ASHWAUBENON (NBC 26) — Do masks really work?
It's a question we’ve all been asking for almost two years. In the Ashwaubenon School District, that question is being answered with a fairly certain "yes."
Students from 4k to 6th grades have to mask up, because for most of the school year they couldn't get vaccinated. Students from 7th to 12th grade haven't been required wear masks all school year. Around half of those students are now vaccinated, said Kurt Weyers, superintendent.
"Certainly, we saw just internally in our own school district, a lot less of what we would consider transmission here in school, virtually none with the mask on at the elementary level, and a little bit more, but not a lot, but a little bit more at 7th through 12th level," he said.
A CDC report from this fall found schools without mask requirements saw nearly four times as many COVID-19 outbreaks as schools with mandates.
"Schools with a mask requirements have fewer cases," said Dr. Ryan Westergaard, Chief Medical Officer for the DHS Bureau of Communicable Diseases. "We've not done the type of careful study where you draw conclusions in a scientific paper using data from Wisconsin, but we believe that that question has been answered, and our recommendation remains during the school year for schools to have all students and staff wear masks while indoors."
With the CDC now recommending children ages five to eleven get vaccinated, Ashwaubenon will lift its mask mandate for all students, and instead highly recommend masking, starting on January 3rd.
