I do have a slight update on the masking requirements at Appleton Area School District facilities. AASD’s position is that they have no legal responsibility to accommodate students with religious beliefs that preclude masking.
The District is, however, offering medical exemptions, and Superintendent Judy Baseman, states very plainly, in unambiguous terms, “The District will not be determining which health issues/concerns ‘legitimately warrant being able to go mask free’. That determination must be made by appropriate medical professionals, as outlined in our attached Accommodation Request form.”
At the same time, the masking exemption form notes, “The school nurse will follow up with physician’s office to clarify the need for the accommodation request,” which suggests that a doctor’s word on an exemption is not necessarily final and the District will have input of some sort into whether an exemption is approved or not. I do have an email in requesting clarification on this and hoped I’d be able to include that information in this post, but I have not yet heard back from AASD on this matter.
The email from Superintendent Baseman does also suggest that that, in spite of the fact that the Delta variant was known to be in Wisconsin, in spite of the fact that we had seen how the Delta variant had gone through other countries and states, and in spite of the fact that cases started rising prior to the school year last year, the District still finds coronavirus to be difficult to predict. Superintendent Baseman states in her email, “If we have learned anything over the last year and a half, it is that the conditions of the COVID-19 global pandemic are extremely difficult to predict and guidance regarding key mitigation strategies continues to evolve. AASD and many other districts in our region, across the state, and the nation had to adjust planning and quickly respond to changing conditions and guidance.”
She also declines to give any sort of explanation as to how factors are weighted or where case rates will have to be before masking will be made optional.
Additionally, as long as coronavirus is here, there seems to be no guarantee that AASD will not continue the pattern set over the last two years in which the leadership drastically changes an announced course of action 2 weeks before the start of the school year. Per Superintendent Baseman, “We are not able to predict if/when the global pandemic will no longer be a factor for school leaders as they plan for upcoming school year(s).”
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