Fifteen South Dakota schools have chosen to offer their fall classes entirely online and cancel fall sports. All are Indian schools:
At this point schools on Indian reservations are the ones choosing online learning and canceling fall sports.
Those schools include: Cheyenne-Eagle Butte, Tiospaye Topa, Takini, Marty, St. Francis, Todd County, Lakota Tech, Pine Ridge, Red Cloud, Little Wound, Crazy Horse, Crow Creek, Lower Brule, Flandreau Indian School and Oelrichs [Dana Hess, “Open Enrollment Rules Waived for Fall Sports,” Rapid City Journal, 2020.08.24].
Evidently our Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota neighbors are willing to make sacrifices to protect their communities that we white folks generally are not. Evidently our Native neighbors have the gumption to put sportsmania aside and figure out how to make online education work.
Alas, instead of supporting those local schools’ decisions, the South Dakota high School Activities Association is easing open enrollment rules for parents who value their kids’ play time more than their academic and physical well-being. At a special meeting Monday, the SDHSAA voted to waive the usual restrictions on team-shopping and let students in districts that have canceled sports as part of their coronavirus response plan transfer temporarily to other schools to play, then come back later this year if their home schools reopen. The SDHSAA is thus encouraging students in communities that have chosen to limit their exposure to coronavirus to drive out to other school districts, travel around the state with other teams, and come home each night as augmented disease vectors from less cautious communities.
At least the SDHSAA didn’t go for the really bad idea of expanding high school sports eligibility to five years:
SDHSAA Executive Director Dan Swartos said the staff also considered other options that included a fifth year of eligibility or moving fall sports to the spring. Adding a fifth year of eligibility didn’t seem feasible, Swartos said.
“It disrupts the natural four-year cohort model,” Swartos said. “I think it opens a pretty big can of worms” [Hess, 2020.08.24].
A fifth year of eligibility hurts all kids. We should maintain the expectation that students finish high school in four years. Kids should learn to take turns: each gets four years to play, and then they need to step aside to the grown-up world and let the next cohort of kids have their fair shot at playing.
Kids should also learn to deal with loss… and as happened last spring and is likely to happen again this fall, sometimes that means missing an entire season of play, because we need to put the good of the community ahead of our highlight-reel, NFL-marketing fantasies. Following the reservation schools: they’re making the right choice.
Cory,
Please be specific in your definition of “Indian Schools.” Some of these schools listed are public schools, some are tribal schools, some are private schools, some are BIA/BIE schools. What are you saying when you say “Indian Schools”?
P.S. McLaughlin School District (a public school located on the border between SD/ND and on the Standing Rock Tribal Land) is also doing virtual learning for the first nine weeks.
Primarily Indian student populations, on reservation land?
IMO there should be no activities like sports, band, music, etc going on during a pandemic. Right now, just have the basic classes like math, science & language. This is the best way to have in person classes and keep the cases of covid as low as possible.
Also schools should be more flexible in on-line classes. Lets kids take some of there classes on line and the other in person, based upon what is the best and safest learning experience for each class. A student may do fine with say a online math class, but may need to be there in person for a science class.
Maybe have all the kids study biology, so we can create a huge new corps of good nurses, doctors, and epidemiologists better equipped to contain pandemics.
Maybe have all the kids read lots of history and philosophy, so we can create a huge new corps of conscientious citizens better equipped to preserve and protect democracy from cults of personality and white supremacy.
All the WNBA and NBA games and 1 baseball game are canceled tonight due to the latest cop shooting of an innocent civilian, Jacob Blake. When they will play again is not known at this time.
The W is 80% Black players. I’d guess the NBA is even more heavily weighted to Black athletes. If Major League Baseball follows suit, and especially the NFL, I think attention may be gained. Wealthy white ownership will be hit in their most sensitive body part, their wallets.
Each of those leagues has a strong player’s union. Go unions!
The change in the sports shopping rule is really just punitive and cruel.
Did you guys know that Cheyenne Eagle Butte is just not a BIA School but a combined BIA and Public School. It’s been like that since 1960, one of the few in the country to be combined and 60 years an going.