June 2021 Update: SUCCESS!
On June 2, 2021, Chetek-Weyerhaeuser Area School District (CWASD) Superintendent Mark Johnson announced plans for 2021 summer school, including optional face coverings.
On June 16, 2021, CWASD High School/Middle School Principal Larry Zeman announced plans for 2021-2022 school reopening, including the plan that face coverings will not be required “barring any significant changes in recommendations from health professionals.”
We were happy to see these announcements! Thanks to all who helped to influence these changes! You can see copies of all the ads and letters to the editor that were featured in The Chetek Alert on our Officials > Messages page.
We remain in touch with the school district, the county health department, and the county board of supervisors to ensure that 2021-22 school plans remain masks-optional.
Act now!
We created this site for parents, guardians, and other concerned citizens of the Chetek-Weyerhaeuser Area School District (CWASD) in Wisconsin. As such, our actions are geared toward the circumstances in our community.
If you live elsewhere and are inspired by our work, we invite you to sign our Open Letter as a “Concerned Citizen.” You are also welcome to copy or adapt this content for your community. After all, we got our start from the Action Plan that Emily Burns wrote for The Smile Project!
1
Sign our letter.
We have written an Open Letter to the CWASD administrators and Board of Education (BOE) asking them to unmask our children.
Although we already presented them with an action plan, this letter provides additional rationale for why we proposed it, and gives you the opportunity to show your support.
If you wish to remain anonymous, indicate that on the submission form.
We are no longer asking for signatures. Thanks!
2
Tell a friend.
Share this site with at least one person who supports unmasking our children, and invite them to act. Use care with social media for two reasons:
- People are more likely to act when they are personally asked to do so.
- Some social media companies flag content that disagrees with their narrative as “false,” and may sanction you. We don’t want you to potentially jeopardize your account or groups you are part of.
3
Contact public officials.
Public schools are part of a larger ecosystem of government, from the local to the state level.
It will be easier for school district officials to unmask our children if officials across this ecosystem hear loudly and clearly that we expect them to abandon mask mandates and recommendations for universal masking.
Click the button to access a list of officials, contact info, and sample messages.
June 2021 Update: SUCCESS!
On June 2, 2021, Chetek-Weyerhaeuser Area School District (CWASD) Superintendent Mark Johnson announced plans for 2021 summer school, including optional face coverings.
On June 16, 2021, CWASD High School/Middle School Principal Larry Zeman announced plans for 2021-2022 school reopening, including the plan that face coverings will not be required “barring any significant changes in recommendations from health professionals.”
We were happy to see these announcements! Thanks to all who helped to influence these changes! You can see copies of all the ads and letters to the editor that were featured in The Chetek Alert on our Officials > Messages page.
We continue to communicate with the school district, the county health department, and the county board of supervisors to ensure that 2021-22 school plans remain masks-optional.
April 2021 Update
On Wednesday, April 14, 2021, the Chetek-Weyerhaeuser Area School District Board of Education voted unanimously to continue the district’s mandatory mask policy without acknowledging or addressing recent parent concerns or input.
While this was a setback, we continued to pursue new ways to change the CWASD mandatory mask policy and influence other school boards who had not yet made a decision about mask policy.
Two other schools in our county and one in a neighboring county chose to make masks optional earlier in the month.
An Open Letter to the CWASD Administration and BOE
Although we are no longer accepting signatures for our letter, we are keeping it available for other parents and concerned citizens around the country who continue to fight to make masks optional in their local school districts.
As Chetek-Weyerhaeuser Area School District (CWASD) parents and guardians, relatives, and other concerned citizens who are committed to the holistic health and well-being of our community and our children who attend CWASD schools, we are grateful for your leadership in offering in-person learning since the beginning of the school year, staying the course during the fall’s seasonal virus surge, and continuing to increase the number of school group activities and events.
We now invite you to bravely build on that leadership tradition by unmasking our children — especially in light of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down the statewide mask mandate — because we know the following to be true:
- Children are not drivers of COVID transmission. Thus, regardless of mask policy, we would expect to see limited transmission in schools and from children to adults. See evidence.
- COVID is less dangerous to children than seasonal flu, not to mention other everyday risks we accept as a normal part of a child’s life. See evidence.
- Masks are, at best, credibly disputed as a virus mitigation measure by decades of quality research, as well as observed results of mask mandates around the world, and, at worst, possibly dangerous. See evidence.
Without overwhelming evidence – not lab studies that suggest “mechanistic plausibility” while real-life results around the world prove otherwise, but real-world evidence – that masking children leads to long-term, positive, holistic health outcomes for a range of health issues and doesn’t actually harm our children, we must abandon this misguided attempt to singularly control a flu-like virus through experimental interventions and suspension of individual liberties.
Children have suffered enough. They have paid a steep price for our fear, bearing a burden that was not only unwarranted, but also, as locations around the world have shown us, completely unnecessary. It is our job to protect our children, not the other way around.
Given these truths, we know it is safe to end mandatory masking for our children. Additionally, according to the minutes from your July 2020 BOE meeting, an 80% majority of staff and families preferred school without masks. As such, we prefer that the unmasking happen immediately through a simple announcement that masks are now optional.
However, we recognize that outsized fear of COVID has become entrenched thanks to ceaseless, one-sided messaging and censorship by politicians, health officials, media, big tech, and big pharma. As a result, there will be some who fear unmasking. Therefore, we propose a 9-point plan for CWASD schools to unmask our children, sooner rather than later. This plan allows people to opt-in or out in phases, depending on their real or perceived risk, so they can ease back into an unmasked school environment with increasing confidence.
We appreciate that you are taking our proposal seriously. We are open to feedback, and welcome a dialogue to help our district return to normal as quickly as possible.
We also recognize that you are under immense pressure, and that it is difficult to blaze a trail in controversial territory, particularly when so many are heavily invested in universal masking as a COVID mitigation strategy. That’s why we are also contacting our neighbors and other public officials to urge them to abandon the notion of mask mandates and any recommendations to universally mask.
If there is more we can do to help you, please let us know. We aim to give you as much support as possible to boldly do the right thing for our children.
In closing, we want to reiterate what we said at the start of this letter: We are genuinely grateful for your leadership in offering in-person learning this entire school year, even as virus transmission surged when emotions and fear were peaking. That took guts! When some of us shared our experience with friends and family around the country, they were stunned that our schools didn’t miss a beat. We tell that story with pride and hope that our little town can show the world how safe in-person learning is. Now, the data from other courageous places around the world make us confident that it will be just as safe — and more enjoyable — with optional masks.
Let’s keep leading the way!