Working For Eternity

As always, this post is a work of the author, is his personal opinion, and should not be read as any representative statement on behalf of any individual or organization

What does this mean for Dane County and Waunakee? It means that if you’re at a gathering of 15 people in Dane County, there is a 42% chance that at least one person in that gathering is covid-19 positive. If you bump the number of individuals at said gathering to 100? 98% chance.

https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/

As a brief aside, the average class size of an in-person hybrid class in Waunakee is around 13 (including staff).

These percentages obviously don’t control for age group, behavior, type of gathering or any other useful factor. However, it’s the underlying in logic on why virtually all serious scientists are recommending a general shut down of large gatherings. Dr. Clio Andris, the statistician behind the GA Tech data noted that “Somebody might spend time with people and then they bring it home. The research has shown that is the most popular place.” Adding that “It’s the dinner party that’s the worry. It’s going out to eat that’s the worry. It’s all hanging out together drinking, watching the game indoors that’s the worry.”

We now face a holiday on November 26th which is practiced by hundreds of millions as an event to gather with non-immediate family, eat, drink and watch TV. A significant number of individuals in our community are going to be travelling, visiting individuals outside of their immediate family, eating indoors, and generally engaging in the kind of behavior which most experts have advised be outright cancelled this year.

Given this expectation, there is no reason to believe that the local covid-19 numbers will decrease dramatically in the next month, especially given the past behavior by some members of the community. So what does this have to do with schools? The current size of an in-person classroom in the Waunakee Community School District ranges from about 11 to 14 (including teacher) in the current hybrid model. Given the viral spread and the risk mitigation factors put into place, at the time of the decision points facing the district in August and October it was determined that this was an acceptable risk.

The local virus levels have nearly quadrupled. And we’re heading into the worst possible holiday for increasing these levels.

Personally speaking, my family will not be travelling. For the opening of the gun-deer season, I’ll be staying in a tent to avoid even the slightest risk of exposing elderly family members. We will not be seeing family members in-person for Thanksgiving. We encourage all other families to do the same. The line has to be said – that in order to ensure that everyone is able to celebrate Christmas, we need to sacrifice Thanksgiving this year. My family will not be sending our children to in-person class from November 30th to December 10th. I encourage all families to not send their children to school if they are travelling, seeing any family, or otherwise increasing your level of exposure over the holiday weekend.

Everyone is entitled to take their own risks with their own health. There is no such entitlement to take risks with anyone else’s health without their consent. We have to come together as a community and decide that we are mature enough to not take risks with our school district staff. When I brought up the idea of a brief planned shift into virtual to the Waunakee BOE, the response was tepid. This is understandable. Shifting back and forth from in-person to virtual would be a tremendous challenge. We are then left with only one choice to keep each other safe:

Waunakee, Westport and Friends: Don’t “Get out and try”. You need to stay the hell at home.

Do it voluntarily because you care about your child’s teachers, and their school nurse. Do it because you care as much about the person working behind the counter at Kwik Trip as you do about yourself. Save the money on the trip or the fancy dinner and donate the difference to the Waunakee Neighborhood Connection. Be the community that we like to say we are.

The school district has excellent risk mitigation in place to prevent viral transmission in school. To be clear: I don’t have any concern that any staff member or student is at any level of significant risk in our K-4 school classrooms (with spec. ed. being a notable and potential exception). However, our policies also mandate a relatively strict level of exclusion if staff or students are exposed to individuals who are found to be covid-19 positive.

If we discover that a child or staff member was positive and if the staff member could not confirm they were not exposed, that staff member would have to be quarantined for 14 days. All students that were exposed would have to quarantine for 14 days. The point is that we need to protect our staff not simply from covid-19, but from the possibility of mere exposure to it. We can avoid a rushed, haphazard closure and “flip” to virtual at the last second by making a smart, planned transfer to virtual for a short period of time.

St. John the Baptist’s parish school has made the decision to shut it down from Thanksgiving to January.

Little Strokes, the swimming academy in Waunakee, has made the decision to shut it down from Thanksgiving to late-January.

We might have to shut it down, if for no other reason than to proactively protect our staff from exposure during literally the worst time of year. It we plan to shut it down for a brief period in early December, we could well prevent having to shut it down for much longer, in a less measured, planned and coherent manner. If anyone wants to avoid this, you can contribute by being self-less this holiday season.

In the spirit of unplanned and occassionally incoherent, I close with the Godfather of Grunge and his always timely take.