On 01/10/2022 the Appleton Area School District Board of Education voted 6-1 to continue universal masking until February 17, 2022.
Superintendent Judy Baseman reminded the board they had several key goals with the Covid-19 mitigation process which were (1) to mitigate the spread of Covid, (2) prioritize in-person learning, and (3) minimize social disruption.
She then passed things on to the City of Appleton’s Interim Health Officer Sonja Jensen who reviewed the Covid-19 data outside of the school district.
She reviewed the 2-week burden per 100,000 residents. Cases last week were double the number from the previous week and the previous week’s numbers were also about double from the week before that. She noted the burden was in the “critically high category.”
She reviewed positive case counts for Appleton residents under 18 and in the 4–17-year-old range. This information only went through 12/28/2021 [and so did not seem necessarily particularly relevant to the current situation.]
She reviewed where the vaccination rates stood as of January 6, 2022. That slide did not include information about boosters, and she directed people to go to the WI DHS website for more information about that. She noted that boosters are now recommended for everyone 12 and up who have had at least 5 months since the completion of their original vaccine series.
She showed a screenshot from the Covid dashboard on WHA.org showing hospitalizations by day. [She indicated it was for the Fox Valley region, but I noticed the screenshot was actually of the numbers for the entire state of WI although she labelled it as being for the Fox Valley Area. Far from having 2002 hospitalized Covid patient and 464 Covid patients in the ICU, on January 6th, the Fox Valley area had 133 total patients with Covid and 27 Covid patients in the ICU, although those numbers have changed as of 01/10/2022 when I took a screenshot.)
She noted that, in the Fox Valley as of 01/06/2022 97.3% of hospital beds were in use and 98.9% of ICU beds.
She reviewed the CDC’s recommendations for vaccines and boosters as well as their updated recommendations for isolating and quarantining. She finished off by remarking that “These guidelines were a big change for everybody, so there have been lots of questions.”
They then opened things up for questions.
Board member Deb Truyman asked if there was any consideration for those who have acquired natural immunity by getting Covid.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said that things are subject to change, but right now if someone has had Covid within the last 90 days, they would not need to quarantine if they were in close contact with a Covid positive person.
Deb asked if that would be included in the recommendations, but Superintendent Baseman told her that the Board was not reviewing the district’s isolation and quarantine guidelines that evening, although she had wanted Health Officer Jensen to provide information on what those recommendations were. “Whether we adopt those operationally or not, we have not made a decision as a team.”
Board member Jim Bowman said it looked like they were encountering the part of the Omicron wave. Although hospitalizations were up, ICU admissions seems pretty stable which, to him, substantiated the idea that Omicron was not as risky as Delta.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said so far, they were seeing that Omicron was more contagious but with less severe symptoms than Delta, but the health systems were concerned about the sheer number of cases which had the potential to impact them.
Jim Bowman said it looked like Appleton’s fully vaccinated rate was only inching up.
Health Officer Jensen said for a while it had been increasing by a rate of 2% every 2 or 3 weeks. That had slowed to 1%, and now it might be less than that. [On 12/13/2021 Appleton’s fully vaccinated population was 62.9% so those numbers do seem to still be increasing.]
Deb pointed out that fewer than 20% of the 5–11-year-old were fully vaccinated and she wondered if those numbers were low due to access issues or because parents were opting not to get their children vaccinated.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said there was definitely opportunity and availability, but the vaccine had only been approved in that age group for 2 months, so timing may be contributing to the low numbers. She could not speak specifically as to parents’ decisions or the uptake of the vaccine.
Board member Ed Ruffolo asked if the CDC had endorsed the “test and stay” approach as an alternative for quarantine for k-12 schools.
Interim Health Officer Jensen said she didn’t know enough to speak on that yet. The CDC had published some recommendations, but WI DHS had not published full recommendations at this point. She said more info was coming and added that one of the issues with “test and stay” was the availability of tests.
Board member Amanda Stuck asked if the city was tracking other illnesses like influenza and colds the way they were tracking Covid and could they compare them.
Per Interim Health Officer Jensen, they track anything that is reportable to the Public Health Department, but they don’t put it on their website the way they do for Covid. Colds are not reportable. Influenza hospitalizations [but not just influenza cases] are reportable. Things like STDs and tuberculosis are also tracked and reported. She said none of those were in the spotlight like Covid, and the numbers were not quite as high.
Amanda asked if she had a breakdown of how many hospitalizations were because of Covid or simply incidentally with Covid.
