In West Virginia, boards of education are showing students where their priorities lie — and the rest of the country can see it.

The move to address chronically low performance — the bottom of the barrel in a significant number of categories for so many years it’s become a running joke — has come at a pace that gives lawmakers time and reason to expand access to charter and non-public schools. .

Meanwhile, some might argue that the flurry of legal filings that led to this week’s mess in high school sports could have come at the beginning or at any point in the season. But the flashback to what the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission’s realignment meant for which schools made the playoffs (and which didn’t) is telling.

So were counter-bans just as swift.

These kids – especially THIS group of young people – deserve better. If they are now seniors facing their final games as high school football players, they were eighth graders dreaming of high school football careers in the fall of 2020. Most high school seniors have now spent part of 2019 – Academic years 2020 and 2020-2021 just trying to navigate distance learning amid a deadly pandemic.

They have faced political upheaval over what books they can access and what can be taught in classrooms. They have faced year after year reports of too slow improvement in performance at their schools.

But where do boards of education stand up? Not in academics, but on the football field.

These students—football players or not—are used to disruption. They are used to waiting. They have become more resilient than some adults will ever be.

God, it shouldn’t be.

They should be able to believe that boards of education have at least as much urgency in giving them the support they need to improve academic performance and prepare for life after high school as they do in it looks at where the football team landed at the end of the season. rankings.

Adults in the state this week showed them they can’t.