Letters to the Editor: LAUSD teachers are adapting heroically. They deserve our support

To the editor: Although your print headline says “schools” may not be doing a good job educating students online -- and further reading reveals a scantly researched, hardly representative look at an issue that seems to be less about teaching and more about the lack of supporting technology -- everyone will read “teachers.”

Well, as a teacher’s spouse, I’m watching firsthand as my husband conducts his lectures on Zoom, reshapes his vocabulary tests into essays, figures out how to best teach his Advanced Placement students and coaches his fellow teachers on technologies they haven’t needed to learn until now.

I’d say that within the bureaucratic behemoth that is the Los Angeles Unified School District, everyone seems to be doing pretty great, considering there are 26,000 teachers figuring out, largely on their own, how to accommodate their more than 600,000 students.

Jill Smolin, Los Angeles

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To the editor: When it comes to K-12 education in public schools, technology investment is almost always viewed by many members of the public and some educators as wasteful.

Former LAUSD Supt. John Deasy’s program to give each student an iPad was seen as a ridiculous expenditure only a few years ago. Now?

One way to correct our lack of foresight would be to secure access and equipment for every student immediately. Surely some of those people with little to do at home could figure it out.

Loss of learning for large numbers of students under the conditions reported in this article is what’s really wasteful. Providing access is like providing lunch. Kids need both.

Lynne Culp, Van Nuys

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To the editor: With little warning and negligible experience, it is no surprise that school districts are not prepared for online learning. Families are dealing with entirely new stresses, and adding the role of teacher to a parent who is often clueless will take many weeks of adjustment.

Where is our national educational guru, Betsy DeVos, at this critical moment?

Aviva Monosson, Los Angeles