Lake Tahoe Unified School District closes all 8 campuses due to COVID surge
Lake Tahoe Unified School District closed all eight of its campuses Thursday and Friday due to widespread COVID-19 infections among students and staff.
The district plans to return to in-person instruction Tuesday, after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
“We’ve struggled to keep schools open this week and it has been quite strenuous on our staff as well as our students,” district spokesperson Shannon Chandler wrote in a statement Wednesday. “In looking at (Thursday’s) anticipated absences, it is clear that our staff shortage will continue to increase. All school sites and departments are severely impacted.”
The school district in a Monday letter to parents said it averaged between 40 and 50 teacher and instructional assistant absences as of late last week, “with only approximately 23 substitute teachers” available.
“While our goal absolutely is to keep schools open, it cannot be at the expense of the safety of our staff and students, and we are nearing a tipping point,” district officials wrote Monday.
The letter went on to call campus closures “imminent.”
Lake Tahoe Unified, located in El Dorado County, appears to be the first K-12 district-wide closure in the greater Sacramento area brought on by the omicron surge.
El Dorado County as of Wednesday reported a daily case rate of 101 daily cases per 100,000 residents and a test positivity rate of 24%, each the highest ever reported by the local health office.
Butte Vista Elementary School, a K-8 campus in Yuba City, closed after an undisclosed number of coronavirus cases among students and staff. Butte Vista plans to resume on-campus instruction next Wednesday.
This story was originally published January 13, 2022 at 1:23 PM.
