Teacher, 47, dies as COVID surges
Green Bay-area school will offer counseling
A Bay Port High School teacher died Thursday morning from complications related to COVID-19, the Howard-Suamico School District said in a letter sent home with students.
Heidi Hussli, 47, a Beaver Dam native who lived in Suamico, followed her mother into education, teaching German at Bay Port High School for 16 years. Hussli had studied German at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and educational leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
“She loved German culture so much,” said Amber Viegut, a Bay Port English teacher.
“She took dozens of kids, including our principal’s son, to Germany,” Viegut said. “She made countless trips to Chicago to the Christmas market. She led amazing cultural events at the school, too. My favorite memory is her yearly dress-up for Oktoberfest.”
As of noon Thursday, Bay Port was reporting nine positive cases of COVID-19, eight involving students. Eight staff and 31 students were under quarantine.
The Howard-Suamico district reported two teachers and a total 10 students across the district’s eight schools have tested positive for COVID-19. The schools and the district office have a total of 130 students and 30 teachers and staff in quarantine.
Hussli is believed to be the first area schoolteacher with COVID-19 to die since the school year began several weeks ago. A colleague said Hussli was in classes the week of Sept. 8, became ill over the weekend and was unable to return to class.
She is survived by a husband and son. Her mother passed away in late August.
District officials announced they would have counselors available Friday at Bay Port. Also, the school will suspend online and in-person classes on Monday and Tuesday, but will be open for students and staff who desire
support.
“This news is heart-wrenching to all of us who have known Heidi. Her positivity and passion for her students and her craft left a lasting mark on our school community,” Superintendent Damian LaCroix wrote in a letter to parents.
Counseling will be available over the phone or online by appointment.
Under the school district’s reopening plan, Bay Port students attend in-person classes two days a week (Monday/ Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday), with remote learning the other two days. On Fridays, students may attend school in person or remotely and participate in labs, personal fitness, interest-based learning or meetings of clubs and organizations.
Hussli is also being remembered at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, where she studied German.
“Heidi was a 1997 graduate of UW-Green Bay and a longtime and beloved German teacher at Bay Port,” professor David Coury, who heads UWGB’s German program, said in a statement. “She was a German major who went on a study abroad trip with (assistant professor) Jennifer Ham and me. As a teacher, she took her students to Germany and hosted many German students here.”
Coury said UWGB German students “were greatly impacted by her enthusiasm, and love of Germany and the German language.”
Brown County has seen a surge in the number of positive cases in September. In the last seven days, 837 positive cases were reported out of 3,429 tests for a 24.4% positive rate.
Wisconsin as a state reported an all-time high of 2,034 new cases Thursday, for a positivity rate of 17.8%.
The surge in positive tests has been driven largely by young people.
The 20-to-29 age group reported 574 new cases Thursday, and those ages 10 to 19 accounted for 443 new cases.
Those in their 20s make up the highest proportion of all cases since the pandemic began, with 26% of total cases. The next-closest age group, those ages 3039, make up 16% of all cases.
Health officials in Madison and Dane County urged fans not to gather to watch football games when the Badgers begin their season next month.
The warning came as the City of Madison health department said Wednesday that 42 players and staff with the Badger football team have tested positive for COVID-19.
Twenty-nine of those cases were detected between Sept. 1 and Tuesday, health officials said.
Local public health officials do not have authority over the UW-Madison campus. But they can limit gatherings outside the stadium, as a result of an emergency order.
“UW can do everything it can to control the situation inside the stadium but they cannot control what happens outside the stadium,” Dane County Executive Joe Parisi said in an interview. “And there will be house parties. And there will be gatherings. Any decision that increases congregant settings increases the risks for spread.
“We’re very concerned,” he added. Separate from sports, Parisi has urged the university to go to virtual instruction. Due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, the school is in a two-week pause on inperson classes, and students in two residence halls are under quarantine.
Parisi called the university’s recent moves “a step in the right direction.”
“But I think ultimately the experiment of bringing people back to school to the UW-Madison campus has failed,” he said.
In Milwaukee, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said the spikes in communities with UW System schools “an alarm we should all be listening to.”
He also warned that the cases won’t be limited to college campuses. Some Marquette University students have chosen to return home instead of staying in quarantined dorms during a recent outbreak.
But at home, they are “more likely to spread the disease, if they have it, to their parents and their grandparents, to older people in the community,” Barrett warned.