The highly contagious Delta variant is running rampant through the country, including Wisconsin. Marathon County is currently ranked “high level of transmission,” and all indications predict that ranking will increase to “very high” before the start of the school year. Despite this highly contagious variant and the nearly 700,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19, the Wausau School Board has decided there will be no required masking, no social distancing and no quarantining of close contacts for this school year. Critically, children are contracting the Delta variant and ending up in intensive care, and even on ventilators, in some states.

Children under 12 cannot get vaccinated (grades 4K through many 6th graders). They have no protections in the school environment unless mitigation strategies are put in place. However, even vaccinated persons are contracting the Delta variant as “break through” cases. The CDC, Wisconsin Department of Health Services and Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction all recommend the following to support safe in-person learning:

- Universal indoor masking by all students (age 2 and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.

- In addition to universal indoor masking, maintain at least 3 feet of physical distance between students within classrooms to reduce transmission risk. When it is not possible to maintain a physical distance of at least 3 feet, such as when schools cannot fully re-open while maintaining these distances, it is especially important to layer multiple other prevention strategies, such as screening testing.

- Screening testing, ventilation, handwashing and respiratory etiquette, staying home when sick and getting tested, contact tracing in combination with quarantine and isolation, and cleaning and disinfection are also important layers of prevention to keep schools safe.

- Students, teachers, and staff should stay home when they have signs of any infectious illness and be referred to their healthcare provider for testing and care.

- Many schools serve children under the age of 12 who are not eligible for vaccination at this time. Therefore, this guidance emphasizes implementing layered prevention strategies (e.g., using multiple prevention strategies together consistently) to protect students, teachers, staff, visitors, and other members of their households and support in-person learning.

Because the Wausau School District is not offering synchronous virtual instruction as last year, families have to choose between risking their lives and their children’s lives, sending their children to WAVE (asynchronous online learning), or withdraw from the district.

Wausau students and staff deserve stability and safety in their home schools, which the Wausau School District is not currently providing. The Wausau School Board is failing this community by rejecting science.

By signing this petition, I am urging the Wausau School Board to listen to science and follow these recommendations to ensure the safest possible learning environment for students, staff and community.