The final ruling on masks had still to come from the state court, but Glenview School District 34’s board had decided it was no longer time to wait.
District 34’s school board voted Tuesday to move toward a mask-optional policy starting Feb. 28, mirroring the statewide shift away from mandatory masking announced earlier this month and joining several other school districts seeking to do away with masks in classrooms.
The decision came as school districts across Illinois waited for a state appellate court’s ruling on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s order to keep a mask mandate in public schools, which a lower court had previously ruled against. (District 34 was a named plaintiff in the lawsuit.) On Friday, the appellate court dismissed the state’s appeal, leaving the decision on whether to mask firmly in the hands of local school boards.
More Top Picks Best Snow Roof Rakes
“This is a reasonable time to reconsider our mitigation plan, and the future of our mask requirement,” Superintendent Dane Delli told board members, citing a decline in area cases and hospitalization rates.
The meeting was virtual, and avoided the confrontational scenes seen at other districts’ school board meetings in previous weeks, though board members and Delli alluded to incidences of harassment of teachers and staff members and called for parents to allow staff to do their jobs without intimidation.
A vocal contingent of parents who opposed the mask mandate made their presence known, while the district received messages from a further 200 parents who opposed masking, according to one board member’s estimate.
In support of their position, parents repeated claims linking masking to increased mental health issues among children, criticized the board for not establishing clear standards for when the district would forgo masks, and accused the school district of “shaming” students who refused to wear a mask to school by isolating them from their peers.
One mother brought her child, who had gone to school unmasked, into the Zoom to plead against masking. Another compared the dispute over masks to her experience growing up during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.
A handful of parents who advocated for continued masking also appeared. They cited the continuing risk toward immunocompromised students, teachers and parents and attacked the more outlandish claims made by anti-mask parents as “tinfoil hat conspiracies.”
“Wearing masks isn’t living in fear, its living in kindness,” parent Laura Coleman said. “Being uncomfortable for a few hours is not a civil rights issue, full stop.”
But the board was for the most part already prepared to move toward mask-optional, even as board members debated when and under what conditions that move should happen.
Board member John Heggie was ready to end mandatory masking by the week beginning Feb. 22, while Natalie Jachtorowycz said Feb. 28 was a “bare minimum” to address changes to individualized education plans for immunocompromised students.
Board members Diane Stefani and Dr. James Dolan initially refused to engage with the call for a deadline, pointing out that board members were not medical experts and had deferred to state and local health authorities up until this point.
“Our board is not a public health department, nor are we qualified to act like one,” Stefani said.
Dolan further argued the student body’s current vaccination rate of 57.4 % was too low and any change to masking policy needed to be matched by increased district effort in testing and immunizations.
Seeking compromise, board members first considered a deadline of Feb. 28 provided the district continued to see an improvement in positivity rates but dropped that measure after they were unable to come to a consensus on what would serve as a reasonable metric for when to unmask.
The final resolution to move to mask-optional on Feb. 28 passed 6-1. Stefani was the sole holdout.
Joshua Irvine is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.