The irony is not lost that Wednesday’s meeting to decide whether Kansas schools should delay opening until after Labor Day was conducted remotely via Zoom.
Sequestered in their homes, members of the Kansas Board of Education voted to allow schools to resume mid-August, despite the evidence that state cases of COVID-19 continue in an upward trajectory. From Monday to Wednesday, cases increased by 770, now topping 24,000.
Wednesday’s vote was 5-5. On such a critical issue, leadership should have demanded a unanimous decision.
The tie vote means the board will not support Gov. Laura Kelly’s request that public K-12 schools wait to open until after Labor Day.
Instead of calling the shots, members gave the responsibility as to the best course forward to the state’s 309 individual school districts.
So one must ask, why have a state board if it’s afraid to lead?
Had the state BOE decided to uphold Kelly’s recommendation, we could assume all schools would be on the same page.
Now, it will be a scattershot response, much like our national situation, sending mixed messages as to how best guard against the pandemic.
Our guess is that urban schools with high rates of cases will feel compelled to postpone until at least after Labor Day, while those with fewer cases will take their chances.
As one of the largest employers in most communities a school district’s response will be a signal to the community as a whole its interpretation of the pandemic and what means it will take to secure the health of its students, teachers and staff.
At the very least, social distancing, face masks and strict hygiene should become second nature.
A worry for Iola is that its buildings are far from adequate to address this health crisis.
In Iola High School, for example, there’s only one restroom per gender on the second and third floors. On the second floor, each restroom has two sinks and three stalls. On the third floor each restroom has only one sink.
No sinks exist in individual classrooms.
Current policy is to allow students to use the facilities during classtime to help alleviate the long lines that typically occur between classes. As for having only one or two sinks for dozens of students at a time, we know the answer — and shudder.
