Onalaska Staff, Students Will Wear Masks This Fall, Remaining In Line With State Guidance

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Teachers, staff and students at the Onalaska School District will be wearing masks and following state health guidelines when they return to the classroom next week. 

During its last meeting before the start of fall semester, held Monday night, the Onalaska School Board opted to not vote on a proposed mask-optional policy that’s been deliberated in recent weeks. The school district likely would have lost all its funding except for local levy dollars if the board opted to pass such a policy going against state guidelines. 

Superintendent Jeff Davis said there wasn’t much board discussion about how to move forward with a mask-optional policy after last week’s workshop meeting, when board members heard testimony from dozens of passionate community members urging them to go against the governor’s and Office of Superintendent Public Instruction’s (OSPI) mandates. 

The district, though, did pass a statement against critical race theory at its meeting, which was met with resounding applause from attendees. 

“We’re going to move forward. I know that parents have options for homeschooling. We’ve heard that a lot of parents are going to choose that and that’s fine. That’s always been an option for parents. We’d love to have their kids on campus, but we understand too that they have the right to homeschool their child,” Davis said. 

Class this year at public school districts will look fairly similar to last year, just with some minimally loosened restrictions. Davis said they’re going to try to get students outside as much as possible, weather permitting, as new state health guidelines for this upcoming school year allows students and staff to remove their face coverings while outside. 

Davis said last year’s regulations largely worked for the district, which reported only a single instance of in-school transmission in the classroom. 

“It worked for us. We expect it to continue to work for the students that are here,” he said. 



As is the case with other public school districts, there’s been many questions and concerns raised on Gov. Jay Inslee’s new COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all public school teachers, staff and volunteers. All districts have until Oct. 18 to be fully vaccinated against the virus, as a condition of employment. Davis said they’re working to identify how much of their staff is vaccinated and get a better sense on what the religious and medical exemptions will be. 

They’re currently looking at a draft exemption form, Davis said. 

Homeschooling has been discussed by community members as an alternative to sending their kids to school with masks on. Others have also heralded homeschooling as a way to keep kids away from new education legislation requiring public school districts to provide context-based sex education and other progressive policies they see as encroaching. 

After last week’s workshop meeting, a large number of community members and at least three school board members attended an ad-hoc meeting at Carlisle Lake where community-based homeschooling was heavily encouraged. Congressional candidate Heidi St. John answered parents’ questions on how to unenroll their children from public school during the event.  

Organizers of the meeting said they believed they could strong-arm the district and state into giving them independence if they removed their kids en masse, effectictively starving the district of funding it receives on a per-student basis. 

School board members Tanya Naillon and Heidi Howard were listed as leaders on two of the group’s citizen-led committees. 

“I also feel it’s a conflict of interest for anybody, including myself, to advocate homeschooling, promote homeschooling. I have not done that, I will not do that. I think it would be hurtful to our school,” Naillon said at Monday’s school board meeting. “I love our school. I love our teachers.”