For starters, says 10-year-old Annalisa, “It’s hard to breathe” running across the gym in her mask.

“You can’t touch the balls and stuff,” she adds.

But make no mistake. Annalisa is quite happy that her Center School District has joined the ranks of schools opening in-person and bringing back LINC’s Caring Communities Before & After School program.

“I’m really glad to be back,” the Boone Elementary 4th grader said. “LINC is really fun to come back to school for.”

Covid-19 cases are in rapid decline. Vaccines are coming. Reports from the Centers for Disease Control of low transmission in safe schools are encouraging.

So more children are coming back into school buildings, and LINC is ready.

“Parents have been so humbled by LINC’s willingness to open the program to them again,” said John Herrera, LINC’s site coordinator at Boone. “We’re here to do our job.”

LINC’s Center School District programs opened Feb. 22, joining those in the Grandview and North Kansas City school districts that have been open most or all of the school year.

More programs are gearing up as the Kansas City Public Schools, Hickman Mills School District and Lee A. Tolbert Community Academy charter school plan to begin bringing students in March 15.

Most definitely, “it’s different,” said 8-year-old Jeremiah at Center’s Indian Creek Elementary School. “We have to wear masks — got to be six-feet (safely distanced), but I really missed being back here.”

He’d just finished showing off a robotic dance — the kind of safe-distanced, physical fun that fits the pandemic experience.

“LINC is great,” Jeremiah said. “It lets you have fun, and you learn stuff.”

And, as 8-year-old Kynlee at Boone added, it’s a relief “to see my friends now” rather than being “stuck at home.”

Following the lead set by LINC teams in North Kansas City and Grandview, the Center programs set to work easing the concerns of staff and helping the incoming children feel comfortable in the Covid-shadowed school year.

“The kids come to us a little uncertain right now about what’s going on,” Herrera said. “We’ve tried to make them feel at home.”

A lot of the work of the first week was making routines of the Covid protocols, said Carl Wade, LINC’s Caring Communities Program Specialist and head of the program at Indian Creek.

“We’re practicing with these students every day,” he said. “They’re doing a great job.”

Instead of shared materials and games, the students all have individual supplies boxes and individual games. The number of children in classrooms is limited to allow safe spacing, and hand-sanitizing is a continual exercise.

Encouraging news continues to come from schools that previously opened with the same safety protocols.

Steve Morgan, an assistant superintendent at the Fort Osage School District, reported at LINC’s February Commission Meeting that the district has experienced low transmission of the virus despite having elementary students in school all year, and phasing in upper grades.

“One-tenth of one percent” of the student body and staff have active Covid cases, Morgan said. And only 0.6% have been exposed to someone who tested positive.

Kevin Foster, executive director of the charter Genesis School, told the Commission that his school — which has been in-person full time for K-4 and hybrid with 5-8 since the start of the school year — has had “no exposure issue since the first week of January.”

Come March 15, all of LINC’s sites will be opened as Kansas City Public Schools, Hickman Mills and Lee A. Tolbert plan to open.

The schools are eager to get back open, and keeping staff and children protected will be paramount, Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Mark Bedell told his school board in February.

“Everybody has to understand (reopening buildings) won’t be 100% perfect,” Bedell said. “Will we have to close a class down? Will we have to close a school down? It’s a possibility. But we are going to be in position to continue providing schooling.”

And as the kids in Center can tell you, it’s a great feeling.

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer

Video edited by Bryan Shepard