MILWAUKEE, WI – As members of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors, we call upon the Milwaukee Health Department to immediately issue a COVID-19 health order requiring anyone 3 years or older to wear face coverings in buildings open to the public.
We strongly support Alderperson Dimitrijevic’s request that the Milwaukee Health Department reinstate the city’s mask ordinance.
As school board members, our foremost obligation is to the health and safety of our students, staff, and families. As publicly elected officials, we also advocate for the entire Milwaukee community. It is obvious that the Delta variant has significantly increased the health risks throughout Milwaukee, which has risen to the level of “extreme transmission.”
The Milwaukee Public Schools has had a mask mandate for our students, staff and visitors since March 2020. The city’s failure to issue a new health order significantly increases the risks for our 10,000 staff and our 75,000 students and their families.
Many schools have already opened and all public schools will be open by Sept. 2. To postpone a decision on masking requirements threatens the staff, students, and families at both public and private schools. This is unconscionable, both as public health policy and as educational policy. Our children are our future and deserve the utmost protection.
The Mayor and the city’s Commissioner of Health could reactivate the indoor mask mandate today, with a quick and simple health order. There is no public health rationale to delay. Why wait for more deaths, more hospitalizations, more overcrowded ICU units?
It is said that it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes leadership.
For more information, please call Robert E. Peterson, President, Milwaukee Board of School Directors at (414) 254-0657.
