Senator Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) raised alarm bells today that there are growing indications from education sources that Governor Evers will use his Emergency Public Health Declaration (Executive Order 82) to prohibit schools, public and private, from starting the year with in-person classes. Governor Evers’ has been under pressure from the leadership of various teachers’ unions to take away local control on how schools will operate at the beginning of the school year in September. Many public school districts and private schools had indicated they would be conducting in-person classes in various formats.
“I have been hearing from education sources that Governor Evers will act within days to prohibit in-person classes at the start of this school year. As I feared, Governor Evers and DHS Secretary-Designee Palm are using the illegal emergency declaration to achieve another political objective for their allies in certain Wisconsin teachers’ unions. The mandatory face mask order was nothing more than political cover for the real purpose of the Governor issuing an illegal emergency declaration – keeping public and private school buildings from reopening in September,” Nass said.
Nass noted that the Wisconsin Department of Health Services has been caught using dramatically flawed data as more than 30,000 (and growing) Covid-19 negative test results had not been included in state data since June. The failure to include dramatic numbers of negative results artificially increases the positivity rates and gives a skewed picture of Covid-19 spread in the state. The skewed data was used by Evers to justify his issuance of the emergency declaration that allows for public health orders such as mandatory face masks and soon keeping school buildings closed.
“The Legislature has the power to stop Evers and Palm from doing more damage under the illegal state of emergency. Failure to act by either house would make the Legislature complicit in empowering Evers and Palm, two of the most untrustworthy people to serve in state government, in my opinion,” Nass said.
