Wichita Public Schools’ fall sports are canceled. USD 259 decides it’s too dangerous
There will be no sports in Wichita USD 259 this fall.
The Wichita Public Schools Board of Education voted 5-2 to place the district in the “orange”-level gating criteria, as outlined by the Kansas Department of Education, to start the school year.
In doing so, all fall activities, including high school football, are canceled.
The Orange level is intended to be enacted when a 10%-14.9% positive case rate exists in Sedgwick County over a period of two weeks, with 101-150 new cases present in the county during that time. It calls for pre-kindergarten through grade 5 students to be taught either onsite or via remote learning, and grades 6-12 students to be strictly limited to remote learning. That applies to activities, including sports, too, and visitor access to schools should be “extremely limited by appointment.”
The Wichita City League (Greater Wichita Athletic League, or GWAL) on Tuesday announced that its schools’ sports programs would only compete against other City League teams this fall. It canceled two regular-season football games for all nine schools, but on Thursday, the other six were canceled, too.
City League athletic director J Means told The Eagle that the league’s two schools that aren’t part of USD 259, Bishop Carroll and Kapaun Mt. Carmel, could decide to move on without the rest of the league.
Wichita Public Schools’ decision falls in line with Kansas City, Kan., and Wyandotte public schools and comes just hours after the Topeka Public Schools system announced it would cancel the first week of fall activities, according to WIBW Topeka.
Thursday’s decision here was not made easily or without much deliberation. Many of the seven members on the board of education mentioned the hundreds if not thousands of phone calls and emails they’d received about the topics of returning to school and returning to activities, including sports.
District 1 representative Ben Blankley called it, “Likely the most input any local politician in Wichita has received in years.” More than half of the board members called Thursday’s decision, “One of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make.”
“I’ve been on this board when we’ve had to close buildings, when we had to cut $90 million out of our budget over six years, so every year we were cutting things that I knew hurt kids,” board president Sheril Logan said. “Those hurt me, but this really has been a difficult decision because we’re talking about health and keeping kids safe and keeping our staff safe.”
On July 28, the Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) executive board voted to remain on course with regularly scheduled fall seasons. Practices for fall activities, including football — even at Wichita Public Schools — started Monday. The first high school football games in Kansas, for schools that will be playing this year, are scheduled for Sept. 4.
Although KSHSAA made its decision three weeks ago, each school district had to decide individually whether in-class instruction and activities would proceed based on conditions local to their communities.
The Wichita Public Schools board also created a COVID-19 advisory committee Thursday night, and voted that criteria used to make this week’s decision would be re-evaluated every nine weeks, leaving winter sports like basketball and wrestling intact for now.
But football, boys soccer, volleyball, girls tennis, girls golf and boys and girls cross country are gone for Wichita Public Schools for 2020.
“The part that really breaks my heart is the athletics, and we won’t have them,” District 5 representative Mike Rodee said. “But we can’t have everything.”
Thursday’s decision means Nov. 30 is the earliest that Wichita Public Schools will see any high school competition, more than eight months after KSHSAA canceled the second half of the state basketball tournaments on March 12.
Here’s some of the reaction Thursday night from players and coaches in the district:
This story was originally published August 20, 2020 at 9:47 PM.