About 180,000 LAUSD Students Absent from First Day of Spring Semester

A student shows her negative COVID-19 test result from her cellphone for entry to Olive Vista Middle School on the first day back in Sylmar, Calif., on January 11, 2022. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

LOS ANGELES—Amid a surge in COIVD-19 cases, almost one-third of students were absent on Jan. 11, the first day of the spring semester in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

The district serves over 600,000 students, of whom 30 percent—about 180,000—did not go back to school on Tuesday, mostly because of testing positive or experiencing technical issues when uploading their test results to the district’s Daily Pass mobile application.