School Board lifts mask requirement

Face coverings were optional in the Cedar Grove-Belgium School District as of Monday, May 3, after the School Board rescinded its mask mandate on April 28.

The board voted 6-1 to make masks optional across the district except on buses, where federal law requires them, garnering applause from a group of more than 20 unmasked adults and students sitting on the left side of the high school study hall room. Fewer than 10 mask wearers sat on the right side.

The decision follows an online survey that showed 75% to 80% of parents supported lifting the mask requirement, although the format allowed people to vote multiple times. Supt. Chad Brakke summed up some of the survey’s comments.

“Many of those comments criticized the wisdom of the district to even consider the other point of view. My leadership was challenged and my intelligence was challenged just because I was listening to the other side,” he said.

Staff members who don’t have children in school are split 50-50 on the mask requirement, board President Chad Hoopman said, while staff members with children support making masks optional by more than a 2-to-1 margin.

Brakke said the teachers association leaders requested the mask requirement remain, citing teachers’ sacrifices to keep students in school and a fear that many students would switch to online learning for the final five weeks of the year. Of the district’s enrollment of about 1,000 students, 37 are now attending online.

The administrative team also wanted to keep the mask requirement, Brakke said.

Brakke referenced a Return to School Committee meeting from last June when opinions on offering in-person or online school ran the gamut from support to reopen schools as normal or keep them closed until everyone is vaccinated and everywhere in between.

“What I wanted people to understand is because somebody wants to have schools open doesn’t mean they don’t care about the health and safety of students and staff,” Brakke said, “and if somebody was nervous and felt like we should be more cautious, it wasn’t that they were weak.

“I wanted people to be careful not to make it political.”

Brakke recommended the board maintain the rules the district has operated under since the beginning of school, which require masks when social distancing can’t be maintained.

Hoopman suggested a compromise, suggesting masks be optional when it is possible to maintain social distance of one meter — citing guidance from the World Health Organization — but requiring masks when people are in hallways and when entering and exiting schools.

Board member Kurt Kraus said he couldn’t support that idea because he knows the majority of the people who this month elected him to a third term want him to make masks optional “otherwise I will not be re-elected.”

Board member Dan Bruhn said some students in highly populated classes, such as eighth-grade algebra 1, still may be required to wear masks since the one-meter distance couldn’t be maintained.

Middle School Principal Kelly Dzurick said keeping distance in that class has been a challenge all year but was easier in fall when more students were learning online.

Brakke said the administrative team requested any decision be “cut and dry” so staff members don’t have to figure out when students should wear masks.

Board member Laura Schieffer agreed with Kraus.

“We don’t have uniforms in school for a reason — because we’ve got choices,” she said. “I put that faith in the parents to make that choice for their children on whether or not to wear a mask.”

Outside school, Schieffer said, students often get together in close quarters. Social distancing, she said, “is a fabrication of the safety that does not really exist outside of these walls.”

Schieffer made the motion to make masks optional for students and staff that was approved, 6-1.

Lori Gruell cast the dissenting vote. She told Ozaukee Press she supported Brakke’s suggestion.

“Given our excellent track record for Covid cases with the measures we already have in place and the short duration of the remaining school year, I felt that going from all masks all the time to optional masks all the time (without social distancing) was too extreme, and could potentially put the health and safety of our students and staff at risk,” she said.

In addition, the board voted 6-1 to use one meter as the social distance and quarantine standard, in accordance with the WHO recommendation. Bruhn voted against the measure.

The board voted 7-0 to make masks optional during summer school, which is slated to start June 14. Hoopman noted that the elementary school doesn’t have air conditioning, which could make students wearing masks uncomfortable on hot and humid days.

The mask issue heated up during the last few weeks, with more than 50 people, including students, speaking at an April 14 board meeting. Most asked the board to eliminate the mask requirement that had been in place since the school year started but could be lifted after the state Supreme Court found Gov. Tony Evers’ emergency orders that mandated wearing masks unconstitutional.

The district has held in-person school all year and offers an online option.

One student and a few staff members requested the mask requirement remain in place through the end of the school year.

On April 28 during the board’s Committee of the Whole meeting, public input was not allowed since it was not on the agenda. Public input is a standing agenda item at regular School Board meetings held the second Wednesday of the month.