West Aurora School District 129 has gotten some pushback from teachers and staff on Illinois’ COVID-19 vaccine mandate for school personnel.
“I think this mandate thing is all wrong,” Jean Oros, a 20-year educator in the district, told the West Aurora School Board recently.
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Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued an executive order that went into effect Sept. 20 mandating that teachers and school staff members across the state had to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or get tested for the virus weekly.
Oros said she is a paraprofessional and works with special education students in elementary and middle schools.
The decision to get vaccinated should be left to the individual, she said.
“We should have free choice,” Oros said. “It should be a (decision) between me and my doctor and my God.”
Oros said she doesn’t have any intention to end her education career over the mandate.
“I am not quitting my job,” Oros said.
Tamela Small said she works with students with disabilities and has been an employee of the district for about 10 years.
“I was recently told through the district’s emails that if I do not comply with the mask and vaccine mandates and for testing that I would be considered insubordinate,” Small said. “For the record, I have never been considered insubordinate in my work career. I have been told that I must vaccinate or test as a condition of my employment. Upon employment, I did not sign-on to have my employer be part of my medical team.”
West Aurora School District Superintendent Jeff Craig said the district’s COVID-19 infection rate has reached a plateau and vaccination rates are increasing in the district.
He would prefer to have the focus on education, the superintendent said. All students are back for in-person learning this school year.
“We have made a commitment to be in-person every day, all day and for the remainder of the school year,” Craig said.
He said he understands people have different opinions on the vaccine mandate.
“Whether it is mandates for vaccinations, testing or masking, people have come to us from all walks of life and we respect that and hear that,” Craig said.
“We are not all going to agree on any of this and I don’t know when we will be through this,” he said. “But part of the responsibility that I take on my shoulders is to get through it dealing with some of the requirements and still provide the greatest possible opportunity for students, staff and community. That’s our mission.
“I know this (pandemic) won’t be without controversy or without challenge and we are OK with that. But let’s do it in a positive way,” Craig said.
West Aurora School Board member Thomas St. Jules said he thought the focus ought to be on how remarkable it is to have students back in class, unlike the last two school years when educators were forced to do remote instruction due to the pandemic.
Board member Valerie Brown Dykstra said the board does take into consideration all of the comments and concerns from teachers and staff members about the vaccine mandate.
“While we understand your concerns, we also have to follow the mandates given to us so we can perform our duties. The last thing the district wants to do is lose funding because we decided we were not going to follow the rules given to us,” she said.
“COVID is not fair,” West Aurora School Board member Melody Saperston said. “None of us asked for this. There is one thing I am incredibly proud of. This district continues to stand by our guiding principles. We are one district with one goal and that places students first and in school every day and all day.”
West Aurora School Board President Richard Kerns said he doesn’t particularly like the state’s mandates either.
“Me personally, I also agree a mandate isn’t the correct way to go,” he said. “I think it is terrible messaging and it’s terrible to try to do something along those lines but like many of our board members have said, our goal is to have our kids in school every single day for the whole year. We don’t want anything that is going to be partial school or anything remotely to what we had last year.
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“I want to make sure our kids are in school every day, participating in sports and doing the myriad of things they can do,” Kerns said.
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.