COLEMAN, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Masking will no longer be a requirement at some Northeast Wisconsin schools.
This comes after the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to overturn the statewide mandate.
The Coleman school board voted to repeal the district’s mask mandate recently.
The district said in a statement,
“Consistent with the School District of Coleman’s Reopening Plan adopted in August 2020, the Board of Education, not the administration, had the sole authority to repeal the mask requirement. The Board exercised that authority on Monday, April 19, with a 5-2 vote. The District will continue to perform rigorous contact tracing, monitor the health and symptoms of our students, staff, parents, and the community for COVID-19, and take the appropriate follow-up actions to ensure the safety of our Coleman School District community.”
Some other districts in the area have done the same.
Dr. Ashok Rai, president and CEO of Green Bay-based Prevea Health, says this is troublesome.
“If you think about the CDC guidelines for schools, some of them have been revised here in the last couple of months, but masking was always recommended and still is. This is not the point in the pandemic where we start to give up on the things that got us to this point,” Dr. Rai said.
Dr. Rai says while the severity of infection in children is lower, their ability to transmit COVID is not.
On Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers announced the state received federal funding to support school-based voluntary COVID-19 testing for teachers, staff and students.
“To be able to test children who are symptomatic right away. Because that’s the most important, if we have ill children, students or ill staff and teachers, we need to be able to do a test quickly, identify if they have COVID-19 and obviously, if so move them out of the classroom setting as quickly as possible,” Wisconsin Department of Health Services deputy secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk said.
Dr. Rai says vaccination rates, especially in rural areas, are not at a point where the virus will go away.
“This will just create sick children, which is the last thing I think anybody truly, meaningfully wants to do,” Dr. Rai said.
Masks will not be required in the Coleman School District starting Monday.
