I don't believe in competitive parenting, but I can spot an ace when I see it.

Two years ago, our family was initiated into the world of the high school marching band. Neither my husband nor I had participated in this activity as high schoolers. I had no idea of the customs and expectations of this subculture. Even some of the instruments were new to me.

We've supported our kids through all their various extracurricular pursuits, so naturally we showed up for halftime performances and the competitive shows on weekends. Then, I noticed that a small group of parents seemed to be doing an awful lot of work on the periphery of these events.

Apparently, they show up hours before the competitions start to load up the truck (or multiple trucks) with instruments and elaborate set props -- some of which the parents built in their garages before the season started. Then, they ride the bus filled with teenagers -- an adventure unto itself -- to the competition site. Once they arrive, they unload the trucks. They set up stations with water and snacks. They help the students make sure their uniforms are on point.

I'm tired just thinking about it to this point, but they aren't even halfway through.

When it's the band's turn to perform, they haul all the props to the field and set them up. Afterward, they break everything down, carry the stuff back to the bus, reload the trucks and ride back to school. Finally, they get to put all that stuff back into the band room or storage area. If their band plays in the finals, this could end up being a 16-hour day, or even longer.

Every tournament-style activity for kids -- from sports to public speaking -- can involve hours of spectating for the parents. But the marching band adds in physical labor and more. In the fall, most band parents block out their Fridays for football games and Saturdays for tournaments. But year-round, the core volunteers hold booster club meetings, organize and publicize fundraisers, send countless emails, and coordinate and volunteer at band camps.

God help the ones hosting a competition at their own schools.

What other high school activity requires this level of parental involvement to function?

"Parents who volunteer a lot are exhausted," said Danielle Henke, who has two high schoolers in marching band and is president of the booster club. Their band has about 135 students, and parents raise around $70,000 for show season.

"You don't know what goes on behind the scenes until you've actually done it," a recent parent recruit told her.

Like most other activities relying on volunteers, about 20% of the parents seem to be doing 80% of the work.

Unfortunately, my husband and I are not among the 20% at our son's school. Work obligations and pre-band commitments prevent us from being part of the backbone of parent operations. We're happy to be an ancillary limb.

Given how crucial these hundreds of unpaid hours are to maintaining a performing arts program, I wonder what happens in schools that don't have parents who can devote so much time and money.

I found a success story from Rancho High School in Las Vegas -- the second-largest public high school in Nevada. Its band program is one of the best in the state despite the school having one of the highest populations of homeless students in the county, with the majority of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. It took a gifted and exceptionally devoted band director, a supportive principal and dedicated students to transform a lackluster program into an excellent one. As the band became more successful, it attracted more students -- and yes, more parent volunteers.

These stories are the exception; like everything else in education, those with the most resources tend to flourish.

While we may never be able to join the ranks of the most committed band parents, we plan to volunteer and donate more this year than we did during our learning-curve year.

One parent I spoke to is in her eighth year of high-commitment band parenting. She confided that she does notice the parents who never help out, or who just show up to watch their kid and then jet.

It would be nice to feel appreciated by those parents, she said. Henke can relate to that sentiment.

"The band doesn't just get dressed and go," Henke said. "There's a huge production behind that."

Missouri state test scores were bound to be lower this year after 18 months of disrupted schooling for most students.

State test scores released earlier this month showed that students' scores dropped across the board: Only 45% of students met or exceeded standards in English, along with 37% in science and 35% in math.

When the majority of students in a state fail to demonstrate proficiency in English, math and science, that's bad news. It's even worse when the results are broken down by demographics. Students in high-poverty schools, those lacking internet access and those who stayed in virtual or distance learning performed significantly worse than their peers.

None of this is surprising in any way. The pandemic shined a harsh spotlight on the broken parts of our education system.

But there's a silver lining: a rare opportunity to address problems often considered too entrenched and too big to fix. The federal government is distributing a historic amount of aid to the nation's schools -- about $190 billion, which is more than four times the amount that the U.S. Department of Education spends on K-12 schools in a typical year, according to the Associated Press.

This is a critical moment for chronically underfunded districts that have been unable to move the needle on student achievement. Test scores like Missouri's offer a blueprint for where to channel the majority of those funds: The students who are the farthest behind, with the fewest resources, need the most help.

What should that help look like?

Invest in as much direct, quality instruction for students as possible for the next three years. Train teachers on instructional strategies tailored to the needs of their students, extend the school day with extra pay for teachers, hire tutors for one-on-one instruction outside school hours, lower class sizes, bring in specialists in math and reading, employ more aides and increase mental health services for students and staff.

