This week, as a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, I voted to declare a state of emergency. On Friday, we made the difficult decision to shut down schools for nearly 700,000 students across 700 square miles for at least the next two weeks.

This decision has forced us to grapple with two crises. The first is the one we are seeing in every headline: a pandemic ravaging communities across the world. Also urgent, however, is the crisis of child poverty, which increasingly strains education systems that are trying to fill in the gaps of our social safety net.

We had to weigh both crises in deciding how to protect the health and safety of families and employees. If we close schools, will children have access to food and a refuge during the day? Will parents be forced to decide between taking a child to work or staying home and losing wages? Will more children congregate outside of school or be shuttled off for child care to grandparents, who are at higher risk?

On the other hand, if we keep schools open, can we minimize the spread of the virus, especially without access to adequate testing? Are we protecting higher-risk employees? With our bus routes traveling the distance of 4 times around the globe each day, are we creating unnecessary travel and touch points throughout the city?