Two mothers are suing Wisconsin schools for their lack of COVID restrictions after their children caught COVID. According to the complaint, both of the Wisconsin children who caught COVID wore masks to school, while some of their classmates did not.
As The Washington Post reported, “Both the boards of education for the School District of Waukesha and the School District of Fall Creek had voted to end many of the coronavirus mitigation policies that had been in place last year, according to the two lawsuits.”
Gina Kildahl, whose child attends within the Falls Creek School District in Wisconsin, filed the lawsuit on Monday. According to the Guardian, the lawsuit is blaming the school district for Kildahl’s child contracting COVID. The lawsuit alleges that Kildahl’s child wore their mask to school every day, but some other students in the class did not.
WEAU reported, “Two of Kildahl’s son’s classmates at Fall Creek Elementary School tested positive for COVID in the span of five days, on Sept. 20 and Sept. 24, with one of the classmates not wearing a mask to school. Kildahl’s son, who wore a mask to school, tested positive for COVID on Sept. 27, and missed two weeks of school while in quarantine.”
Shannon Jensen, whose child attends in Waukesha, shared a similar story. Jensen alleges that the Waukesha School District told her that quarantine was optional for her child who was exposed to COVID while in school. Jensen’s lawsuit also states that her child wore a mask to school while many of the child’s classmates did not.
Jensen said that after her child tested positive for COVID, she quarantined them along with two other children. Jensen reported that the school district where they live did not have educational plans available for quarantined children.
Jensen’s lawsuit states that the school board was “knowingly, needlessly, unreasonably, and recklessly exposing the public to Covid-19 … endangering public health.”
Frederick Melms, an attorney for Jensen and Kildahl, reportedly said in an interview with The Post, “We’re hoping to get a judge that [will] make them do the right thing. It’s unfortunate that it came to this.”
Both of the lawsuits are sponsored by Wisconsin’s Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC, which was founded and is run by Kirk Bangstad, the owner of the Minocqua Brewing Company.
A Facebook post from Bangstad that announced the lawsuits said the lawsuits’ goal is to sure “every school board in Wisconsin that doesn’t follow CDC guidelines to protect the spread of COVID in schools.”
Bangstad wrote he does not believe his PAC should be sponsoring the lawsuits, but no one else had stepped up.
“Our Super PAC should not be funding these lawsuits. We always thought that our government, the teacher’s union, the ACLU, the hospitals, the nurse’s unions, or any other number of progressive groups or ‘academies of smart people who understand stuff’ should be stepping up to block the alt-right, anti-science, and anti-history nonsense that has overcome school boards across our state,” Bangstad said.
His post blamed Wisconsin’s COVID cases on the “shrieking hordes of Tucker Carlson-watching zombies separated from their cerebrums and driven only by their lizard brains.” Bangstad added that the super PAC would “like to see a lot more progressive organizations and politicians join us on the battlefield against these wild-eyed regressive school boards.”
He said he believes that the lack of action to push to implement COVID policies is because Wisconsin residents are “building their war chests for the elections in 2022 that could ultimately decide the fate of democracy in Wisconsin and America.”
Bangstad agreed that those elections are “existentially important” but that “conservatives are using these anti-masking and critical race theory school issues to organize their base for the upcoming elections, and we need to realize that every day a school board folds to mouth-breathing lunatics, our democracy gets a little weaker.”
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Hayley Tschetter is a reporter with The Minnesota Sun and The Wisconsin Daily Star | Star News Network. Follow Hayley on Twitter or like her Facebook page. Send news tips to [email protected].