Interim Health Officer Jensen responded, “That I don’t have.” She said the health systems keep track of that. She also noted that “Staffing definitely has a big impact right now on the healthcare system, not just space or number of beds.”
[Honestly, it doesn’t seem that difficult or extraordinary for the Health Officer of a Level 3 health department to call her contacts at the two local hospital systems and get monthly or semi-monthly updates as to how many hospitalizations are with Covid instead of because of Covid. That seems like kind of important information for a health officer to have.]
Amanda asked what her thought were on the Mayo Clinic saying cloth masks aren’t effective.
Interim Health Officer Jensen responded, “Any kind of masks are going to be effective for the person to stop some of the spread. Some are more effective than others.” She said that the more layers there were and the better it fit over a person’s mouth and nose, the better it would be at preventing spread to someone else. “But I don’t have access, like, at my fingertips to know which mask itself is more effective at this time.” [Honestly, that seems like a softball question that a health officer should be able to answer.]
With that portion of the presentation over, Assistant Supervisor Polly VandenBoogart then reviewed the district’s internal data with the Board members.
She reviewed the case counts over time of both students and staff and indicated that, as of 01/07/2022 under the rule they had been planning to utilize wherein when 2% of students at a school had Covid the school would mask, masking would have to be implemented at 9 elementary schools, 1 middle school, and 4 high schools.
Between the start of school on 09/01/2021 and 01/05/2022, approximately 10% of the student population had tested positive for Covid as has 14.5% of the staff population. 1,669 individuals, or 10.37% of the staff and student populations combined, had tested positive. [For what it’s worth, during that same timeframe, the City of Appleton, in which a majority of the population is going around unmasked, had 6,019 positive cases which is only 8.03% of our estimated population of 75,000 residents.]
The district’s Covid-19 testing sites has evolved. They now only conduct the rapid antigen tests instead of PCR tests. They had started out offering tests only to symptomatic students and staff, but they now offer drive-through testing that is available to both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. That site is, however, weather dependent to maintain the safety of the testers and the testing products.
Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes hopped on the presentation briefly to let the board know that back at the 11/22/2021 meeting they had shown a slide that had compared the positivity rate at 4 fully masked districts as compared to 12 mask optional districts. In November, the positivity rate of the masked districts had been 0.40% as compared to 0.75% for the other districts. Since that time, 2 of the masked districts had gone mask option. The positivity rate at the remaining 2 masked district had gone up to 0.64% while the rate at the mask optional districts had gone down to 0.73%.
He concluded by saying, “Now, again, this data doesn’t necessarily help us draw any conclusions, but we felt because we shared it at the November 22nd meeting, we needed to share it at this meeting as well.” [I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to look at that information, however, and see (a) given the much larger number of mask optional districts available for comparison, AASD appears to be an outlier with its policy and (b) the less that 1/10th of 1 percent difference between the masked and unmasked districts is clearly statistically irrelevant.]
Julie King then reviewed the staffing challenges AASD is facing. Compared to the 2019-20 school year prior to the start of the pandemic, staff absences are up and in December, they were averaging about 14% of their staff being absent per week. They also saw a significant increase over the most recent week, and the over 1,100 absences were almost double the absences on that same week in the 2019-20 school year. The absence trend (i.e., the ebb and flow of absences over the weeks), however, remained very similar year over year, just with an increased number of people being affected.
They were facing challenges filling substitute positions. Last week, 27% of substitute positions went unfilled. This was due to a smaller substitute pool and some substitutes electing to not take jobs as well as increased Covid absences on top of regular seasonal illnesses.
Since June they have hired 130 substitutes and support staff and have made efforts to engage inactive substitutes.
She said that every day their principals are looking at where they can move staff to cover absences. They do have dedicated substitutes and ESSER funded substitutes at their locations and can also use paraprofessionals who are licensed to teach, youth advocates, interventionists, or coaches to fill in. They also have increased the payrate for internal subbing.
They opened things up for questions again.
Jim Bowman asked if, assuming Omicron continued to cause high cases for a month or so, would extending the mask mandate improve the teacher/substitute issues?
There was a very long pause before Julie responded that she didn’t know that she could answer that question. Individuals feel differently about that and she hadn’t gathered information that would give her a true picture of whether that would help or hinder the situation. She did note that, if masks are helping, then they might mitigate some of the transmission.
Ed wondered how close AASD was to reaching a critical point where they simply didn’t have an educator in the classroom to teach and what would they do in that situation?
