Milwaukee schools can reopen in fall, if their plans are approved
Expected order focuses on capacity, those at risk
Schools in the city of Milwaukee that have approved plans will be allowed to reopen in the fall under a new order the city’s Health Department expects to issue either this week or next.
Limits on capacity and a focus on ensuring that necessary accommodations are made for people who are high risk will be part of the order, Milwaukee Health Commissioner Jeanette Kowalik said during a virtual news conference Tuesday.
The announcement comes after private school leaders and the advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin said they were blindsided after the city changed the metric for reopening, effectively barring them from returning to schools until the city reached Phase 5 of its reopening plan.
The confusion frustrated schools that had been investing time and money into ways to open safely and left parents with uncertainty weeks before schools began.
But Kowalik also pushed back against the idea that the Health Department had quietly prohibited schools from reopening, saying there is “misinformation out there that we
were doing this in the dark or being malicious.”
While Milwaukee Public Schools has announced it will begin the school year virtually, the Health Department’s announcement paves the way for the city’s private and charter schools to reopen for in-person instruction if they meet certain criteria.
Kowalik said the concern is that there needs to be standard guidance on how to open safely, and when the city’s current order was issued, city officials believed guidance would be coming from the state Department of Public Instruction and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Without those two documents, we didn’t feel it was appropriate to allow schools to open at that point in time,” she said, adding that when the order was issued in late June they were thinking of summer school, not fall classes.
When the current health order was issued, she said, the city’s COVID-19 situation was trending in the right direction and officials anticipated issuing a new order soon to move into the next phase of reopening, making an interim order unnecessary.
The new order the city will issue will link reopening schools to following the guidance of the state as well as the CDC, she said. It’s also necessary to address outbreaks in schools, including defining what constitutes an outbreak.
The risk that school-age children could transmit the virus to both each other and their family members makes the transition back to school a challenge, said Ben Weston, director of medical services at the Milwaukee County Office of Emergency Management.
A large study out of South Korea showed that children in the 10-19 age category showed the highest rates of transmission of COVID-19 of any age group, he said. And in Milwaukee County, school-age children, ages 10-19, have in the last two weeks been testing positive for COVID-19 at substantially higher rates than before, he said.
To manage that risk, he said, schools should restructure their building environments, be flexible with virtual options, implement social distancing, require masks and keep students in small groups.
Kowalik said the Health Department had been in contact with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for weeks and on Monday approved the university’s plan. The Health Department is accepting plans for review, she said.
She said the plans will be “extremely detailed.” “It covers all aspects of your operations, from staff training to allowing accommodations, to tracking accommodations, to how you will conduct business virtually, to how you will conduct your operations in the event of an outbreak, how you will message that information,” Kowalik said.
She also said the city wants to create a template and guidance on how to create a plan, because not every school has the resources to put one together.
Jim Bender of School Choice Wisconsin called the development “a step in a positive direction.”
He said some schools have already developed reopening plans and would be submitting those to the Health Department.
And he said his organization and school leaders would be working with the Health Department to develop a template to expedite the creation and review of plans. He said they are waiting for additional guidance from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services on what to do if students or staff test positive, and that would be coming early next week.
Last week the Journal Sentinel reported that UWM, Marquette University and many of the city’s private and independent charter schools had been planning to reopen with precautions based on guidance from the city.
An earlier version of the city’s plan showed that schools and universities could reopen during Phase 4. But that document was updated on June 25 — the day before the city moved into Phase 4, where it stands now.
Under updated guidelines, schools and universities were prohibited from opening until the city enters Phase 5 — which won’t happen until the city meets several benchmarks, including seeing a downward trend in COVID-19’s spread.
Teachers unions in the state’s five largest school districts are calling on Gov. Tony Evers and the state’s top health and education leaders to require schools to remain closed for now and to start the school year online only, arguing the threat from the coronavirus remains too high for students and staff to safely return.
The unions voiced their concerns in a letter to Evers, Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Stanford Taylor and Department of Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm, saying the virus is “surging across Wisconsin” and that the state has among the fewest restrictions in place to contain its spread.
COVID-19 pushed college students off their campuses this spring, leaving universities with deep financial challenges that forced furloughs and other cost-cutting. Not returning to in-person classes could cause further financial damage to colleges, which rely on revenue from room and board.