Wausau School District. MWC file photo.
WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — After two tumultuous school years, the Wausau School District is hoping to make things feel a little more normal this year.
Monday night the Wausau School Board heard from District Administration regarding their current plans for the 2021-2022 school year. District Superintendent Dr. Keith Hilts says the administration has one main goal in mind when planning this school year. “What we would like is for the students to have the best year ever. Really that’s kind of the driving philosophy. So that means interactive instruction. That means being on the playground. It means being in the cafeteria.”
To achieve that goal, Hilts says the district will start the school year fairly open and restrict things as the need arises. Director of Pupil Services Angela Lloyd went through some of the recommended mitigation strategies from the DPI that was released on Friday that the school district will be using this year.
“Promoting vaccinations, yes so we do that. We have them in all of our secondary buildings in the bathrooms and we put them in the newsletter. And of course, we’ll do that at our elementaries when that vaccine comes out. Right now we’re hearing late fall, hopefully, they’ll be able to speed that up a little bit. … Of course staying home when sick and getting tested. So we will be continuing that. If kids come to school sick or with symptoms we will be sending them home.
“And again the contact tracing with isolation and quarantine. Ventilation and then cleaning and disinfecting. So the CDC has said that cleaning once a day is appropriate in all situations except if we have a case of COVID. Then we would disinfect as long as we find out in enough time. And of course hand washing. We’ll have handwashing schedules for kids in the elementaries and especially hand sanitizer.”
One of the main changes the school district wanted to make in regards to COVID-19 measures was the handling of contract tracing. Hilts says the District would like to turn contract tracing duties back over to the Marathon County Health Department to help with staff time.
“Last year our staff, our nursing staff, our administrative staff, others, spent a significant amount of time and energy doing contact tracing when there was a case. And also contacting families about quarantines. And frankly, I think some of our staff took a little bit of abuse for playing that role. In our conversations, we would like to not do that anymore.
“We did get a legal opinion on the idea of quarantining and that is the responsibility of the county health department. Clearly, they would like us to continue but we really feel that we want our staff to be serving our students and their families.”
The general school district rules around quarantining would not change with the move to contact tracing by the health department. The only change would be who would facilitate the calls to families letting them know they were in contact with a positive COVID-19 case and need to quarantine.
The school board unanimously approved the motion to let the school district no longer handle contract tracing duties. A second motion to allow the administration to mitigate COVID outbreaks was not brought up for a vote as Board Member Lance Trollop pointed out the administration already has the agency to change mitigation measures for potential outbreaks.
The only mitigation measure administration cannot change on its own is the school district’s current mask policy. And while there was some discussion about potentially changing the masking policy, the board ultimately decided not to bring it back up for a motion on Monday.
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