Thousands of LAUSD students attend acceleration day classes

LOS ANGELES - Winter break was delayed for thousands of Los Angeles Unified School District students who enrolled in the district's first "acceleration day" designed to help students recover learning lost during the pandemic.

Roughly 72,000 LAUSD students signed up for the acceleration classes scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at about 300 campuses across the district. Two more acceleration days are scheduled during the district's spring break.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho had initially announced that the four additional instructional days would be held during the regular school year, which would then end four days later than usual.

But dissent from the teachers' union, which said the days were added without consultation with the labor organization, led to a rescheduling of the days during the winter and spring breaks. District employees who work for the acceleration days during the breaks will be paid.

Carvalho personally visited a trio of campuses Monday that hosted acceleration day classes, and he even taught an ecology class at Maywood Center for Enriched Studies Magnet.

"This is an additional chance for these students to graduate on time through credit recovery and completion of assignments," the superintendent said.

He also noted that some students participating in the days will have an immediate chance to improve their grades.

"About 250 of them are here because they have an agreement with their teachers -- if they submit a number of assignments, their letter grade in their classes will improve," Carvalho said.

Some students at the Maywood school told KNX Newsradio they didn't mind being in class on the first day of winter break.

"I get the extra help that I need that I can't get during the school time," one student said.

Another said, "I mean, I wish I could have done better on my grades, put more effort into it to not have to come. But I mean, I'm just happy to have the opportunity to improve my grade."