according to the Los Rios district COVID-19 updates web page. For the spring 2022 semester, the college district requires evidence of full COVID-19 vaccination or an approved exemption for all students who access district and college facilities.
District officials on Monday “strongly” encouraged everyone to get tested before coming to campus by using free Sacramento County resources, at-home COVID tests, or on-campus COVID testing resources. They also urged all students and employees eligible to immediately get a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot, since boosters are proven to dramatically reduce the chances of contracting the omicron variant and becoming seriously ill.
On-campus testing centers initially were designed to only handle testing for those with approved medical or religious exceptions or special programs, like athletics. District officials said they expect to have significantly expanded testing capacity by Jan. 31, when many experts believe the omicron surge should begin to wane.
Los Rios officials said they expect the district in the next several weeks will start to require booster shots for all eligible students and employees on campus as an extension of the district existing COVID vaccination policy.
The district recommended that all Los Rios students and employees on campus use surgical masks or higher-level respirator N95 or KN95 masks instead of cloth masks or any other face-covering providing less protection in accordance with the California Department of Public Health’s latest guidance on masks. District officials said each college’s operations department already has an inventory of surgical masks available for those who need them, and they were in the process of getting more.
Most Sacramento State University classes and labs will meet virtually for the first two weeks of the spring semester in response to rising number of COVID-19 cases, President Robert S. Nelsen announced last week. UC Davis will hold classes virtually for essentially all of January due to the omicron variant surge, extending what was originally announced as a one-week transition to four weeks of classes.
This story was originally published January 10, 2022 at 5:25 PM.
