Nearly half of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) students—or about 200,000 students—have been “chronically absent” since September —meaning they have missed almost 10 percent of school days this year, according to an April 3 story in the Los Angeles Times. This comes as the district struggles to recover from setbacks brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, even as schools returned to in-person learning this year and mask mandates were lifted last month. At the height of the Omicron variant surge in January, about 30 percent of students—or 180,000—did not attend classes the first week, according to the Los Angeles Times, due to either testing positive for the virus or due to technical issues uploading their COVID-19 status to the district’s “Daily Pass” mobile app, which was required. Though nearly 90 percent of students over 12 years old are vaccinated, those that aren’t and who are exposed to the virus …