As authorities in suburban Milwaukee worked out the complex preparations to allow children back into classrooms during the coronavirus pandemic, they didn't plan for one scenario -- parents deliberately sending infected kids to school.
Yet that's exactly what's happened numerous times in Washington and Ozaukee counties, health officials said this week.
"Something that happened and continued to happen ... which I never in my wildest dreams imagined it would happen, is people sent their known positive kids to school," Kirsten Johnson, the Washington Ozaukee Public Health Department officer, told WISN.
As health officials investigate cases in more than two dozens schools in the counties, some are demanding harsh repercussions for any parent caught sending a child to class after they test positive.
"When you have parents lying to contact tracers, refusing to get kids tested, that's just beyond the pale," said Washington County Board member Don Kriefall, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. "That becomes very problematic for the health department to manage this whole situation. The hammer may have to be dropped."
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Wisconsin, which has recorded more than 1,200 covid-19 deaths, isn't the only place struggling to cope with parents who purposely evade the safety systems set up to prevent school outbreaks of a virus that has now killed at least 202,000 Americans. In Massachusetts last week, a student attended the first day of high school despite a positive test, sending dozens of classmates into quarantine. A similar situation in Oklahoma forced 17 students into quarantine.
In Washington and Ozaukee counties, which sit just north of Milwaukee, a patchwork of school districts have adopted a range of back-to-school plans, but many have offered students the option of going to school in-person five days a week.
Health officials already know of at least three cases where students have tested positive and showed up to class anyway, Johnson told the Journal Sentinel. One covid-positive student felt so sick after going to school that the child went to the school nurse.
In several other cases, Johnson said, parents have lied to contact tracers about test results and about whom their child had contact with. Other parents have refused to test children, even when they are obviously ill.
"The biggest challenge for us that we're experiencing right now is people are just being dishonest," Johnson told the Journal Sentinel. "They don't want their children to be quarantined from school. They don't want to have to miss work. In doing that, they're jeopardizing the ability to have school in person and other people's health."
Health officials are now urging schools in Washington and Ozaukee counties to use attendance software to keep track of students who test positive for the virus, and to ensure they don't show up for class when they're supposed to be at home in quarantine.
The counties also plan to hire more contact tracers and will consider ordering schools to close if cases rise. As of Tuesday, the two counties were investigating cases at 25 schools.
While early evidence suggests that schools have not become hot spots for coronavirus transmission so far, health officials said they will have no choice to but to take drastic action if sick kids keep going to school.
"We're not going to be able to keep our schools open," Kriefall told WISN. "It's going to, I mean, just a few parents that are irresponsible are going to affect the entire school district."
KINDERGARTEN DROPOUTS
Separately, thousands of parents around the U.S. have made the decision to have their children delay or skip kindergarten because of the coronavirus pandemic. The opt-outs, combined with huge declines in preschool enrollment, are raising worries about the long-term effects of so much lost early education.
"If there is a group for which you would be particularly concerned, it is these very young students who are not having these foundational experiences," said Nate Schwartz, a professor at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.
Kindergarten isn't required in most states, and in normal times parents sometimes "red-shirt" children who would be young for their kindergarten class to give them an extra year of developmental readiness.
But enrollment numbers have plunged in many places this fall as parents weigh health concerns and the prospect of helping young children to navigate distance learning while also holding onto their jobs.
In Los Angeles' public schools, kindergarten enrollment is down about 6,000 students, or 14%. In Nashville, Tenn., public kindergarten enrollment is down about 1,800 students, or 37%, from last year.
Some parents feel their children may be ready for in-person school but not for virtual school, said Anna Markowitz, an assistant professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"They are thinking I can't work and monitor my child's Zoom schooling. Parents are really in an impossible situation," she said.
Only 17 states and Washington, D.C., require children to attend kindergarten, Markowitz said. Parents elsewhere can bypass kindergarten and just send their children to first grade next fall. In a typical year, only about 4% of children who are eligible to begin kindergarten are held back by their families, said Chloe Gibbs, a Notre Dame economist.
Information for this article was contributed by Tim Elfrink of The Washington Post; and by Heather Hollingsworth of The Associated Press.