School District sheds mask rule, other precautions

The Grafton School Board on Monday provided an early look at how districts will begin a new school year amid a lingering and evolving pandemic by approving a plan that will eliminate several of the Covid-19 safeguards enacted last school year.

In doing so, the School District proved that navigating the pandemic remains challenging and controversial with a plan that a handful of parents said ignores mask recommendations from health experts and endangers students who are too young to get Covid-19 shots.

A day before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidance to recommend that all students and staff members wear masks in school regardless of whether they have been vaccinated, the School Board adopted a plan under which students, staff members and school visitors will not have to wear face coverings inside or outside district buildings.

The plan also does away with mandatory quarantining for students and staff members who have had close contact with people who test positive for Covid-19, scales back contact tracing and social distancing and will only allow students who submit a homebound application and an excuse from a physician to attend school online.

In addition, events such as performances can resume, as can field trips, and visitors will again be allowed in schools.

The district will continue to fight the virus by using electrostatic sprayers to disinfect high-traffic areas, deep cleaning schools nightly, using Covid-19 approved air filters, complying with recommended ventilation ratios and using its $150,000 bipolar ionization air purification system. 

Also, students and staff members who test positive for the virus, as well as those who exhibit symptoms of any virus, will not be allowed in schools for a period of time.

Supt. Jeff Nelson said the plan developed by administrators in consultation with staff members is based on Covid-19 infection and vaccination rates in Ozaukee County, the fact a high percentage of district staff members are vaccinated, the limited spread of the virus in schools last year and the fact there were no Covid-19 cases reported during summer school even though masks and social distancing weren’t required.

“There are still a lot of questions we don’t know the answers to. We’re still in uncharted waters,” Nelson told the board. “We don’t believe the pandemic is over, but we do believe we’re headed in the right direction with vaccinations. We believe the mitigation measures we have in place will keep our students and staff safe.”

But not everyone who attended the nearly two-hour presentation and discussion Monday agreed. 

Three of the four parents who spoke during the meeting, all of whom were critical of the back-to-school plan, noted that the district’s optional mask policy is contrary to recommendations from the Academy of American Pediatrics, which recommends universal mask wearing, the Ozaukee Washington Public Health Department, which advises people who have not been vaccinated to wear masks,  and the CDC. 

At the time the district’s plan was drafted and approved, the CDC recommended people who have not been vaccinated wear masks. On Tuesday, it changed its recommendation and now advises that students in kindergarten through 12th grade and staff members wear masks regardless of whether they have been vaccinated.

Of particular concern, the parents said, is the elimination of the mask mandate in light of the fact children younger than 12 — those in elementary school and many in sixth grade — are not yet eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine. 

“Maybe summer school went well. Maybe it will all be fine, but you are going against CDC, health department and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations,” Jennifer Shimon, who said she is particularly concerned about her fifth-grader, told the board. “Doing this before vaccination is a possibility leaves a gap in protecting our kids. 

“To me, you’re abandoning this age group simply because you’re tired of masks or because you think it’s safe.

“Extending mask wearing for a few more months is a small price to pay if there’s even the possibility that it might protect one of our kids.”

Carrie McClung, whose daughters are in elementary and middle school, said that while it makes sense to give middle and high school students the option of wearing masks because they can receive the vaccine, she can’t understand why face coverings would not be required at schools where children are still too young to be vaccinated.

“If you look at the recommendations locally, if you look at the national recommendations, it seems like the district would want to continue to have a policy of requiring masks at the elementary level until those students can get vaccinated,” she said. “It just seems incredibly risky to make it optional.”

Grafton resident Michael Behlen, who no longer has children in school, said the district’s plan is particularly concerning given the increase in Covid-19 variant infections.

“Does anyone on the board or in the administration know what the Delta variant is going to do to students, especially since it’s going through younger people and is causing them to be hospitalized?” he asked. “This is terrible.”

School Board President Paul Lorge noted that the district was successful in keeping schools open last year, which it would not have done if it followed all the advice from experts.

“I think it’s safe to say that if we followed the recommendations of the Washington Ozaukee Health Department and CDC, we would have not been open,” he said.

But School Board member Jo Maehl, who was the only one to vote against the plan, said she favors a mask mandate for students who are too young to receive the vaccine. 

“It’s something that’s simple, effective and could protect our youngest students,” she said.

Nelson said the district’s plan is based on its experiences, as well as those of other districts, and county data.

Of the 844 students who attended summer school and the 83 staff members who worked over the summer, none of them contracted Covid-19 even though masks and social distancing were not required, Nelson said. 

McClung, however, took issue with the relevance of the district’s summer school experience, noting that enrollment is significantly smaller than during the school year and several summer classes are held outside.

But Nelson said many Wisconsin school districts lifted their mask mandates and essentially returned to normal practices in May and did not experience Covid-19 outbreaks.

“The schools that I know of that went mask-optional turned on the bubblers and everything,” he said. “Everything went back on and there were no breakouts.”

Among the data cited by the district is that according to the Ozaukee Washington Public Health Department, 70% of Ozaukee County residents 18 and older have received one dose of the vaccine and 67% are fully vaccinated. 

Those percentages, however, are lower among county resident ages 12 through 17. Half of that population has received one dose and 45% are fully vaccinated.

Beyond mask wearing, the district quarantine policy will change significantly. Instead of students having to quarantine at home if they have close contact with a person who tested positive, parents will now be notified of such contacts and have the option of quarantining their children.

The change, Nelson said, is based on the district’s experience last school year when 794 students were forced to quarantine and none of them contracted the virus while at home.

Students and staff members who test positive for the virus will still have to quarantine — seven days with a negative test and 10 days without one.

Students who are in quarantine will receive online support, but they will only be able to view their teachers in the classroom rather than participate in classes via synchronous learning. 

Long-term online instruction, which last school year taxed teachers who had to provide both online and in-person instruction for students, will only be available to students whose parents submit a homebound application with a physician’s recommendation.

The one change made by the board was to a requirement that students who qualify for online instruction commit to it for the full school year. Students now will be able to switch to in-person instruction at the beginning of the second semester if cleared by a physician, a change made by the board primarily to accommodate younger students who may become eligible for and receive the vaccine by the middle of the school year.

The one caveat to the plan, Nelson said, is that it is subject to change as the pandemic evolves.

“If we learned anything last year, it’s that we need to be flexible,” he said. “Obviously, if there are abrupt or sustained increases in Covid infections in the community and/or in our schools, we’d need to look at modifying those practices just as we did last year to keep us open.”