The Kansas City, Kansas, Board of Education voted 4-3 Tuesday night to allow sports workouts to begin on Monday, Sept. 14.
In a marathon board meeting lasting almost six hours on Tuesday, which also was the first day of school in the district, the board approved one of three recommendations from the school district’s athletic director, Tammie Romstad.
The motion by board member Stacey Yeager was to allow student athletes to start working out on Sept. 14 if they attended class and turned in their assignments.
Voting for the recommendation were Yolanda Clark, Randy Lopez, Maxine Drew and Dr. Yeager. Voting against the recommendation were Janey Humphries, Wanda Brownlee Paige and Dr. Valdenia Winn.
The school board previously suspended all fall KSHSAA sports and activities in the Kansas City, Kansas, school district because of COVID-19. That suspension, along with earlier Unified Government Health Department guidelines on sports, was the subject of student protests in August in Wyandotte County. The early sports recommendations from the Health Department came out Aug. 13, with newer guidelines on sports out on Sept. 4. School started on Tuesday in the Kansas City, Kansas, school district, but all classes were remote.
During her presentation, Romstad told the board that allowing practices to resume could be a way to motivate students to attend class and turn in their assignments.
The board members asked for more clarification on the plan to be presented at a special board meeting at 3 p.m. Friday, about what the attendance requirement means for each student, and also about how student athletes would get transportation to and from practices.
During the presentation, district officials mentioned that the district had been holding workouts during the summer when Wyandotte County had a 20 percent COVID-19 positivity rate. One day during that time, the county had a 29 percent rate, according to Romstad.
Dr. Winn was aghast at the positivity rates during the summer. “I’ll take the high road and say we dodged the bullet over the summer,” she said. “We were still allowing students to participate and the numbers were as high as 20 percent?”
“Did the board know what was going on?” Dr. Winn asked. “I’ll say no, I didn’t,” she added. She did not think they should have had workouts with such a high county positivity rate.
Board member Wanda Brownlee Paige wanted to wait for more information, as she said they were getting different numbers about the positivity rates.
The positivity rate reported by the Unified Government COVID-19 webpage was 17.6 percent on Sept. 8. However, district officials said they were told on Tuesday the number was lower.
Board member Maxine Drew said that she believes the numbers they heard in the report have been very low. She agreed with interim Superintendent Alicia Miguel that it was necessary to find some way to address the issue of students being present in classes.
Two other sports recommendations were not adopted at Tuesday night’s meeting, and will be taken up on Friday, according to the board.
The second recommendation, not adopted at this time, was to create transparency with students and parents through the Kansas State Department of Education gating criteria. The criteria were recommended to be used to determine when it is safe for each sport to start or suspend, using data from the local community.
The third recommendation, also not adopted at this time, was to accept the KSHSAA proposal to participate in fall sports in the spring, if health conditions allow.