When you've lost the L.A. Times editorial board....

Even the left-wing editorial board of the Southland's biggest newspaper has had enough. They call on teachers' unions to quit holding kids, parents, and school districts hostage, follow the science, and let the schools reopen.

Schools have been reopening across the country for months now, illustrating that students can return to classrooms with little risk if the proper precautions have been taken. This is especially true of elementary schools, as younger children have been far less likely to be sickened with COVID-19 or to infect others. Reopened schools have not caused infections to surge in outlying communities.

Yet Los Angeles Unified schools — along with many other public schools statewide — have remained closed. Supt. Austin Beutner, who has been struggling with a teachers union unwilling to send educators back into classrooms, couldn’t have opened the schools anyway because the county’s infection rate was too high to meet the state’s stringent standards. But this week, that rate fell to the point where it is officially safe for all elementary schools in the county to open.

And yet Beutner, who is still embroiled in talks with the United Teachers Los Angeles, has no immediate plans to reopen.

There are no more excuses. Further delay is unacceptable.

Read the whole thing here.

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Photo taken by Tony Hoffarth.