We had it coming: Wichitans brushed off COVID-19 advice — now schoolchildren will pay
Parents of about 13,000 Wichita elementary-school students woke up to disappointing news Tuesday, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise:
The state’s largest school district can’t weather the current surge of COVID-19 cases and quarantines, and it’s sending everyone home.
Wichita district leaders voted 6-0 to move all classes online until further notice, citing rising numbers of positive cases and quarantines and a shortage of substitute teachers.
The district’s two-week positive test rate was more than 22% as of Nov. 21, officials reported. The red-zone threshold for closing schools is 15%.
The rate of new cases was about 1,138 per 100,000 people — nearly eight times the red-zone threshold.
Three Wichita elementaries and Levy Special Education Center have already moved to full-remote learning due to a high number of staff absences. Nearly 1,200 employees are under active quarantine. Twenty-two buildings have more than 20% of their staff absent due to COVID-19.
That’s not sustainable. And it’s no one’s fault but our own.
School and public health officials sounded clear warnings recently that too many people are ignoring calls to wear masks and limit gatherings, and that the only way to keep schools open is for everyone to work together.
That didn’t happen. And here we are.
Nobody wants a rehash of last spring, when Gov. Laura Kelly ordered schools closed and one in six high school students had no contact with their teachers for the rest of the school year.
Children are better off in school, in person, with teachers and peers. Our community is better off, too, when parents can go to work — or even work from home — knowing their kids are supervised and actively learning.
But “these numbers are staggering,” Wichita school board member Stan Reeser noted. And they’re unlikely to improve after a Thanksgiving holiday that saw too many families ignoring pleas to forgo large get-togethers.
So what now?
Unless Wichita and surrounding communities get serious about curbing the spread of the coronavirus — that means you, too, Haysville and Butler County — our children won’t return to school buildings anytime soon.
Except middle- and high-school athletes, that is.
Despite a call from local health officials and its own medical advisory committee to postpone the start of winter sports, the Kansas State High School Activities Association voted to allow sports to start on time this week, albeit without fans until the end of January.
It’s a baffling scenario, proceeding with basketball games and wrestling matches but not kindergarten reading circles. It illustrates our haphazard response to the pandemic and our reluctance to give up anything we love, even if it means our children sacrificing their educations.
Fortunately, districts are better prepared now than they were in the spring for an extended period of online learning. Over the past two weeks, Wichita has distributed more than 11,000 laptop computers to elementary schools, finally meeting its goal to provide internet-ready technology to every student.
Nevertheless, the board’s decision leaves parents scrambling to arrange child care, teachers rushing to switch to online lessons and everyone in Wichita facing another wake-up call.
Will we listen or hit the snooze button?
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This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 10:38 AM.