The Examiner U-46 News Feed

Speaker at U-46 meeting rebuffed while rebuffing

By Seth Hancock
  “Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive,” wrote C.S. Lewis in “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment.”
  School District U-46 demands the public obey its dictates when exercising their free speech rights as seen at the Board of Education meeting on Monday, April 26.
  Jeanette Ward, a mother and former board member, addressed the board during public comments opposing the district’s authoritarian measures in response to COVID-19. Prior to speaking in a separate room, because the district claimed the board room was “at capacity,” Ward and another member of the public were threatened to be removed because their face masks were down momentarily.
  Ward, at a table with nobody near her, took her mask off to speak during public comments to be interrupted by Superintendent Tony Sanders: “You can keep your mask up.”
  “I’m way more than six feet away from anyone in this room,” Ward responded. “I’m about 20 or 30 feet away.”
  Sanders replied: “We do have a requirement to wear masks while we’re in here. We’re all wearing our masks.”
  Ward spoke about her daughter being sent home from track practice the previous week “based on a cryptic email.”
  “The emails said, ‘Effective immediately, Charlotte must not enter into any U-46 buildings, practices, programs or attend any in-person education until cleared by a U-46 services nurse,’” Ward said. “So, Charlotte’s, and her classmates’ and teammates’ lives can be up-ended, just like that, based on inferences that someone they might have sat next to in class might have COVID, even though the World Health Organization has said asymptomatic spread is rare.”
  Ward noted that students are “300 times more likely to die on the way to school in a car or bus” than COVID-19, but “neurotic, self-centered adults have kept students locked in their homes staring at computer screens for more than a year for so-called ‘on-line learning.’ You all know on-line learning is failing our students. You all know it is in no way equivalent to in-person learning. And you all know our students are failing because you are failing to defend them. They are becoming the lost generation.”
  Student athletes have been “pestered and harassed” to wear masks outside and while working out, Ward said, as have band members while playing outside like her other daughter, Cheyenne.
  All of these dictates are without any authority from law as they are solely based off Gov. JB Pritzker’s orders, who does not have authority to write law. Still, a police officer spoke to Ward after her comments and told her, at least for the Elgin Police Department, that the police will just follow orders whether they are lawful or not.