The aftershocks of an Illinois judge’s decision upending Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 school mask mandate were rumbling across Chicago and the suburbs Tuesday, igniting parent protests, heightening fears about the safety of students and teachers, and prompting the departure of a beloved Catholic school principal.
The impact of Sangamon County Circuit Judge Raylene Grischow’s Friday decision is also reverberating in Chicago Public School classrooms, where for the first time in nearly two years, a small number of students were allowed to attend school without wearing masks.
“When I picked them up from school, it was so great to see their smiling faces. … My daughter told me some of her friends never realized she had braces, because they’ve only seen her masked,” said Brendan Hehir, a father from Edison Park.
Hehir is one of about 700 Illinois parents who signed onto a lawsuit against 146 school districts alleging that students who object to wearing masks or being excluded from school for being a COVID-19 close contact are entitled to due process.
“Unfortunately for parents and children, CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union feel like they’re above the law, but they’re not, and they’re going to quickly find that out, because we’re coming for them, but we’re doing it through the legal process,” said Hehir, a Chicago firefighter.
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While CPS has vowed to continue universal masking for the vast majority of its more than 330,000 students, a handful of students whose parents signed onto the lawsuit are being allowed to attend maskless based on the temporary restraining order issued by Grischow.
While some anticipated attorney Tom DeVore, who is representing parents in the lawsuit, would need to take legal action to force the district to comply with the order, he said Tuesday he “didn’t need to, as they backed off.”
While the abrupt halting of the state’s school mask mandate this week was seen as a victory for parents like Hehir, it proved devastating for those who fear the temporary rollback of the virus mitigation measures could place their families and community at risk.
“My 7-year-old crawled into bed with me last night and said she might need to move her seat, because the majority of the kids in her class are unmasked,” said Shannon Limjuco, a mother of two from Wheaton, who is frustrated Wheaton Warrenville Unit School District 200 has shifted from a mask mandated to mask recommended stance.
“It really broke my heart, and from a policy level, it’s not developmentally appropriate for little kids to be having to make these decisions,” said Limjuco, who was among the contingent of parents who gathered outside District 200 headquarters this week to demand a return to the COVID-19 school protocol recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At Queen of Martyrs Catholic School in Evergreen Park, parents and students were reeling Tuesday afternoon upon learning from Principal Jacob “Doc” Mathius that he had been placed on paid administrative leave for declining to comply with the Archdiocese of Chicago’s mandatory masking policy at its schools.
“Before I lose administrative rights to this platform, I want to let you know that I have been placed on paid administrative leave until the Office of Catholic Schools leadership officially acts … presumably to terminate me,” Mathius wrote in a Tuesday letter to parents.
“While it is many times not easy to do what you believe is right, it always makes it easier if it comes from the heart. To that end, my decision was easy, and my course was clear,” Mathius said.
Andrea Gertonson, a mother of five children, three of whom attend Queen of Martyrs, said Mathius — who arrived at the south suburban school last year after four decades at Brother Rice High School — was beloved by students and parents.
“He’s been so good for our school, because the kids don’t want to disappoint him,” Gertonson said. “He respects them, and they respect him.”
A spokeswoman from the Archdiocese of Chicago declined to comment on Mathius, who could not immediately be reached.
But Gertonson said parents had “an open dialogue” with Mathius, and had conveyed the “school community is ready to be mask optional.”
“He agreed with us, and then he’s put on administrative leave,” she said.
In addition to parents protesting at Queen of Martyrs Tuesday afternoon in response to Mathius’ departure, dozens of parents and students gathered outside Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Glenview early Tuesday, asking the archdiocese to abandon their mask mandate and shift to a mask optional policy.
The tensions and volatility surrounding school mask policies led to the arrest of a student at Fremd High School in Palatine on Monday, after a school resource officer was alerted to a disturbance in a classroom involving a student who displayed a small pocket knife during class.
“No injuries were reported and there is no active threat to the public, students, or staff at Fremd High School,” Palatine police Cmdr. Jason Watson said, adding that charges are pending.
Magnifying the tumult and uncertainty is an anticipated ruling on an appeal to Grischow’s decision from the Illinois attorney general’s office, which could lead to the reinstatement of the governor’s executive orders on masking and quarantining for schools.
And despite the steep declines in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, some medical experts warn that any lifting of mandates should be rooted in science, not legal decisions.
“It’s a little bit premature,” Dr. Tina Tan, professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine said in a statement.
“Omicron is going to take advantage of this opportunity to infect as many people as it can because not everyone is vaccinated, people are indoors and therefore, they’re at a much higher risk of the spreading the disease, which is very transmissible,” said Tan, also a physician at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
The state’s largest teachers union also urged school districts Tuesday to take caution, saying schools “do not want another disruption to our students’ learning while we are still working to bridge the learning gap created by the pandemic.”
“We believe our school districts should not make any rash decisions changing COVID safety requirements until after this process plays out in our court system,” said Al Llorens, vice president of the Illinois Education Association.
But for parents like Theresa Guditis, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against CPS, the end of mandated masking at schools could not arrive soon enough.
“Why are we still masking healthy children? You don’t see their smiles, they can’t hear properly, and they’re all so sad and scared about what other people will say about them if they’re not wearing a mask,” said Guditis, whose two children are students at Mount Greenwood Elementary School.
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Limjuco, the mom from Wheaton, said while she also looks forward to a time when virus mitigation measures are no longer needed, school districts should not be easing up on protocol including masking before state and federal health departments have determined it is safe to do so.
“I’m not particularly concerned about my kids, because they are not high risk,” she said. “But we don’t live in a vacuum, and the foundation of public health is we need to make decisions that are for the good of all.”