Hi, I'm Dampramack and welcome to Axios Recap.

Today is Tuesday, July 21st.

The Dow is up, LinkedIn's head count is about to go down by 6%

and we're focused on America's second largest school district.

On August 18th, the school year will begin for over half a million kids in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

But unlike in many other parts of America, L.A. is not debating whether or not to send kids into the classroom.

It's already decided to be fully remote, at least as the city battles rapidly

rising coronavirus spread, including over 9,000 new cases yesterday. Why LA matters beyond its size

is that lots of other school districts might be looking to it for pragmatic inspiration. For example,

LA Unified has managed to procure and distribute internet

connected devices to nearly all of its students, and also worked with Verizon to get broadband

into student homes that didn't already have it. It's also figured out things like Saturday

school and ESL programs and one-on-one teaching and even teacher assessments, all with union

blessing.

Now, to be sure, not everything in LA schools is going to be perfect.

Remote learning continues to be a very poor substitute for in-class education, and LA

is paying for these programs with theoretical tax revenue from future years.

For now, though, L.A. does seem to be ahead of the class.

To go deeper on this, I am pleased to be joined by L.A. Unified School District Superintendent Austin Butner.

At what point did you make the decision for L.A. public schools to go entirely remote for the start of the school year?

We formally made it as about two weeks ago.

We could see it tracking in that direction toward the latter half of May, early June.

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