LAUSD announces app to coordinate COVID-19 factors in step toward reopening
LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles Unified School District Monday announced the launch of "Daily Pass," the first comprehensive system in the nation that coordinates health checks, COVID-19 tests and vaccinations in one online tool.
In a statement released Monday morning, the district called Daily Pass "a critical component of Los Angeles Unified's Safe Steps to Safe Schools' reopening plan.
"The Daily Pass sets the highest standard possible for school safety," said LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner. "MERV-13 upgraded air filters in every school, COVID testing for all students and staff at least every week and now the Daily Pass -- Los Angeles Unified is proud to lead the nation in creating the safest possible school environment."
The LAUSD said it's the first school district -- and likely the largest employer in nation -- to adopt the technology, the district said.
Daily Pass was developed with support from Microsoft Corp. and can be accessed from any mobile phone, tablet or a computer, the district said.
"Since last June, our teams have been collaborating closely with Los Angeles Unified to support running schools remotely," said Eran Meggido, corporate vice president Windows Product & Education, at Microsoft.
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"We are pleased to be working with Los Angeles Unified to help educators, staff and students return to schools sooner and safer."
Daily Pass generates a unique "QR" code for each student and staff member, and that code authorizes entry to a specific LAUSD location for that day only -- as long as the individual receives a negative test result for COVID, shows no symptoms and has a temperature under 100 degrees, the district said.
Upon the individual's arrival to a campus, their QR code is scanned by a district school-site leader, who takes the individual's temperature.
L.A. Unified's school-based vaccination program will also use Daily Pass to register and schedule appointments, track vaccines in stock, perform check-in and data capture at time of appointment, sort high-risk individuals, offer waitlists to low-risk individuals and dashboards to view data, among other features, the district said.
All of this information is shared with the appropriate authorities.
The district said that Daily Pass was tailored to accommodate the diverse types of people who visit a school campus on any given day and to include functions tied to COVID testing and contact tracing and vaccination.
Anonymous data from Daily Pass will be used by the Los Angeles Unified's research and health care collaborators -- Stanford University, UCLA, The Johns Hopkins University, Anthem Blue Cross, Healthnet and Cedars Sinai -- to provide insights for strategies to create the safest possible school environment.
Students, families and employees can access Daily Pass at https://dailypass.lausd.net. Students and employees should use their Los Angeles Unified logins. Family members can log in using their Parent Portal accounts.
While some schools around L.A. County are allowing students up to the sixth grade to return to campus, LAUSD remains closed to in-person learning, as the district's teachers' union demands vaccinations before returning.
Schools got the option of returning to at least some form of in-person learning last week, after the county's rate of new COVID-19 infections dropped below the state's threshold for reopening campuses for students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade.
Schools must meet a wide range of safety protocols before the can reopen to in-person learning.
In-person instruction has been unavailable to the vast majority of the roughly 1.5 million students in public and private schools countywide since March 2020, but the state permits elementary schools to reopen as soon as counties reach an adjusted average new daily case rate of 25 per 100,000 residents.
L.A. County met that threshold Tuesday, when new state figures put the county's case average at 20 per 100,000 residents.
In-person classes cannot resume for grades seven through 12 until the county's rate of new COVID cases falls to seven per 100,000 residents.