Weekly roundup: Santa Ana student artwork to be displayed on school bus, database for reporting positive COVID cases, and more

A student from Saddleback High School in the Santa Ana Unified School District has won an art contest sponsored by JFK Transportation, and soon her artwork will be displayed on a school bus.

SAUSD Bus contest winner

Jazmin Suarez won the high school division of the competition, titled “#2020VISION Through The Eyes of a Student.” Her entry features a school bus wearing a face mask and the words: “Wear your mask so that I can wear my backpack.”

JFK Transportation will wrap a bus in Suarez’ artwork and will hold a ceremony later this month to recognize all contest winners.

And here are some of the other stories we’re following this week:

  • State public health officials this week launched a new Healthy Places Index aimed at spotlighting disparities in neighborhoods that have higher shares of positive COVID-19 tests than the rest of their counties. The new metric serves as a third test going forward that will decide in which of the state’s pandemic tracking system’s four tiers a county falls into.
  • Hundreds of elementary students in the Laguna Beach Unified School District returned to school sites this week, marking the first time families have stepped on campuses in almost seven months.
  • Fullerton Joint Union High School District and LaHabra City School District join the growing list of local districts returning to in-person learning. Fullerton announced this week that students will return to in-person instruction under a hybrid learning model on Nov. 2, with LaHabra bringing TK-K student back on Oct. 19, first and second grade students on Oct. 29, third and fourth grade students on Nov. 9, and grades five through eight on Nov. 16.
  • And finally, the Los Angeles Unified School District director of athletics this week presented a tentative timeline for the return of school athletics in LAUSD to more than 150 local athletic directors. The timeline begins with a COVID-19 testing protocol window from Oct. 19-30, with an attempt to have all sports teams eligible to begin tryouts and conditioning on Nov. 2.

This is the part where we encourage you to keep up with local education news stories by bookmarking the OCDE Newsroomsubscribing for emailed updates and following us on FacebookTwitter and Instagram.