KC area district has so many teachers out with COVID, it’s gone temporarily virtual

One day after classes started back after the holiday break, a district just south of Columbia closed all its schools again and went virtual because there weren’t enough teachers, staff or substitutes to lead classes. They were all out sick with COVID-19.

Southern Boone School District officials say they’re hoping students can return to in-person classes on Monday.

The Lee’s Summit school district — of more than 18,000 students — was so short of teachers that the superintendent had to jump in and teach classes on Tuesday.

School officials across Missouri and Kansas are worried with good reason, especially since many districts — including Park Hill, Blue Springs, Independence, Olathe, Blue Valley and Shawnee Mission — dropped mask mandates they had in place before the break.

Clever Kansas lawmakers have made it impossible for schools to return to virtual learning even if they have to: They passed a law against it. Take that, COVID.

Yet, to the surprise of the stubborn, just as students return to school the highly contagious omicron variant is surging everywhere, overwhelming hospitals and threatening to shut down schools.

The situation seems to have also closed the mouth of Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, at least for the moment. In August, he filed a class action lawsuit against schools with mask mandates. “Forcing schoolchildren to mask all day in school flies in the face of science,“ he said, though the opposite is true.

Last month the AG ordered an end to mask mandates in school districts and public health agencies.

Tuesday, the Shawnee Mission district school board voted to maintain its recently instituted mask-optional policy. But reality intervened quickly, and on Wednesday, when the district reached its 3% confirmed cases threshold, officials announced a return to a mask mandate. In Kansas City, Mayor Quinton Lucas introduced an ordinance Thursday to require masks in K-12 schools through Feb. 3.

If schools want to stay open and keep students and teachers safe, officials must resist bending to the whims of politically motivated politicians and the vocal minority of anti-vaxxers and mask opponents. To keep schools open, encourage vaccines and enforce mask wearing for everyone entering their schools.

This story was originally published January 6, 2022 at 8:43 AM.