On his first day as Los Angeles schools superintendent, Austin Beutner visited 11 campuses in 12 hours, boarding a school bus before dawn and later slinging aside his suit jacket to take afternoon batting practice. In his last weeks, he hopscotched around the reopened district, talking up summer school in South L.A. and showcasing robotics at Roosevelt High on the Eastside. A former Wall Street executive with no experience in education management, Beutner wanted to see schools and be seen at schools; those visits, he said, energized him. Yet his tenure would be defined by events outside the classroom, in ways no one imagined when he was appointed chief of the nation's second-largest school district in 2018. At the time, he was seen as a controversial choice who, for better or worse, was going to shake things up. Instead, the coronavirus pandemic threw the district into unprecedented turmoil.

Once COVID-19 vaccines are available to children, Los Angeles students will have to be immunized before they can return to campus, Supt. He did not, however, suggest that campuses remain closed until the vaccines are available. Instead, he said, the state should set the standards for reopening schools, explain the reasoning behind the standards, and then require campuses to open when these standards are achieved. A COVID-19 vaccine requirement would be "no different than students who are vaccinated for measles or mumps," Beutner said in a pre-recorded briefing. He also compared students, staff and others getting a COVID-19 vaccine to those who "are tested for tuberculosis before they come on campus. That's the best way we know to keep all on a campus safe."