Parents prevail in campaign for mask rules in Grafton schools

Under pressure from parents who called on officials to protect their children from Covid-19, the Grafton School Board on Monday adopted a mask mandate for the district’s youngest students and the people who educate them.

The board, which last month approved a mask-optional policy for all students, debated for more than two hours this week before amending its back-to-school plan so all elementary school students — those generally 12 and younger for whom a Covid-19 vaccine has not been approved —  as well as staff members in their schools and visitors, must wear masks indoors at all times for at least the first quarter of the school year.

The board also approved a motion that requires middle and elementary school students and staff members to wear masks when entering and leaving buildings and while walking between rooms in schools for the first semester or until a vaccine is approved for children younger than 12. 

That makes Grafton the only school district in Ozaukee County to adopt any sort of mask mandate effective the first day of the 2021-22 school year, which in most districts is Sept. 1.

The Northern Ozaukee School District in Fredonia and the Cedar Grove-Belgium District will start the year with mask-optional policies, and last week the Port Washington-Saukville School Board approved a plan that encourages, but will only require, masks if the infection rates in schools reach a certain level.

In fact, the Port-Saukville School Board thought the thresholds at which masks would be required were too restrictive as proposed by administrators and relaxed them. 

The opposite was true in the Grafton School District, where the board thought the administrative proposal to implement mask requirements and other additional Covid-19 mitigation efforts only if enough students and staff members became infected didn’t go far enough to protect its youngest students.

“I think we’re making a big mistake if we don’t start school with face coverings,” said board member Jo Maehl, who credited mask mandates and other mitigation efforts for the district’s success in keeping students in classrooms full time last school year. 

“We have to keep our students safe. That’s the bottom line.”

Maehl unsuccessfully proposed multiple changes to the district plan, including requiring masks for all students and staff members in the district, before finding enough support on the board for a mask mandate that targets those students too young to receive the vaccine. 

Her efforts were applauded by parents, 18 of whom urged the board to require some if not all students and staff members to wear masks.

“If we underestimate the amount of virus spreading in our schools, the results of starting (the school year) without masks could be disastrous,” Carolyn Wagner, who has two children in elementary school, said. 

Wagner said she would prefer a mask mandate for all students and staff members until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics, both of which recommend universal mask-wearing in schools, advise otherwise, but in the interest of finding a “middle ground” recommended requiring all students and staff members to wear masks for the first 14 days of school, which is roughly the incubation period of the coronavirus. If there are no outbreaks, then masks would be optional for middle and high school students and required for elementary school students for about five weeks — the estimated time it will take for a vaccine to be approved for children younger than 12.

Kristin Gasser, whose youngest child attends Grafton High School, praised the district for its handling of the pandemic last year but warned it would endanger its students, particularly its youngest ones, if its Covid-19 protections such as masks were relaxed when the pandemic is worsening by some measures.

“Everybody was looking to Grafton for guidance. You guys aced it last year,” she told the board. “Now it’s so much worse than last year. We have two entire buildings chock full of children who cannot get vaccinated. I don’t have children in those buildings any more, but it breaks my heart to think about those kids and their parents and their grandparents and people in their families who might have other illnesses and could die if they got Covid from these little kids, not to mention the kids themselves.

“How can we subject an entire population of unvaccinated children to this humongous risk? It’s just inconceivable.”

Gasser’s husband Paul Gasser, a biomedical professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, urged the board to stick to the facts.

“The virus doesn’t make everyone sick, but it makes some sick enough that they die — that’s a fact,” he said. “So you have to do the simple, not really difficult thing of mandating masks. Maybe it’s not popular, but it’s much more popular than hospitalization rates increasing in the county.”

Fifth-grader Morgan McCraw told the board she went to school online from home last year because she didn’t want to risk contracting the virus and giving it to her grandfather, who has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Her mother Sarah McCraw said, “My children had to make a sacrifice, which was to miss an entire year of school so they could see their dying grandfather.”

Gretchen Viesselmann, a nurse, said her 11-year-old daughter contracted Covid -19 earlier this year, was hospitalized and has yet to regain her sense of smell or taste.

“My high-schoolers who are vaccinated are going to wear masks to protect their 11-year-old sister who can’t get vaccinated,” she said. “I’m just praying that you consider requiring masks regardless of age.”

Two parents urged the board not to implement mask mandates, with one questioning the effectiveness of face coverings and claiming they cause ailments that range from hypoxia to bacterial infections. 

Another parent who urged the board not to adopt a mask mandate said he feared Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic but has come to realize that nothing can be done to stop it.

“It’s going to get worse, and masks and plastic partitions are not going to stop it,”he said. “I love the Grafton School District, but there comes a tipping point. We’re just going to walk away, and at some point the district will be hurt by that.” 

After more than an hour of comments from parents, the board considered and rejected multiple motions that would have mandated masks to some degree.

Board member Mark Koehler advocated for a mask requirement, saying that face coverings were key to keeping students in classrooms last school year.

“We know being in-person was extremely valuable, and that set us apart from other districts,” he said. “We want to continue that into this school year, and I think masks weigh heavily on our ability to do that.”

But board member Jerry Rossi opposed wide-ranging mandates that would require students who are old enough to receive the vaccine to wear masks.

“So we’re going to require a fully vaccinated person with a minuscule chance of getting seriously ill from Covid to wear a mask?” he asked.

The board ultimately settled on the mask requirement for elementary school students and agreed to review it on Oct. 25 — a board meeting that coincides with the end of the first quarter.

The board also adopted “check points” proposed by administrators, which are thresholds at which additional mitigation measures would be implemented. 

Those thresholds are a 5%, 10% or 20% Covid-19 positivity rate in a classroom at elementary schools or a combination of infection and quarantine rates at a school, a grade level or in an extracurricular activity at the middle and high schools.

If the 5% threshold is met, students and staff members not required to wear masks would have to do so when entering or leaving buildings and while transitioning between classrooms. Some social distancing measures would be implemented and students and staff members who have close contact with someone who has the virus would have to quarantine.

At the 10% threshold, students and staff members would be required to wear masks regardless of vaccination status for 14 days and until rates dropped below 10% for five school days.

At 20%, grades or buildings of students would be sent home and receive online instruction for 14 days. 

Last school year, all schools hit the 5% threshold several times. John Long Middle School reached the 10% threshold once and the eighth-grade class reached 20%.