County faces almost insurmountable challenge

Tonight, the Anne Arundel County school board will try to sort out the way forward on high school sports. We wish them luck.

Parents of student-athletes are increasingly vocal, pressing for school leadership to find a way to hold games. It’s understandable.

The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association last month gave the state’s 24 school districts the option of playing high school sports as early as Wednesday.

High school students can play four years of sports, and many hope those endeavors will lead to scholarships or other rewards beyond the athletic fields. In addition, sports have the potential to be a force for good in teenagers’ lives. There is truth in the old saw about building character.

So, parents and students want to play. But this season has been put on hold by the correct decision to reopen schools only when coronavirus infection rates drop to the threshold determined as safe by local health officials. There is no one size fits all for Maryland.

County Health Officer Nilesh Kalyanaraman has recommended that schools not reopen until the seven-day average of five cases per 100,000 people. The county has average has persistently been eight or higher. Schools are following his guidance.

So, almost all students remain in remote

OUR SAY

learning. The school board will get an update Wednesday on progress toward a hybrid reopening plan that will bring some students who need in-person learning the most.

As the board then considers what do to with sports, it’s not at all clear that a speedy resumption is a prudent thing to do. It’s not even sure that it is possible for Anne Arundel County Public Schools to be the first of the big counties in Maryland to restart play.

In order to begin competition again this fall, county schools will have a number of logistical obstacles to overcome. All of them are factors that don’t come into play with recreational league sports, which have resumed. The difference is significant.

With school buses halted, how will students without access to private transportation get to practices and games? If public schools sports are to be available, they have to be available to all students and not just those with the resources to figure it out on their own.

How will players use locker rooms if the health department determines it is not safe for students to go back into school buildings? Private schools have been reporting cases since classes resumed there, and it is mathematically likely that those rates of spread will increase in the substantially larger public schools.

And that brings us back to those four years of play a high school student is given.

The five biggest counties — Montgomery, Prince George’s, Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Howard — also are the ones that consistently produce the state’s best high school teams and individual athletes. If Anne Arundel moves ahead with play, and the other counties decide to have a spring football season or basketball season, how will students and parents feel about whatever that pared-down season looks like?

Anne Arundel County has already shown it struggles to deal with passionate political speech and behavior on the field and in the stands. How will it cope with enforcing social distancing rules and mask requirements? Those have, unfortunately, become political.

As Capital Gazette Sports Editor Tim Schwartz asked in a column after the state association announced its plan last month, how will schools enforce testing requirements?

Advocates for an early resumption whistle past these very real questions. School board members and county school executives cannot.

If they can adequately address them all, then godspeed to county teams.

Frankly, we don’t see how they’re going to do it.