On 08/30/2021, two days before the first day of school, the Appleton Area School District released a family letter addressing Covid mitigation protocols.
It appears they have also created a “Restorative Process to Address Mask Refusal”. Currently, this process culminates in the removal of students from in-person school and the calling of police on non-student parents/guardians/visitors.
A number of families had asked for exemptions to the masking policy. Clara Kopplinger, writing on behalf of Superintendent Judy Baseman, told me that this is the text of the responds the district has provided to those families:
Under Sections 118.001, 120.12(1), 120.13, 120.13(1), and 120.13(35)(a), Wis. Stats., among other statutory provisions, public school districts have broad authority with regard to establishing policies and rules to manage the school district. Through these statutes, school boards have wide discretion to implement policies and rules applicable to students, employees, and others who enter school district buildings. A school district may conclude that masking is required to protect the health, safety, and welfare of all who enter district buildings and premises. Not only can a school district implement a policy requiring masks (provided an exception exists for legitimate medical exemptions), but a school district can also enforce the policy.
For the reasons stated above, the District will not reverse its policy requiring face masks. We are responsible for protecting the health of all students, and we take that responsibility seriously. That is why we have made a commitment to account for the best, current health data and information in making our decisions concerning COVID-19 (including the decision to require masks). All available information indicates that we’ve made the right choice and we will continue to require masks for students in our schools.
If you need to request an accommodation for your child/ren based on medical or disability reasons, please contact your child’s school principal(s) directly to request an accommodation form. They will be happy to assist you in the process.”
Response sent by the Appleton Area School District to parents seeking mask exemptions for their children
The district’s mitigation protocols are based on 6 different items: (1) Current community transmission rates, (2) Summer School In-district Data, (3) DHS/CDC/Local Public Health Guidance, (4) Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) Guidance, (5) Local Vaccination Rates, and (6) Availability of PCR Testing Options for Students and Staff. I see no indication of how these items are weighted or what would have to happen for masking to be made optional.
When I asked Superintendent Baseman what case levels would have to be at for masking to be options, Clara Kopplinger, writing on the superintendent’s behalf, stated, “We will review multiple pieces of internal and external data. While not looking at a specific threshold, we will be continuing to review and discuss the many facets of this decision.”
There also seems to be no guarantee that masking will ever go away. I asked Superintendent Baseman, “Covid doesn’t seem to be going away and we’re seeing more and more breakthrough cases in vaccinated people. It seems a little like, as things stand now, AASD could be masking in perpetuity for large chunks of this school year and future school years. What needs to happen regarding Covid for the administrative team to become comfortable having school return to how it was pre-Covid?”
Clara Kopplinger, writing on Superintendent Baseman’s behalf, responded, “We will work with local public health, medical advisors/providers as well as consider guidance from DHS, CDC and DPI.”
I did also ask Superintendent Baseman “why the district suddenly lost faith in their plans to start the year with masking optional. It comes across a little as if you were caught off guard by the recent rise in cases in spite of the fact that cases started rising around this time last year and in spite of the fact that the Delta variant was known to be in Wisconsin prior to your initial decision to have masking be optional and was known to have caused increases in cases elsewhere in the country and the world. “
Ms. Kopplinger’s response, on Superintendent Baseman’s behalf, was, “Our plan all along accounted for flexibility based on internal and external data. Through reflection and analysis, per the plan, the external data changed over time and therefore a shift was needed. It was not a ‘loss of confidence’ but rather seeing the plan through in terms of continuous monitoring of data and reflection as a team. Please see the Item of Consideration here, that was provided for the Board and is available to the public on Board Docs. This Item gives an overview of reasoning for our modification of our mitigation strategies. All of our Board documentation can be found, at any time, on Board Docs.”
[While I agree that the plan had always allowed for flexibility, Superintendent Baseman had indicated to the Board of Education during the 07/26/2021 Board meeting that they wanted to take a more targeted approach that included the ability to focus on individual classrooms and layer in mitigation protocols in specific situations. An across-the-board mask mandate would seem to be at odds with that targeted approach.
I do think it is interesting that the document Ms. Kopplinger pointed to as laying out the reasons for the change in protocols seems to indicate that the administrative team was indeed caught off guard by the rise in cases. Reason 1 given was that “the Delta Variant has become the predominant COVID-19 strain in our community, contributing to a surge in positive cases.” Reason 2 given was that “rates are much higher than during our summer school sessions, when masks/face coverings were optional and we had minimal positive cases among students.” In re-reading this document it does genuinely seem that the AASD administrative team’s planning was such that they did not expect Wisconsin to experience a Delta surge even though the Delta variant was known to be in Wisconsin and we had seen Delta surges happen elsewhere. It also appears they were not planning for the worst and accounting for the possibility that cases were going to rise in August or September in light of the fact that cases rose during that timeframe last year. While the third reason given—the “updated guidance regarding masks/face coverings as a required mitigation strategy in schools”—was something that one couldn’t expect them to have anticipated, I do not understand why the administrative team’s 2021-2022 planning did not include the assumption that there was going to be a rise in cases given the information that was available to them in July.
Ultimately, as I posted about previously, the issue in my mind is not masking per se but rather the district’s overall communication issues. By voting to start the school year out masks optional only to reverse direction a few weeks later they both needlessly freaked out a bunch of parents who wanted masking to be required and they also unnecessarily got the hopes up of another set of parents who didn’t want their children forced to mask. It would probably have been a lot better for both sides if the administrative team could have just come out and said plainly that they wanted to start the year off with masks optional but if cases started rising before the beginning of the school year, then they would make masks required. It would also help if the district could give any sort of benchmarks for what would prompt a change in policy. That would allow the parents who are opposed to masking to look at the situation and decide if they want to hang in there for the whole year and, likewise, the parents who really want masking could decide if they think their children have a reasonable chance of being safe for the entire year or if they also will need to seek other educational options.]
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