Wichita school board to review fall sports cancellation at Tuesday meeting
The Board of Education for Wichita Public Schools will review its decision to cancel fall sports and extracurricular activities at a meeting on Tuesday.
The school board members will review recommendations from an advisory committee formed for the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 advisory committee meets Monday. The Tuesday board of education meeting starts at 6 p.m. with the primary agenda item being discussion of the committee’s recommendation.
The school board meeting can be viewed live through WPS-TV on Cox Channel 20 or online at www.usd259.org/wpstvonline.
Public comment may be submitted by emailing the clerk of the board at mwillome@usd259.net prior to 8 a.m. Tuesday. Complete contact information is needed, including the full name, full address and phone number.
Board President Sheril Logan at an Aug. 24 meeting asked people not to contact the members of the advisory committee.
“It won’t make a difference. The reason is, they’re looking at this guide,” she said, referring to the district’s gating criteria.
Committee membership is supposed to include school board members, district administrators, representatives from the teacher union and the service employee union, community leaders, health officials, parents and doctors. United Teachers of Wichita President Kimberly Howard said last week that the union has no position on fall sports.
The color-coded gating criteria matrix is used as a guide for school reopening decision based on COVID-19 statistics. When the school board met Aug. 20, doctors said the numbers placed the district in the orange zone, which meant no fall athletics and moving middle and high school classes online only.
The gating criteria is a modified version of the Kansas Department of Education’s gating criteria, which was developed by educators and doctors, including pediatricians and a psychologist. The USD 259 criteria include the two-week positive test rate, the two-week rate of new cases compared to population and the trend in the case rate.
Gov. Laura Kelly on Aug. 24 announced that “we had a bad week” for coronavirus spread and recommended moving high-risk sports like football to the spring. But Dr. Lee Norman, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment secretary, said Wednesday that “I think those things are important and if they can be done safely to mitigate the risk, I think it would be great to continue with them.”
“The public health advice I think that I would give is that this would be a ‘gap year’ for doing anything that’s truly optional and stick with the things that are truly essential for schools,” Norman added. “From a public health perspective, there’s no question we would reduce the risk of disease transmission were we not to have those (sports).”
Sports practices stopped in Wichita after the Aug. 20 decision from the school board. The district athletic director, J. Means, told the board on Aug. 24 that there had been a small number of positive COVID-19 cases among students and coaches over the summer.
“We had over 1,500 (kids participate in summer workouts) and we had six cases,” Means said. “I’ll do the math for you. That’s .004%.”
The percent is actually 0.4%.
Board member Ben Blankley said on Aug. 24 that he thinks Wichita has been lucky.
“Right now, the level of community spread is such that if you grab 500 random Wichitans, there’s going to be a COVID case in there. ... Every decision we’re making here is rolling the dice,” Blankley said. “I just don’t understand — I don’t think it’s responsible to wait until we have a confirmed mass exposure that requires 120 students and staff out on quarantine to say that I don’t think this is a great idea. It sucks, it really sucks.”
Last week, the district had five employees from five different schools test positive for the coronavirus disease. There were 80 employees placed under quarantine last week, and as of Friday there were 190 employees currently under quarantine.
Blankley said the district can put a lot of effort into trying to reopening safely with activities.
“But if just a tiny, tiny minority of folks aren’t doing the right thing at every time at every opportunity, then all of our plans are for naught, and then we’re back in the same situation that we are right now where we have all activities canceled,” he said.
Hundreds of students and adults have protested the decision, advocating to let the athletes play. A protest Aug. 23 at Northwest High School had little social distancing, though most attendees wore masks. A second protest was held at North High School on Aug. 24 before the school board meeting.
“I saw all the kids out exercising their right to free speech, and I really appreciate that they’re out there doing that,” the Service Employees International Union representative told the school board on Aug. 24. “And it looks like they’re all doing it very safely to wear their masks. ... I wish there was that many kids out there screaming let us in the doors so we can learn.”
This story was originally published August 30, 2020 at 5:12 PM.