Blue Springs School District, a school district in Jackson County, sued the Jackson County Health Department after it was issued a notice of non-compliance with capacity limitation rules for its home opening football game.

What did Blue Springs do wrong? Attendance at the game exceeded the 100-person fan limit set by the county for outdoor events. The county is adamant Blue Springs cannot do that, threatening to ban all fans for the season and force the team to quarantine for two weeks if it happens again.

Blue Springs simply wants to allow for home football players, cheerleaders, and dance team members to give four tickets to their family members and two tickets to visiting team players—totaling 550 fans and 11 percent normal capacity. Yes, this exceeds the 100-person limit, but is the 100-person rule being enforced everywhere throughout the county?

Let’s compare this to the Thursday night opener for the Kansas City Chiefs. The county allowed roughly 16,000 fans, or 22 percent of Arrowhead’s normal capacity to attend.

Double standard? Absolutely. When the order was issued, the county intentionally exempted Kansas City, the city with the highest COVID case numbers in the county. Jackson County wants Blue Springs held at less than 2 percent of its stadium’s capacity while the Chiefs can have 22 percent. Shouldn’t Blue Springs be allowed to have the same percent capacity applied to its stadium?

Due to the limit set by the health department, Blue Springs decided that no visitor fans can attend games going forward. Even worse, with roughly 100 students on the active roster, each player/cheerleader/dance team member gets one ticket to give to their parents or guardians. Imagine a senior who has to choose between their mother, father, or grandparent attending their game. If one person from a “household” can attend, why can’t one or two more?

Jackson County defended the 100 person limit (2 percent capacity) for Blue Springs and 15,895 fan limit (22 percent capacity) for the Chiefs by saying, “Just because the Chiefs have the resources to do this in a relatively safe matter doesn’t mean that a high school stadium does.” But is this true? Blue Springs and the Jackson County Health Department developed a plan that health officials deemed safe for the school district to teach thousands of students each day indoors and in-person. The health department said Blue Springs has enough resources for that.

Wouldn’t the school district have enough resources to take a fraction of the people compared to the current school day and place them in a less risky area outdoors? I think so. The Jackson County Health Department should assist Blue Springs in implementing an 11 percent capacity plan instead of threatening to quarantine the players and ban its fans.

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For quality distance instruction, you need a few basic items—students with high-speed internet connections, proper learning devices (laptops), content from the instructor, and synchronous feedback on student work.

How did Missouri respond overall? After reviewing distance-learning plans from the more than 500 school districts throughout our state, it can be said we barely managed.

The main obstacle for many schools to implementing quality distance learning was access to high-speed internet. For students without high-speed internet, education was delivered through printed learning packets.

And many Missouri students did rely on printed learning packets because nearly 1 in 4 students in our state does not have access to high-speed internet. Just as shocking: 1 in 10 teachers don’t have access either. Without a reliable internet connection, students couldn’t use online resources and their teachers couldn’t provide proper feedback. Thus, districts were left with providing homework packets that were for “enrichment” purposes only. From our research of distance learning plans, most packets found on district websites did not cover fourth quarter state standards that students were expected to learn. To put it simply, learning did not happen for many students.

Some schools deserve credit for responding creatively to the unexpected challenges. Some creative solutions included providing Wi-Fi in school parking lots, having teachers post read-a-longs on school Facebook pages, and partnerships with internet companies that provided two months of free service to households. However, these temporary band-aids are not long-term answers for Missouri student learning.

The few school districts that were able to continue with effective distance instruction made sure that every student had a device and access to high-speed internet before resuming instruction. Those districts were by and large suburban and already had the infrastructure in place. Most rural and urban areas in the state don’t have such infrastructure.

A majority of districts have sizable student populations without high-speed internet or without devices. In those communities, school leaders decided to not leave these students behind, meaning instruction goes at the speed of those receiving paper packets in the mail. This means instruction is slowed down to the lowest-common denominator, and other kids with online resources are being held back. And there’s no quick solution. Despite numerous grants, expanding high-speed internet across Missouri it is not cheap and is not a problem that falls on the school districts.

We all hope that schools can reopen and that students can go back to in-person learning. However, if schools must temporarily shut down due to an outbreak, students deserve more than what was offered last spring. If we don’t start getting ready for the next crisis now, the prospect of quality distance learning is unlikely for Missouri.

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The petition gets a few things wrong.

The first problem is the claim about the test using 20 percent of the funds. According to the fiscal guidance on DESE’s website, “90% of (CARES Act) funds must be distributed based on the Title I formula (FY19), with equitable services provided to non-public schools.” Title I funds go to items such as instructional supports or behavioral programs in schools. That leaves 10 percent for “administrative costs and the remainder for emergency needs as determined by the state educational agency to address issues responding to coronavirus, which may be addressed through the use of grants or contracts.” The diagnostic test for students would be constrained to this portion of the money. DESE’s current proposal for the test would use $10 million, less than 6 percent of the CARES Act budget.

Second, a DESE administered diagnosis test would not cost the state millions of dollars, as the petition goes on to suggest. While Missourians do pay federal taxes, CARES Act money has already been allocated to states for things like testing.

Third, despite what some may think, DESE has an obligation to find out how much learning loss has occurred throughout Missouri. We know COVID-19 has caused more learning loss than what would normally occur over the course of the summer due to additional missed class time in the spring. To start addressing the issues caused by COVID-19 learning loss, we first need to understand the extent of the problem. Rather than a “misuse” of emergency relief funds, this test could be a crucial first step in helping our students.

Fourth, if individual schools or teachers create their own tests, as is suggested in the petition, it would not help identify which schools need the most support. If you ask more than 500 districts to create their own diagnosis assessment, you may get 500 completely different assessments. Without a common assessment, there would be no accountability and no basis to develop plans to address shortfalls.

To my fellow teachers who signed the petition: Let’s do our homework on the facts and let’s instead support DESE in gathering the data it needs.

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What may be even more concerning is performance on the Missouri End-of-Course Exam (EOC) testing. EOC results are “(The) information used to diagnose individual student strengths and weaknesses in relation to the instruction of the Missouri Learning Standards (MLS), and to gauge the overall quality of education throughout Missouri,” prior to graduation. Unfortunately, the results showed that in 2018–19 a quarter of high school students tested in Algebra I, the ninth-grade math level, scored below basic on state standards. This means that more than 15,000 students showed “minimal understanding.” The number of students scoring below basic in Algebra I has risen slightly in the years leading up to 2018–2019.

What happens to the students who score below basic? Their classroom grade, not the state tests, determine whether they are promoted or not. Most of the time they move on to the next math class required for graduation, leading to many students unprepared for the more difficult math courses and to schools not being held accountable for addressing achievement gaps.

If the EOC tests really are used to “diagnose individual strengths and weaknesses” and to gauge “overall quality of education” in Missouri, then it is time we do something with that information.

Schools must be held accountable. Students who score below basic should not be passed on to a higher-level math course. Instead, individual schools must be responsible for reteaching that student until they have demonstrated the basic level of content mastery in state standards. Students may demonstrate basic proficiency by retaking the EOC after a school has retaught the material. Options include a summer school reteach or a 10th grade retake that would not delay graduation as the state only requires 3 years of high school math.

A doctor would not just diagnose a patient with a condition and leave them untreated. Why should our schools be allowed to pass students on when scores clearly indicate they are falling behind?

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