No Marathon mask mandate for school start
The Marathon Board of Education last week Wednesday approved COVID- 19 guidelines for the 2021-22 school year that make mask wearing recommended, but not required. The optional mask rule will stay in place unless five percent of staff and students test positive for the virus.
The board agreed to the guidelines in front of 32 residents who mostly said they favor no mandated masks. Some residents said masks are useless and ineffective against containing the virus.
Under the approved guidelines, masks must be worn on school buses. This is not school policy, it was explained, but a requirement of federal mass transit rules which are set to expire Sept. 13. The school district will follow requirements set down by Fischer Transportation, Fenwood, its bus company, it was said.
Students or staff members who are positive for COVID-19 will be required to quarantine for 10 days or until they provide a negative test result. Close contacts to those who test positive will need to quarantine for 14 days, unless they have been vaccinated and show no symptoms.
Non-school sports groups can use the Marathon Public School facilities but a manager for the group must agree to follow COVID-19 guidelines. In discussion, administrator Rick Parks said the approved guidelines were developed by 17 school superintendents across northcentral Wisconsin over the course of four meetings.
Parks said the guidelines recognize the threat of the Delta variant of COVID- 19 but don’t over-react.
“We know the Delta variant is more contagious, but there is not a lot of it here,” he said.
Several residents told school board members they oppose the use of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Shannon Berens, Marathon, argued against a mask mandate, saying that masks do not work against COVID-19 and hurt student learning. She argued that a decision whether to mask children should reside with parents, not the school board.
To support her position, she distributed a research paper written by Baruch Vainshelboim, supposedly from Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System at Stanford University entitled, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis.” She said the study was available through the National Institute of Health website.
The paper argues that face masks are ineffective against COVID-19 because the size of pores in even a medical grade mask are a thousand times bigger than the COVID-19 virus. The virus will simply pass through the mask, the study suggests. The paper asserts that wearing masks increases the risks for other diseases.
Melissa Mohr, spokesperson for the Marathon County Health Department, repeated on Friday that the Center for Disease recommends even vaccinated people wear masks in order to limit the spread of COVID-19 and its Delta variant. She said masks, properly worn, are effective because the COVID-19 virus is transported on water droplets and that masks filter out these droplets from being inhaled.
A fact-check article from Reuters, a news agency, reports that Stanford University says it “strongly supports the use of face masks to control the spread of COVID-19” and that the Vainshelboim article is “not a Stanford study.”
Reuters also reports it is false to say that the paper was released by any agency affiliated with the National Institute of Health.
One district resident at the meeting, Mike Guralski, Marathon, questioned the veracity of the study.
In other resident statements, Monica Krautkramer, Marathon, said the school district was combatting COVID-19 in the wrong way. She said students should be taught to eat right and take vitamins in order to boost their natural immunity.
Other residents said masks were, on balance, bad for children, who are less likely to get COVID- 19. One mother said her young child had trouble with fogged up glasses when wearing a mask in school last year.
One resident said he did not want the school district to impose a mask mandate even if there is a surge of COVID-19 among teachers and students.
School board president Jodi De-Broux said the district will not have a mask mandate to start the school year, but the school board will monitor the COVID-19 situation and act accordingly.
“I pray to God we don’t have to have a special meeting” to impose a mask mandate, she said.
Shannon Berens