There may be a temptation to channel much of the federal money to repairs and improvements in school buildings. While those fixes are needed in many cases, school officials ought to resist that impulse. Decades of educational research -- and common sense -- show that what happens inside a classroom is the single most important factor in improving student achievement. Parents with resources know this; that's why they hired private teachers for their kids' distance learning pods, or insisted that their kids' private schools return to classroom instruction far sooner than public schools did.

Improve the quality of teaching, and give teachers more time to teach, and students will regain the ground they've lost far more quickly.

The urgency of this moment cannot be overstated. The way schools respond to the educational setbacks of the pandemic will determine the life trajectory for millions of students.

Accountability needs to happen on more than just the local level -- each state must also be transparent and accountable. In 2019, for example, Missouri refused to release the annual performance report numbers for school districts, which includes metrics like attendance and graduation rates. But parents deserve to have that information, which is critical to understanding the challenges a school faces.

Whenever test scores are released locally, parents must take the opportunity to ask questions about how the data will be used to help their children improve in the core subjects. If a student is earning good grades in school, but their standardized test scores fail to show mastery, find out why that gap exists.

For years, educators have preached the importance of a "growth mindset" to help students build resilience and overcome setbacks and challenges.

Now is the perfect opportunity to model it.

The Fogarty family in St. Louis County had been looking for a puppy for months before they found Dunkin.

Carolyn and her husband are both teachers, and they have two teenage sons. When schools switched to virtual learning in the spring of 2020, they were all at home all day.

Their older dog, Pepper, was sleeping much of the day. They wanted a playmate for her and figured they finally had time to train a puppy.

"It's like having a newborn," Carolyn said. "We lost sleep the first six weeks." It also took Pepper a few weeks to warm up to the new pup, but "now they are best buds," she said.

More than just Pepper, the entire family benefited.

"It was fun to have something to look forward to during that hard time," she said. Walking, training and playing with Dunkin "was our joy," she said.

When the family returned to their respective school buildings, the dogs had each other for company. Dunkin is part of the pandemic puppy boom that led to skyrocketing demand across the country during the year of lockdowns and social isolation.

Sarah Javier, president and CEO of the Animal Protective Association of Missouri Adoption Center, said that during the pandemic, the average length of stay for shelter animals dropped -- at times, down to one day.

Rescue organizations say they worried about unscrupulous breeders capitalizing on that demand.

"That's absolutely a concern for us, especially in Missouri," said Gary Lowder, spokesman for The Humane Society of Missouri. For nine years running, Missouri has topped the Horrible Hundred list produced by the Humane Society of the United States to draw attention to puppy mills and problem breeders. There are more puppy breeders and sellers in Missouri on the list than anywhere else in the country.

Lowder cautioned that breeders' "happy Facebook pages" do not reveal what's going on behind the scenes. The organization recently rescued dogs from a licensed breeder where the animals were starving and living among dead dogs.

Those concerns led some puppy-seekers to stalk shelter websites and social media pages. In much of the country, shelter operations were drastically impacted by the pandemic. Many closed to the public in March 2020 and eventually created curbside adoption processes. Since people couldn't walk through and fall in love with an animal in person, that connection had to happen online.

For the largest shelters in the St. Louis area, overall adoption numbers declined in 2020, given the tight restraints on how they could operate. But their facilities have since reopened. This year, they are seeing the number of adoptions rebound to pre-pandemic levels.

Other places, however, saw significant increases last year, even with the additional barriers to adoption. The Belleville Area Humane Society in Illinois saw a 44% increase in animal adoptions in 2020 and a 74% increase in fostering, according to Executive Director Kim Vrooman.

The organization also started a pet food pantry and a vaccine clinic to help families who are struggling financially to keep their pets. They don't require any proof of hardship from pet owners to receive pet food or obtain subsidized vaccines for their animals.

"We want to put supports in place to support pet owners," she said.

All of these shelters countered the news reports that greater numbers of people were returning the animals they had adopted during the pandemic.

"There was no surge in returns due to COVID," Vrooman said. "The reasons for returns are still very diverse."

Javier agreed. Many of the reasons that typically lead people to surrender pets -- divorce, deaths or relocation -- are similar to what they saw throughout the pandemic.

As many people return to work, pets and their owners may need to get used to being apart for longer hours. But the lessons of love and commitment that come from owning a pet transcend the circumstances under which they enter our lives.

The Fogartys can attest to that. Their biggest concern was making sure Dunkin was fully potty-trained before they returned to school and work, and he learned that skill with their consistent training. These days, he waits for them to come home to go outside and play.

"Now, it's just one more member of the family," Carolyn said.