MONROE — The Monroe Board of Education made a couple of changes to their COVID-19 protocols at the Sept. 27 meeting, which included actions on quarantine and mandatory masking of students.
The board approved keeping masks mandatory for students pre-kindergarten to sixth grade and will revisit the topic when the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves Emergency Use Authorization for at least one type of COVID-19 vaccine.
The following day, on Sept. 28, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their had submitted data to the FDA that showed “robust” and “favorable” outcomes in a trial that included children ages 5-11 that completed the two-dose regimen. The formal request for emergency-use authorization is expected to be turned in to the FDA within a few weeks, with the government entity expected to take a few weeks or more to announce its conclusion on the matter.
“If it takes about the same timeline (that) it did for the adult vaccine, it’s very likely in a month or two we’ll have emergency-use authorization,” said Rick Waski, District Administrator.
Americans ages 12 and older are already eligible to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Students in Monroe’s sixth grade are typically 11 and 12 years old, meaning a large population of the grade is not yet eligible for vaccination. Because students in seventh through 12th grades are eligible, the district has left masking decisions up to each individual.
The district likely will ease restrictions and protocols once vaccinations are readily available for school-aged children.
“I do think that there is a difference between the population that has a choice to be vaccinated, and the population that doesn’t,” Waski said. “To me, and this is just in my opinion, we are in a different situation when virtually all of our children in the school district have the opportunity to be vaccinated if their parents choose to. … As I look at this, I think we do have to lessen those restrictions when we are that threshold when vaccines are available to all of our school-age children.”
Another change the district made was within the quarantine protocol. Students and staff can choose a 7-day quarantine instead of the 10-day limit as long as they have a negative PCR test on Day 6 or later of the quarantine. If students and staff are a close contact, but were masked — and the positive person was masked at the time of exposure — those close contacts also will not have to quarantine.
“The common thread is, everyone wants their kid in school,” Waski said, referencing dozens of conversations with parents and teachers alike.
As of 4:16 p.m. on Sept. 29, there were 47 students in the district in quarantine, plus another nine positive with COVID-19. Seven of the nine positives are in the middle and high schools. However, Northside Elementary principal Amy Timmerman said that her school has seen almost 50 students out each day for one sickness or another.
“As you can imagine, it’s a lot to manage,” Timmerman said. Teachers are using Google Classroom to help students along, but there will not be live remote instruction like last year for anyone not already in the JEDI program.
On Sept. 29, Green County Public Health released its data for the week of Sept. 22-18. There were 85 new cases in the county, an average of 12 new cases per day. There are approximately 160 active cases in the county, which remains in the Very High metric level, according to Wisconsin DHS guidelines. Overall, there have been 239 Green County residents hospitalized with COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, with 20 deaths.
According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 695,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since January 2020, which is more than combined battle deaths by American troops in all wars dating back to 1775. However, many of the dead were elderly or had other health issues that were exacerbated by the coronavirus. In fact, people ages 85 and older died at 570-times the rate of those 18-29, while children 17 and younger were less than a 1:1 rate.
That does not mean, however, that young people are not immune to hospitalization or death. In mid-September, a Fort Atkinson 13-year-old middle school student died after contracting the virus, which prompted its school district to mandate all students to wear a mask.
“Please watch your child for symptoms, and please don’t send them to school,” Waski said. “We’ve had situations in the last week or so where we have had kids who were positive in school all five days of the week and then got tested.
“That is one thing that I think we really have to reinforce to people: We hear you. You’re frustrated with quarantines. We’re taking action. On the flip side, stop sending your sick kids to school, because that doesn’t help anybody, regardless of the situation.”
