PW-S Board urged to act as Covid-19 spreads at Port High

With students continuing to attend classes even after their parents and siblings test positive for Covid-19 and evidence that the virus is spreading within Port Washington  High School, administrators asked the Port Washington-Saukville School Board Monday to tighten rules regarding masks and quarantining. 

The board did not even entertain a suggestion from administrators who make up the district’s Covid response team that all students and staff members be required to wear masks until at least the end of the first quarter, but it did essentially adopt two of the team’s recommendations.

Members voted unanimously to require unvaccinated students who have close contacts with people in the same household who have Covid-19 to quarantine.

Administrators noted in a written summary of their recommendations that school nurse Abigail Monroe receives 10 to 20 reports a day of positive cases in homes “and children are still coming to school.”

School Board member Matthew Uselding said, “I think this is a no-brainer. If you live with someone who has Covid and you’re not vaccinated, you shouldn’t be going to school.”

The board, however, was divided over a recommendation to lower the Covid-19 infection rate threshold that determines when students and staff members in a particular school are required to wear masks.

According to a plan approved by the board in August, masks are recommended but not required until the infection rate of a school reaches 5%. 

Administrators recommended Monday that the rate be dropped to 2%, noting that the tipping point in other school districts that have struggled to keep schools open is 3%.

“When they got to this point is when they started having a hard time keeping the doors open,” Supt. Dave Watkins said. 

“All of this is about creating an environment where it is possible for our students to be in person five days a week. It’s about keeping kids in school and preventing us from going to that virtual environment.”

But as they are in districts throughout the country, masks continue to be controversial in the Port Washington-Saukville School District, where one official wrote them off as ineffective before the board voted 6-3 to set the mask threshold at a 3% infection rate. 

“Do we have any data that shows masks reduce spread (of the virus), because I haven’t seen it,” said Brian Stevens, vice president of the board and chairman of the recently created Executive Committee, which has the authority to act on behalf of the board in emergency situations that include responding to Covid-19 conditions. “I view masks as useless, and I’d rather do something that is useful,” Stevens, who voted against reducing the infection threshold for masks, said. “I don’t like grasping at straws and trying things that are ineffective.”

The other board members who voted against decreasing the threshold to 3% were Uselding and Doug Miller.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal mask-wearing in school, calling proper face-coverings one of several measures that effectively limit the spread of Covid-19.

School Board President Brenda Fritsch said the district needs to do whatever it can, including requiring masks when infection rates reach a certain level, to avoid a return to online instruction.

“We have to do everything we can to keep kids in school, and at some point they (masks) are the only thing we have to throw at it (the virus),” she said. “To me, they’re better than nothing.”

As of Tuesday morning, 81 students in the district were quarantined. Of those, 45 were required to stay out of school because they have Covid-19 or symptoms of the virus, Director of Special Services Duane Woelfel said. The other 36 students chose to quarantine because they had close contact with someone who has the virus.

Students are not required to quarantine because of close contact with someone who has Covid-19 until the positivity rate in a school reaches 10%.

Of the 15 students in the district who have tested positive for Covid-19, 11 are high school students.

Port High is an area of particular concern for administrators, who noted that there are two documented cases of students transmitting the disease to each other in school, while last school year, when students were required to wear masks, there was no evidence of in-school transmission. 

“Right now, I believe we’re in an upward trend, and the activity we’re seeing is at the high school,” Woelfel said of the infection rate.

Also of concern is the more-contagious Covid-19 Delta variant. According to the CDC, a person infected with this variant can be expected to infect an average of seven other people. Administrators pointed out in their justification for recommending that the threshold for mask-wearing be lowered that if 42 high school students — 5% of the student body — contract the Delta variant, they could infect another 290 students, more than one-quarter of the school’s students. 

The Delta variant also factored into the suggestion from administrators that all students and staff members be required to wears masks in school through Nov. 5 — a suggestion that was ignored by the board. Requiring mask-wearing through the first quarter would see the district through the projected peak of the Delta variant spread, administrators said. 

Meanwhile, the district has applied to become part of the Wisconsin K-12 Covid-19 Testing Program, which would offer free tests to students in the district. The program would give students a convenient way to find out if they have the virus while possibly reducing the time they are out of school and help the district better track Covid-19, Woelfel said.