Time to rise: State analysis shows how far performance fell during pandemic

It’s as severe as the education community feared. The effects of the pandemic on lost learning place a community-wide burden on everyone — including LINC’s Caring Communities — to help children recover.

Critical summer: Here's how everyone can help children 'learn, grow and play'

The summer of 2022 has arrived with refreshing joy and possibilities — but also with a heavy air of fear. The hot season has long brought out the best and the worst of the fellowship that brings neighborhoods together and the violence and neglect that endangers children and families. Here’s what KC is doing about it and how you can help.

All aboard! How you and everyone can play a role in this most critical school year

We’ve learned a lot in the past year and a half. And everything we know about hardship, strength, resilience and unity has primed us for what looms as the most critical school year probably in a lifetime. But it’s going to take all of us, and here’s why.

'Find your community'; In critical year ahead, schools want you back, welcomed and safe

It doesn't matter how well — or not — you and your child managed Covid’s hard time. A common message is brewing. Children, however much they struggled with online learning, will be advanced with their peers into the next grade. Everyone will recover together. Schools’ plea: Just come back.

Hickman Mills' campaign against chronic absence sets up pandemic success

The jarring pandemic sent the Hickman Mills School District’s campaign against chronic absence down a whole new — and unfamiliar — track. But the project with Attendance Works is proving a success, both in improving attendance and keeping students engaged during these months of distance learning.

'Learning Together Every Day' campaign rallies support, encouragement for critical school attendance

The work to help all children “cannot be the schools’ responsibility, alone,” write leaders in the campaign by the United Way of Greater Kansas City, SchoolSmartKC and Turn the Page Kansas CIty. “It requires the collaboration of our whole community.”

Creativity rises against the COVID storm as schools scramble to re-open

Ideas on reopening schools during COVID are churning at warp speed. Here’s one example, in the name of safe-spacing: How about overflow class space and after-school programs in church basements?

'Your kids, Your families': Work against chronic absence in Hickman Mills means to get personal

The Hickman Mills School District and Attendance Works are taking aim on chronic absence, working with LINC and several community partners to develop personalized strategies that could help all communities ease the heavy impacts of missed time in class.