Julie answered, “Right now we are, I would say, are at near critical.” She was concerned about how the absences had compounded and how a 2-week period of isolation increased the number of absences. They were fully implementing every coverage plan in order to meet their statutory requirements, but that came at the expense of things like interventions, social and emotional learning, and coaching support for new hires. They were hoping the surge would be brief.
Ed wondered if they would have to cancel some classes or do a soft lockdown.
Deb asked how moving to the new CDC guidelines would reduce quarantines and get teachers back more quickly.
Julie agreed it could reduce the duration of time an individual was out.
Deb said, “This is a general statement: if we’ve got 10% of the students in the district that have tested positive and 15% of staff that have tested positive are masks working?”
Board President Kay Eggert asked when there would be discussion of the potential adoption of the new CDC guidelines.
Essentially, the leadership team was waiting on the results of the board decision on masking. Per Superintendent Baseman, they were looking at the practical aspects of implementing that policy and how they would monitor students if universal masking was not in place.
Superintendent Baseman finished out the question-and-answer session by stressing that things were at a critical point. So far they had been able to keep things up and running and have kids in school 5 days a week, but she said it had been an all-hands-on deck approach.
The Board then moved to consideration of the item.
Deb started that discussion out by giving a short PowerPoint presentation that summarized and clarified her thoughts and concerns.
- Dr. Fauci said the number of children hospitalized with Covid was being overcounted.
- Leana Wen had said “cloth masks are little more than facial decorations.”
- A Pfizer board member had also indicated cloth masks don’t provide much protection against Omicron.
- The board had heard from medical doctors, but not from certified industrial hygienists. In the Hierarchy of Controls to Minimize Exposures, PPE was the least effective measure and that didn’t necessarily even include masks. She wondered if they should focus on other measures instead such as increased air flow and filtration.
She was deeply concerned about the consequences of their mandates saying, “We’ve done studies on how many students are getting covid. What we have not done studies on are–or any data on–how many students are anxiety ridden, afraid to come to school because they just can’t take this anymore…. What are we going to find in years to come, really, that we’ve done by keeping these masks on kids when, especially cloth masks don’t work?”
Kay said that she had listened to the joint press conference by ThedaCare, Ascension, and Aurora in which they talked about the burden on the local hospitals and that they were at a critical point. She said, “Indeed it is projected that this omicron is fast and furious and hopefully will be a shortened surge but given the current Covid data in the community and the district, the anticipated trajectory of the covid cases over the next several weeks, the potential change that the district could follow the updated CDC isolation and quarantine guideline which would help with staffing, the current stress and burden on our local hospital systems, and also our very worthy goals of trying to keep students in school for in-person learning and to minimize disruptions for our students, families, and staff, I would like to make a motion that we would continue a universal mask requirement until February 17th.”
Jim Bowman seconded it. He then went on to state, “It’s distressing to me that we are in that position, that we don’t yet have a collective set of data that we call science that we can all agree to. It’s probably because the science is evolving. That’s understandable. The virus itself is evolving. We call them variants. So, at some point you have to pick who you trust—who is the best sci-, who has the best science, who has done the most conclusive research. And that’s why we’ve got the CDC is my judgement.”
He went on to say that although cloth masks couldn’t stop airborne particles, they could stop droplets, “So cloth masks have a limited effectiveness. There’s no questions about that, I think. But if you put them on everybody, it helps.” He thought that the school district comparison numbers presented by Greg Hartjes indicated that masks helped. “So, I look at our situation for the next four weeks and I care about kids getting sick, but I particularly care about this district unable to staff its own classes. That’s why we’re here. And if masks will cut down a little bit on the case rate, that frees up more teachers. It may cause more subs to be willing to volunteer. I think I’m in favor of that.”
Deb thought the differences in rates between the masks and unmasked districts was inconsequential and pointed out that with masking 10% of the students and 15% of the teachers had gotten Covid. Were the masks working?
She recounted some parent comments. A parent at Madison Middle School said that fewer than 50% of the kids in the school wore masks appropriately. Were masks working? Another said 75% of the 4k students at their son’s school were learning virtually because of at-school exposure. Were masks working? One student’s classroom was planning to visit and unmasked indoor sports arena with no articulated Covid mitigation plan. How were masks working? Another parent said any benefit to wearing a mask was not worth the cost at this point.
She said they kept thinking about the physical health of the students but what about their mental and emotional health? Were they taking social emotional learning seriously if they were insisting on something that wasn’t proven to work? She said school nurses were writing in to ask them to stop the mandates.
She said, “I would like to remind you all that safe and healthy is more than a negative Covid test. We don’t know what this is doing to our students other than getting them really feeling like they’re pawns in a political game.”
Board member James Bacon said he had read the emails and public comments they had received and “by my tally 69% of those that write to us, including staff, students, family members, have asked us to continue the mask mandate. So, I know that there’s plenty of input on both sides, plenty of people that have various opinions, but in my opinion, the overwhelming majority of our constituency is asking for us to continue it, which also seems like the prudent choice to offer consistency in our education system and prioritize the safety, wellbeing, and education of our staff, students, and community.”
He said vaccinations weren’t providing as much protection for Omicron. They had hard choices to make but they had to prioritize what was best for kids. He didn’t think requiring masks came at the expense of supporting the students social or emotional needs. “I do think if masks are providing some benefit we should continue to do so.”
Deb asked again how they knew they were providing a benefit. Why were the numbers so high if they were working?
Kay thought that if they adopted the new CDC guidelines for quarantine and isolation that they wouldn’t have to worry about monitoring kids in that 5-day masking period if they kept universal masking. She said that everyone in the room knew how disruptive the current isolation and quarantine policy was. “You know people or you’ve lived it yourself.” [That statement made me wonder how many of the board members have gotten Covid.]
She said, “I really do believe that the CDC is basing these new guidelines on science.” She didn’t believe that one could conclude that masks weren’t working because cases were high.
Amanda said, “I do think at some point we have to really set the parameters of what we decide is the numbers that we wear a mask and what are the numbers we don’t. If it’s the cases per 100,000 I think we need at some point to have a clear communication about how we’re deciding that.”
Deb suggested amending the motion to include a statement that if they saw a downward trend for 2 weeks by the 17th that they would go forward with approving masks being optional.
Board member Kris Sauter wanted to review where things were on the 17th. Kay and Jim Bowman also wanted to, at a minimum, leave open the option for a review on the 17th, but they also thought that 4 weeks was what Omicron surges have been estimated to be.
Ed said, “This is a very exasperating situation, and I appreciate how difficult it is for this board and how frustrating it is for our families. Every time it looks like we can take a step towards normalcy, Covid has another idea. This is the second time it’s happened to us. So as much as I would love to have a definitive plan, I don’t know that we can. I think we are going to have to relook at everything on the 17th.”
He said it was important for kids to stay in school. “I’m very concerned that we’re going to just simply not have the staff to properly do education and, again, we may be forced into some kind of a soft lockdown.
“There’s so much information on masking. It’s very difficult for me to definitively state whether they work or not. I just know the situation appears to me that we need to do everything we can and use every mitigation strategy at our disposal to try to hold off some very bad outcomes over the next 4 weeks.”
Amanda said she was frustrated that “even the medical community doesn’t seem to have clear answers or be on the same page. I mean, there are literally doctors in other school districts putting forward the recommendation to go mask optional. You know, the CDC guidelines are changing all the time so now it’s only 5 days, so, you know, it just gets really frustrating I guess to try and figure out what the right thing is to do and what the science really is. Again, now to see the Mayo clinic saying that masks don’t really work, well then why should would do it?”
She wished they had some good guidance and metrics to make decisions. “If the medical community doesn’t have it, how do we come up with it? but it’s just frustrating to feel like we’re making decisions without good information and good data.”
Deb went ahead an made a motion to amend the motion as she had suggested earlier but it failed for lack of a second.
Although technically there ought to have been a second in order to discuss the amendment, Kay went ahead and said that she appreciated the idea behind the amendment, but it was hard to define what a significant reduction in cases would be. She also understood Amanda’s concerns, and thought it was an issue.
Jim Bowman said it took several years for the polio vaccine to become accepted and there was much controversy surrounding it. But in retrospect everyone thought things were obvious. He heard Amanda’s frustration that they didn’t have a clearer set of fact. Things would be straightforward if they had those facts. “We don’t and we’re not going to. We’re going to have to exercise our best judgement.”
Deb wanted to know how many kids had transferred to online school because they had previously told families they would be moving to masks optional at the start of the second semester. The answer was 36.
Kris said that she had watched the press conference also and the doctors had encouraged everyone to wear masks. They also had a lot of concerns about hospital personnel and the ability to provide cancer care and heart surgeries. She looked at that and thought that if the people who were in the trenches were recommending masking that they to continue doing that because it was the best information they had right now.
There was no further discussion and the board voted 6-1 to extend masking until February 17 with Deb Truyman providing the one dissenting vote.
View full meeting video here: https://youtu.be/AAYdb6t-bAk
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