The Examiner U-46 News Feed

Area school districts vary in reacting to court ruling

By Seth Hancock
  While many school districts across the state have made face masks and COVID-19 shots optional following a Feb. 4 judicial circuit court ruling, it’s been a mixed bag for area schools.
  Judge Raylene DeWitte Grischow in Sangamon County issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on school districts forcing students to wear masks, quarantine and other measures implemented through executive fiat. The case included families from over 140 districts across the state.
  In her ruling, Grischow called the “unilateral unchecked exercise” of power by Gov. JB Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health and other bureaucracies a “type of evil” that is “exactly what the law was intended to constrain.”
  Although the TRO applies to the families involved in the case, Grischow wrote that students have “individual due process rights” which all students have. The state is appealing the decision.
  The lawsuit did include families from School District U-46, but days after the TRO was issued Superintendent Tony Sanders wrote in a message that the mandates were still on. He wrote that U-46 “reached out to those students who are included in the lawsuit,” but “all other students” will have to submit to district dictates.
  Superintendent David Hill in School District 93, which did not have any families in the lawsuit, released a similar statement that the mandates were still in effect after the TRO, but a Board of Education discussion at its Thursday, Feb. 10 meeting led to a change.
  This week, D93 students will have an option of wearing a mask, Hill wrote. He stated masks are still required on the bus because of federal dictates.
  Contact tracing will continue and quarantine recommended, but not required. Noting the division of opinions on the matter, Hill asked people to respect the choices of others and wrote: “We will not tolerate disrespectful behavior of any kind.”
  At the board meeting, there was a packed audience and 18 public comments were made including parents, students and teachers.
  All were against forced masking except one father who said he has an immunocompromised child and said “you have to consider that one child.” Another said he understood where he was coming from as a father of a child with cancers but said you can’t remove all risk for your children as he supported ending the mandates.
  In contrast, the U-46 board did not discuss the mandates despite a packed audience at its Monday, Feb. 7 meeting. There were nine comments made opposing the mandates.
  Kim Kowall, a teacher at Illinois Park Early Learning Center in Elgin, said the district has ignored the religious objections to masks the jabs of her and other staff, and “the terrible discrimination that I, and many other staff members, have felt throughout this process is very real and completely unnecessary. We need to be recognized and not villainized.”
  A parent noted a video on social media showing a middle school student in the district being physically locked in a room by a U-46 staff member for not wearing a mask.
  On Friday, Feb. 11, a large group of students walked out and gathered for a protest at Bartlett’s Eastview Middle School. Similar walkouts have occurred at Glenbard North High School in District 87.