Tosa School 6th Graders Go Virtual Because Of Covid-19: School

WAUWATOSA, WI — Sixth graders at Longfellow Middle School will move to virtual learning for a week because of rising COVID-19 cases, according to an email from Seth Larson, the school's principal.

Students in the grade level will participate in virtual learning through Oct. 25.

There will be no classes for sixth graders Monday to allow teachers to prepare. Virtual instruction will begin Tuesday, Larson said.

There will be no instructional changes for seventh and eighth grade staff and students for now, Larson said.

More than 5 percent of sixth grade students tested positive for the virus as of Friday, Larson said.

The Wauwatosa School District dashboard said there are 13 children in isolation and 67 in quarantine at the middle school as of Monday. No Longfellow staff members were in isolation or quarantine, the school's dashboard said.

Some 31 children in the district were in isolation and 116 in quarantine as of Monday, the dashboard said.

Six staff members in the district were in isolation, and no staff were in quarantine as of Monday.

Larson cited the Wauwatosa School District Reentry Plan for the move. The Wauwatosa School Board in August adopted the plan to mitigate the coronavirus's spread.

The plan required masks if student infection rates reached certain thresholds during the 2021-22 school year.

If cases were in the "high" category — 100 to 749 cases per 100,000 people in a seven-day period — the Wauwatosa School District could require masks for all people indoors, the plan said. If cases reached "extremely high," the district could even shut schools down.

The district will introduce five tiers of requirements, depending on the infection rate. The highest tier involved canceling field trips and school events and switching to virtual learning, the plan said.

"Our goal is to provide as much in-person instruction as possible; however, due to the number of positive cases that have been linked to an in-school exposure, we must take action to minimize the spread now," Larson said.

Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine is currently being given to people as young as 12 in the U.S.

In the next few weeks, federal officials planned to discuss making smaller-dose versions available to children between 5 and 11, according to an Associated Press report.

Patch Editor Ethan Duran contributed to this report.