Evanston’s elementary and high schools will continue to require students, teachers and staff to wear masks, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, despite a downstate judge issuing a temporary restraining order that halts the governor’s mandate that masks be worn in school.
“To limit disruption and to keep our school communities safe, the current mitigation measures regarding masking, close contact exclusion requirements, and testing for staff will remain in place,” Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Superintendent Devon Horton wrote in a statement available on the district website Monday.
“Please continue to reinforce with your children the need to remain masked while in school and to follow the other mitigation measures which are all still in effect in District 65,” the statement read.
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Sangamon County Circuit Judge Raylene Grischow on Feb. 4 granted a request from downstate attorney Tom DeVore to temporarily halt Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s executive orders on masking and quarantining for schools, finding that the measures are beyond the governor’s authority and deprive students of due process.
In a statement on the Evanston Township High School District 202 website Monday, Superintendent Eric Witherspoon said the district will continue following guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Illinois Department of Public Health, requiring that masks be worn in Evanston Township High School.
“At ETHS we follow the science, and the CDC and IDPH are recommending masks,” Witherspoon said in the statement. “For the safety of everyone at ETHS, we will continue to follow the public health recommendations and wear masks to protect one another from the COVID virus.”
The statements from the two school districts came only days after Grischow’s ruling. The judge said Pritzker overstepped his legal authority with a “mask mandate,” something that two years into the coronavirus pandemic has left many parents, students and teachers across the state angry and confused.
Though legal experts state that the ruling applies to the plaintiffs who sued the state over the governor’s mandate, many school districts across Chicagoland had some kind of response. While some districts did as Evanston did and stayed the course, others moved to make mask-wearing optional and there were some districts that immediately shifted to remote learning for now.
“Late Friday, a judge in southern Illinois issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against Governor Pritzker’s executive order requiring masks in schools,” the statement from SD202 read. “Out of over 800 school districts in Illinois, the TRO affects the 143 that were named in a lawsuit. ETHS, like most districts in Illinois, is not part of the lawsuit.”
SD65 officials said in that district’s statement that because the district was not named in the lawsuit, the judge’s order has no impact on SD65 COVID-19 mitigation plans.
By Tuesday morning, the Illinois attorney general’s office had filed appeals to the court ruling.
“An Appellate Court decision will likely come quickly and will very likely provide a ruling that will have a broader and more definitive impact for public school districts,” SD65 officials wrote.
Brian L. Cox is a freelancer.