Kansas lawmakers want to limit online learning statewide. Some districts push back
It’s been a year since Gov. Laura Kelly ordered all schools online as the COVID-19 pandemic surged through Kansas. More than 80% of K-12 schools in the state have brought students back to classrooms full time or are preparing to by the end of the month.
A handful, however, continue to wait. They have opted for hybrid learning or to remain entirely remote for reasons particular to their communities.
Their decisions have placed them on what Kansas Republican lawmakers view as the wrong side of the issue. Worried that the pandemic has resulted in a “lost year” for students, they are pushing for policies that would sharply limit online instruction.
The Kansas Senate approved a bill Wednesday requiring all schools to offer full-time, in-person instruction by March 26. The proposed House budget includes provisions that would cut per-pupil funding by two-thirds for any student fully online for more than a six weeks during a state of emergency or more than week during normal times starting next year.
Lawmakers argue that remote learning has harmed Kansas children, weakening their mental health and learning skills. They say that as the virus ebbs, there is no reason for students to be away from the classroom.
But some district officials say the one-size-fits-all policy risks disproportionately harming schools in more densely populated, often low-income communities. In the rush to put students back in school, learning models found to be effective might end up being abandoned.
“I think unfortunately all these measures usually affect lower-income areas more than more affluent areas,” said Alicia Miguel, the superintendent of the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools.”We may have fewer choices because of the low income.”
It’s not just low-income districts that have found reason to remain in remote or online learning well into the school year.
According to the Kansas Department of Education, 20 out of 46 school districts still using remote or hybrid learning in late January were in Johnson, Sedgwick, Wyandotte and Shawnee counties.
‘What’s worked for us’
The Kansas City, Kansas, School District, with an enrollment of more than 23,500, is one of the last in Kansas operating almost exclusively on a remote model. Miguel said the district has relied closely on data such as positivity rates for COVID-19 cases and the advice of Wyandotte County health officials.
Miguel said the district was cautious as Wyandotte County saw some of the worst and quickest COVID-19 outbreaks early in the pandemic.
The system was planning a slow return to in-person learning starting in January before the school board pushed the date to April, citing spiking case rates in Wyandotte County and anticipated staffing shortages. Some high-need students, Miguel said,were back in person in November.
But the district, Miguel said, contended with “complex factors” that separated it from others in the state. According to a 2018 study, roughly 27% of children ages 5-17 in the Kansas City, Kansas, School District live below the poverty line.
“Average income per household is very different. The ratings for (Johnson and Wyandotte) counties in terms of health rankings is almost opposite. We have a large number of multigenerational families living in our district. We know that that has had an impact on the spread of the virus,” Miguel said.
“We also know that together with lower incomes we may have a larger population of uninsured individuals who may or may not have access to healthcare.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control the virus has disproportionately harmed low-income Americans and communities of color partially because many low-wage workers cannot afford to work from home or cut hours. For multigenerational homes, the concern exists that a child could pick up the virus at school and bring it home.
If the legislature approves the March 26 deadline, Miguel said KCK would return to schools in person and sacrifice some of the prep time she had planned for.
As for the funding reductions if the school is remote after next year, Miguel said she hopes it won’t matter because the district will be in-person anyway. In the event of another emergency, though, she said the lost funds would be damaging.
“The buildings don’t go away because you have to have the kids in remote learning. At some point they have to come back,” Miguel said. “All this time that we were in remote learning we had to prepare the building for kids to come back.”
Justin Henry, the Goddard Superintendent, said his district in Sedgewick County was lucky to operate issue-free. Elementary and middle school students attended in person and high schoolers on a hybrid format, learning in person every other day. The arrangement was possible, he said, because the system had the staffing and space available to practice social distancing and keep kids safe.
“When I speak to what’s worked for us, that doesn’t mean that’s going to work for every district,” Henry said.
But Henry, like Paul Dorathy superintendent of the Baldwin City School District, was wary of legislative mandates that students return in person full time.
Both leaders said they’d found that the hybrid model an effective way to serve high school students safely. Henry said Goddard was even considering ways to maintain hybrid learning after the pandemic because it taught students time management skills they’d need in college.
“Doing what (the legislature) saying would mean we would have to be ignoring the advice of the medical community,” Dorathy said.
Sending a message
The regulation pursued by lawmakers could lead to lawsuits. Schools in more densely-populated areas with higher percentages of low-income students and students of color are more likely to need remote learning as an option, said Mark Desetti, a lobbyist for the Kansas National Educators Association.
“You have a serious equity problem if you start cutting their funding because they have to respond to a crisis,” he said.
Proponents argue that in-person schools have had relatively few serious problems with COVID-19 and that the benefits to bringing students back in person outweighs the risks.
“Those facilities are made for a certain occupancy rate and if they would have even done hybrid one day a week they could have had one-third of the students or half of the students,” Rep. Kristey Williams, an Augusta Republican, said. “It was a decision that they made and I believe there is not really a valid reason to not have kids in school at least some portion of time.”
Since August, however, outbreaks have forced some schools in the Kansas City area to temporarily close or send students and teachers into quarantine, placing a strain on staffing.
Williams, who chairs the House K-12 budget committee, says giving schools the option of remote learning for 240 hours (six weeks) per year in an emergency and 40 hours outside of one gives them flexibility to adjust their learning model in the event of winter storms or natural disasters.
As lawmakers debated the bill to mandate a return in person by March 26, Senate President Ty Masterson insisted that it was merely a suggestion. Without a clear enforcement mechanism, he said, schools could continue doing what they felt was best.
“It is us sending a message to our constituents that there needs to be an in person option,” Masterson said.
But the KCK, Goddard and Baldwin City superintendents all said they would likely act quickly to comply with the new law.
Mark Tallman, a lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards, said that the measure will largely create confusion if it’s passed.
“All of our districts, they have reasons they haven’t done it. It isn’t because they think that is an ideal situation,” Tallman said. “They’re going to have to weigh it against one other factor now which is a pretty strong directive from the legislature.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
