Oak Creek Health Officials Sent A Letter To The OC School Board Urging Them To Adopt Masks

OAK CREEK, WI — Officials from the Oak Creek Health Department sent a letter to the Oak Creek-Franklin Joint School District Board of Education Tuesday urging the board to adopt masks and quarantining for students in light of recent district COVID-19 spread.

At present, OCFSD does not require masking or quarantining for students of all ages in the district. Those that come into close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 are not required to quarantine under current district policy enacted by the Board of Education.

"All students are entitled to a safe learning environment, and currently, students in the Oak Creek-Franklin School District are not learning in the safest environment," said the letter signed by Health Officer Darcy Dubois and OCFSD Medical Advisor Doctor Steven Jereb.

"We respect the position of the Oak Creek Health Department and appreciate their continued advocacy," said Emily DeBaker, communications coordinator for the district. "We also respect the decisions of our OCFSD families to do what’s best for their children as it relates to quarantining and masks. In the last week, we have seen a decline in the number of positive cases in our schools."

"We continue to encourage our community to follow the guidance of the health department and have implemented mitigation strategies such as providing on-site COVID-19 testing at District Office, coordinating contact tracing with the Oak Creek Health Department, hosting vaccinations clinics and maintaining hand sanitizing stations in all our schools to help keep our students and community safe," DeBaker added.

While other nearby school boards have adopted district mask mandates for the 2021-22 school year, especially for students under 12 who cannot get the vaccine, Oak Creek schools have gone the other way. The district's policy encourages masks, but does not require them.

The decisions on COVID-19 procedure were made before students started filtering in for the school year. At a Board of Education meeting on the topic in August, several parents voiced opposition to quarantining and masks, saying that excessive quarantines hindered learning. Other parents at the meeting voiced concerns about not requiring masks.

In the end, quarantining was made optional, except for those who test positive for COVID-19. Masks were "reccomended," but not required, per the Board of Education decision.

The Oak Creek-Franklin Board of Education's decisions on masks and quarantines worried some in the district as the school year began. In September, a petition collected hundreds of signatures in support of mandatory masking.

At that time, the district's superintendent, Dan Unertl, told Spectrum News 1 that the district encourages masks and supports the position reached by families.

MORE PATCH COVERAGE:

Hundreds Sign Petition Asking Oak Creek Schools To Require Masks

Oak Creek Board Of Education Revisits COVID-19 Procedures

Oak Creek-Franklin District To Discuss Masks Monday

OAK CREEK'S LATEST COVID NUMBERS:

City Of Oak Creek: COVID-19 Update: October 4, 2021

In the letter sent Tuesday to the Board of Education, the health department cites rising cases as a key reason to implement mandatory masks in schools. Oak Creek is averaging 17 new cases of COVID-19 per day through October, the health department wrote.

Additionally, through September, about 34 percent of new COVID-19 cases in Oak Creek were in school-aged children, the letter said.

The health department added that OCFSD has some of the highest rates of COVID-19 among students in Milwaukee County. Since Sept. 1, when school began, more than 270 students have tested positive for COVID-19, the health department said.

"Many of these students have attended school while infectious, and as a result, the Oak Creek Health Department has issued over 3,300 quarantine directives to OCFSD students exposed to COVID-19," the department wrote in its letter.

"We remain very concerned that several of the strongest mitigation strategies are not currently in place at OCFSD, including universal masking and quarantine of close contacts," the health department wrote in its letter. "The Oak Creek-Franklin School District is hereby advised to implement the universal use of face masks for all students and staff, except when medically inappropriate," the department wrote.

A recent report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found some teachers in the district have not been wearing masks and that parents have been left with a difficult choice.

Read the full letter here.