Masks Required Regardless Of Political Actions, District Says

BROOKFIELD, WI—The Elmbrook School District sent out communication regarding its policy on face masks in the wake of Thursday's Assembly meeting.

The Assembly canceled a vote to repeal Gov. Tony Evers’ mask mandate in the face of broad criticism from the state’s health, school and business leaders and out of concern it would jeopardize more than $49 million a month in federal aid.

Elmbrook School District Superintendent Mark Hansen released the following statement on the policy:

"For this entire school year we have done everything possible to keep our students and staff safe while prioritizing in-person learning. This work has been a tremendously lift by our entire community and has relied upon the following actions and strategies:

• Prioritizing over $2.6 million in expenditures that includes risk mitigation measures ranging from clean air filters to hundreds of gallons of sanitizer.
• Reimagining in-person learning with safety as our first lens; reinforcing social distancing in all classrooms, limiting student and staff mobility, cohorting students into small groups, and restricting access to our buildings.
• We have built a strong partnership with our families that relies on accurate reporting of illness and COVID-disease data, established a robust contact tracing system, and created a transparent COVID dashboard that has received over 200,000 hits since September.
• We created a Medical Advisory Board that has met weekly to review the latest science, research and our disease data in order to provide guidance on safety protocols, procedures and practices that prioritize safety.

Of all the safety and risk mitigation measures and efforts implemented, none has been more impactful than masking. The science and the data support this, and we stand behind it. We will continue to follow the science and rely on our Medical Advisory Board to help guide policies and procedures. To be clear, regardless of the political action in Madison, masks will be required in all schools for anyone entering a facility in the School District of Elmbrook.

We are grateful for the continued support of County Executive Paul Farrow and State Legislators including Senator Dale Kooyenga, Representatives Robyn Vining and Sara Rodriguez who are equally committed to Staying Safe to Stay Open and were in opposition to the mask mandate repeal."

Speaker Robin Vos said on Thursday the Assembly was “hitting the pause button” and could return as soon as next week to repeal the mask ban. In the meantime, Vos said he wanted to be sure that the move could be made without losing the federal money.

“We don’t want to rush into anything,” Vos said after the session during a virtual event hosted by WisPolitics.com.

The mask resolution had been moving quickly through the Legislature. It was introduced last week, not subject to a public hearing, and was passed by the Senate on Tuesday.

Reporting and writing from the Associated Press was used for this report.