Uniform Wisconsin coronavirus school lockdown policies not serving districts, schools choice president says

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School Choice Wisconsin president: Decision to close schools not based on science, but on politics

President of School Choice Wisconsin, Jim Bender, discusses lawsuit against the city of Racine after schools were closed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Amid the ongoing debate over coronavirus lockdowns in Wisconsin, the head of School Choice Wisconsin argued Tuesday that schools in the state want localized mandates instead of a "one-size-fits-all" approach.

“There is really two layers of health departments," Jim Bender explained on "Outnumbered Overtime." "There’s the state health department and then local units of health departments underneath that."

When local officials closed down schools in Dane County, Bender explained, the state Supreme Court stepped in and stated that only a “statewide health officer” can push such mandates.

“That’s the legal argument in front of them,” Bender said. “They put an injunction on Dane County and then the [the city of] Racine followed up and said, ‘We’re going to close all the schools in Racine’ and we have gone to court to have the injunction get extended from Dane County to Racine County to say, 'No, this is under review, you can’t close schools just because of a local health order.'"

"Surprisingly," Bender continued, "the local health department and the city of Racine has ignored the injunction that the Supreme Court extended, so now you’re talking about schools that have been operating in a very safe manner arbitrarily closed from now until sometime in January again.”

WISCONSIN PARENTS SUE CITY OF RACINE FOR SHUTTING DOWN SCHOOLS

According to the Daily Wire, officials in Racine ordered all schools to remain closed from Nov. 27 through Jan. 15, 2021.

Five private schools and two other groups -- represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty -- asked the court for an injunction after Racine Public Health Administrator Dottie-Kay Bowersox issued an order Nov. 12 requiring schools to switch to virtual learning.

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“If I look at one school, they have been open and operating safely, 250 total students, they had 142 of them in person following mitigation protocols, social distancing, masks, things were obviously kept very clean inside the school," Bender said. "They had a handful of positive cases, but those were students that were infected outside the school and because of their cohorts in mitigation, there was no transfer of COVID inside the school."

Bender concluded by saying that, “all the schools are asking for is the ability to have a hybrid approach that fits their student body, their families, their workforce as it goes forward. That’s what most schools have been doing, public and private, around the state of Wisconsin when it comes to creating a safe learning environment. The one-size-fits-all approaches that are meant to close down all the schools are not serving the kids and that’s the most important part here.”

Fox News' Louis Casiano contributed to this report.