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With the three-week shutdown of public schools about to be extended, N.M. educators need to be given the freedom to emulate proactive educational institutions that have moved to distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic.

For the sake of our state’s 300,000-plus K-12 students.

To be clear, many institutions didn’t miss a beat. Private schools, such as Albuquerque Academy and St. Pius X High School, took a page from university systems and quickly implemented online instruction. Academy was actually ahead of the game – on March 11, a day before it was announced schools across the state would be closing, it canceled in-person classes. On March 13, the school announced “faculty have begun online teaching training and curriculum planning with their departments and divisions so they will be fully prepared to teach classes online, if necessary, after spring break.” In a letter to parents Tuesday, leaders of St. Pius X said the online education now being offered is as rigorous as classroom instruction, with teachers teaching online full-time.

And for those who would say only fancy private schools can do this because they have more resources and more-involved parents, know that districts that serve disadvantaged students, from Indianapolis to D.C., the Permian to New York City, quickly came up with their own Plan Bs to ensure students stay on track. And then, for the most part, there’s N.M.’s public school system.

On March 12, when Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered a closure of all public schools until April 6 to curb the virus’s spread, the state made a serious mistake and wrote off at least three full weeks of learning in its traditional and charter public schools rather than transition as many students as possible to some form of distance learning. The silence from teachers’ unions, whose members were being paid whether they took roll or not, was deafening.

The unfortunate approach of districts, including Albuquerque Public Schools, at the direction of the Public Education Department, has been to educate none rather than as many as possible. Secretary Ryan Stewart has cautioned against scenarios in which only some students would have access to e-learning, saying it would perpetuate opportunity gaps.

It is a typically bureaucratic and politically correct response that embraces inertia and leaves hundreds of thousands of K-12 students – most of whom already cannot read or do math at their grade level – without an education plan as this school year winds down and essential (and recently beefed up) summer learning programs remain in flux. While the state has made sure meals are still available for students, their instruction has been fasting.

A notable exception is Santa Fe Public Schools under the direction of Superintendent and former PED Secretary Veronica Garcia. On Monday it is launching “an ambitious remote learning initiative in response to school closures.”

Today the governor is expected to announce an extension of the shutdown. We urge her to also announce a “moonshot” that gets lessons to our students, one that embraces distance learning options and includes things like partnerships with national giants and home-grown communications and computer businesses and public and public-access television.

Part of getting through this COVID-19-era is keeping our children and their futures safe. The governor and PED have more than a little homework to do to ensure that happens.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.