When Chicago Public Schools parent Kate Jablonski heard the district’s mask mandate would end, her initial reaction was “probably not appropriate to be printed.”
“I’m not happy about it,” the mother of two first graders at New Field Primary School said.
Jablonski was particularly surprised, disappointed and confused, she said, because she believed masks would be mandated through the end of the school year, based on an agreement the Chicago Teachers Union reached with CPS in January.
Instead, amid dropping COVID-19 numbers and legal pressure, CPS announced this week that the mask mandate would be lifted Monday but not, it appears, without another fight with the CTU.
The union, which went on strike months before the pandemic hit, initiated work stoppages in early 2021 and again this January in protest of what it said were lacking coronavirus safety measures in schools. Now the CTU has filed an unfair labor practice complaint over CPS’ removal of the mask mandate, calling it a unilateral violation of the January agreement.
Jablonski — who said she fully supports teachers and has helped organize parent “sick-outs” in support of improved COVID-19 safety measures — was still frustrated by the repeated conflicts.
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“CTU sticks to their guns. CPS sticks to their guns. And it’s the families that suffer,” she said.
Even as CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said this week there are more areas of agreement than disagreement between the district and the union — something the CTU disputed — opinions among CPS parents interviewed Wednesday on the latest potential standoff varied widely, from relief to rage.
Lourdes Benitez, mother of a fifth grader and seventh grader at Patrick Henry Elementary School, where she is chair of the Local School Council, is one parent grateful for the end of the mandate.
But even with the choice to go maskless, Benitez’s children will likely continue wearing them for a few weeks after the end of the mandate because they’ve grown accustomed to it.
“It might just take them a while to get used to not wearing it. … It’s their comfort zone,” Benitez said.
A father of five CPS students at Beasley Academic Center, Lindblom Math and Science Academy and Englewood STEM High School, Joseph Williams said he’ll continue sending all of them to school with masks. It “won’t hurt,” he said.
Williams, who is Local School Council chair at Beasley and has also advocated for parent “sick-outs,” said he believes families should have the maximum level of choice in dealing with the pandemic, including in-school masking.
The changing guidelines in schools are “stressful on parents, on babies. It gives anxiety because you’re uncertain,” Williams said. “Sometimes it is overwhelming.”
Other parents said they’re concerned about a potential for stigma or hurtful comments for children who choose to continue to wear masks.
Temple Payne, mother of a CPS eighth grader, said her 14-year-old daughter wants to stay masked, but “if you’re the only one in the classroom with a mask, there’s going to be a pressure to take that mask off.”
Nakieta Mitchell, whose son Aiden Roberson is a sixth grader at Skinner West Elementary School, said masks still don’t feel optional for students who live in households with immunocompromised individuals. The school has not always communicated enough about cases, and she has asked the Local School Council to monitor the potential for bullying of masked students, she said.
The end of the mandate was “another punch in the gut,” Mitchell said, after her son’s classroom had to quarantine three times this year.
The mask mandate allowed Cortney Ritsema, a mother of three and an activist with the group Activate Chicago Parents, to feel comfortable sending her children back to the classroom after having home-schooled them until they were vaccinated, she said.
Ritsema, who also believed masks would be mandated until the end of the school year, is now scrambling to decide whether to go back to home schooling, she said. Her 8-year-old daughter — the oldest of her children at New Field Primary School — has severe asthma, but she said “it was a huge sacrifice” for her family to do home schooling.
She’s anxious to see how CTU responds, and hopes the union will be able to protect the mitigations that were outlined in the January agreement, she said.
Nikia Jefferson, another Skinner West parent, said she’s for the most part comfortable with CPS going mask-optional. However, in a conversation with her pro-mask third grader, she encouraged him to stick to his personal decision, should any of his classmates question his mask.
“No one should look down upon anyone in either facet,” Jefferson said.
For students who may have struggled with masks for the past two years, the end of the mandate could make school more comfortable.
Jeannie Liu’s son is a senior at Northside Learning Center High School, which serves students with disabilities and impaired adaptive functioning. She said he struggles to read facial expressions and recognize friends behind a mask. It’s difficult to tell his exact opinion on masks, but Liu said she has observed her son express a desire for normalcy throughout the pandemic.
“It’s kind of about time,” Liu said of the end of the mandate.
Benitez said that, despite her support for the mandate ending, the overall relationship between CTU and CPS “is broken,” inhibiting the district from fully listening to family feedback.
“It’s extremely detrimental to families and students,” Benitez said.
It remained unclear late Wednesday what the union’s next move might be. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board has taken up the CTU’s unfair labor complaint but isn’t expected to make a determination before the mask mandate lifts Monday.
Tribune reporter Tracy Swartz contributed.
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