Southern California public TV stations rise to the COVID-19 academic challenge

It was mid-March when all 700,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District and their parents learned they would learn from home for the rest of the school year as schools shut down to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Local public media organizations PBS SoCal, KLCS, and KCET took up the challenge to ensure students had access to on-air and online educational programming.

Working with LAUSD curriculum leads, the PBS stations redesigned their current programming schedules to include content that met educational requirements; the schedules, along with interactive activities, were delivered to parents and teachers via a weekly newsletter.