The “frightening” expanse of unenrolled or disengaged children across the Kansas City area can be rounded into large numbers — or bared one-by-one.

Like the teenager Central High School Principal Anthony Madry knows who ran away from home, worn out by the responsibility of watching over younger siblings so his mother could keep working.

Or the teenager Northeast High School Principal Waymond Ervin knows who took a job when his mother couldn’t, letting education’s promise slip below the urgent tide of supporting his household.

Or the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten parents that United Inner City Services Executive Director Deidre Anderson knows who are adrift in the pandemic, sheltering children in relatives’ homes, lost from the opportunities of early childhood education.

An enrollment and drop-out task force, newly forming in Kansas City, shared experiences like these on Dec. 1 and began shaping plans — including issuing a call to educators, business leaders, policy makers and anyone else who wants to join in the work.

Enrollment, early data show, may be down 15 to 20% across district and charter public schools, said Leslie Kohlmeyer, the director of the SchoolAppKC program at Show Me KC Schools. That suggests as many as 5,000 children — from pre-K through the 12th grade — are disconnected from school.

To contact the task force: Send email to Leslie@showmekcschools.org

And schools are growing short of staff to recover and engage missing students as many educators are either quarantined or stepping away from classrooms over pandemic fears.

“We are on the verge of a total system collapse,” Kohlmeyer said. By the time enough people are vaccinated for schools to emerge from the pandemic’s shadow, schools may be overwhelmed in a “massive teacher shortage.”

“It’s frightening,” she said.

Several dozen educators, community organization leaders and other participants in the task force set initial targets:

• To reach out to stressed parents of pre-K and elementary school children who are choosing to wait a year, home-school or otherwise survive the pandemic absent of adequate education.

• To engage with high school students who are separating early from education during the pandemic, whether to work or to avoid the stress of an education world turned upside down.

Madry believes there are many students like the one who ran away from home. “He’s scrambling to make his own life work,” the principal said. “He’s not cut out to be a parent, but that’s what we’re asking him to be.”

For many high school students, Madry said, “school was a safe haven.”

Ervin, thinking of his students at Northeast who are working jobs to support families, is concerned that some may be losing confidence in what schools have to offer once they are out earning wages.

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“It’s not that they don’t value education,” he said. “(The pandemic) is putting students in a bind. They have to support their family. How do we bring them back when they are making money?”

School staff members are having to “flatten their responsibilities,” said DeLaSalle Education Center Executive Director Sean Stalling.

Administrators, teachers, parent liaisons are all ranging out to contact households, find students, confront trauma and “understand what a kid is going through.”

“We’re all struggling with this,” Stalling said. “Mental health support is more important now than ever.”

Covid has “shaken us up,” said Janice Thomas, executive assistant to the superintendent at Hogan Preparatory Academy. “We’re not equipped as a society. We’ve got parents saying, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ We can’t expect a 17-year-old to know.”

The impact of lost years, especially at the early grades, could be long-lasting, warned Anderson. The early childhood program at United Inner City Services has found that attendance patterns are formed in the first years of a child’s schooling.

The notion surfacing in the pandemic that early childhood education is not necessary is “exacerbating issues that have been simmering,” she said. “Families that have been disengaged are going to be more disengaged.”

The task force is reaching out for a broader range of participants and resources, Kohlmeyer said. Anyone wishing to learn more or join in the work should send an email to Leslie@showmekcschools.org.

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer