During the 08/09/2021 Appleton Area School District Board of Education meeting, 10 people made public comments, all of them regarding masking for the upcoming school year. 9 of them asked for the District to change its plans for masking to be optional and instead require them to be worn. 1 of them asked that the District maintain their plans to have masks be optional.
The written comments the Board received included 7 people in favor of keeping mask wearing option and 4 people who wanted mask wearing mandated.
It was established at the previous Board of Education meeting when the Board voted to approve the administrative team’s plan to begin the year with masking recommended but optional, that the administrative team would have the flexibility to make masking required if necessary.
During this meeting, Superintendent Judy Baseman did not indicate whether she intended to change the course established two weeks ago and make mask wearing mandatory. She did say that they were seeing come concerning trends but were still more than three weeks out from the start of school. They would be taking case rate data as well as vaccination rate data into consideration and that they would be discussing things with Appleton’s Interim Health Officer Sonja Jensen.
In answer to a question by Board of Education member Ed Ruffolo as to whether the administrative team had a due date for when they would let the public know if they were going to institute changes, Superintendent Baseman said the administrative team had discussed announcing any change at the Board meeting on August 23.
View full Board of Education meeting details here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C5CPUE5F9400
With all the current statistics and data regarding the new delta variant, my worry is that we are already throwing our children into a Covid Petri dish. There should be no question, masks should be MANDATED for ALL children. This is not about peoples’ opinions and their thoughts of others “impinging” on their rights. This is way bigger. This is about our children and their right to be safe in the classroom.
What statistics specifically do you think suggest that masking in schools should be required? According to the WI DHS website, since Covid first hit our state, there have been 0 deaths in children 9 and under and only 3 deaths in children 10-19.
There are no real numbers to back up requiring masks in schools. The percentages are so low. Plus there have been other events this summer, such as swim meets, where kids were en masse and they were not superspreader events.
Masks don’t guarantee anything health-wise, and negatively they impact the social interaction of students, which has already been hampered this past year. Nobody is talking about the mental health aspects of this, certainly not virologists.