A judge’s recent ruling that Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 mask mandate was authorized illegally prompted chaos and confusion Monday morning at school districts across Illinois, as increasingly volatile battles over virus mitigation strategies further divided communities and forced some schools to cancel classes.
Meanwhile, the Illinois attorney general’s office filed an appeal Monday, demanding a stay to Sangamon County Circuit Judge Raylene Grischow’s Friday decision to grant a request from downstate attorney Tom DeVore to temporarily roll back the governor’s executive orders on masking and quarantining for schools.
At least two school districts, St. Charles Community Unit School District 303 and Geneva Community Unit School District 304, took an emergency day and shuttered schools. Chicago Public Schools continued to double down on COVID-19 protocol, including mandatory masking, which officials said is allowing them to protect the safety of students and staff and keep schools open for in-person learning.
Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates pointed to the union’s agreement with Chicago Public Schools that calls for everyone entering a CPS facility to wear a face mask.
“We are willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with Mayor Lightfoot and (CPS CEO) Pedro (Martinez) against those who really are harming our school communities with this dangerous rhetoric, with this divisive tone that puts educators and school systems and families against each other,” Davis Gates said at an unrelated news conference Monday.
In her ruling, the judge sided with about 700 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. A second lawsuit challenging the vaccine or test mandate for school district employees was filed against 21 districts.
While the restraining order only applied to families, staff members and school districts that are part of the litigation, the judge also found that the state’s emergency rules implementing the mandates were void, leading to a range of responses from local school districts. Some are going mask optional or recommended, while others are exempting only those students whose parents signed onto the lawsuit from wearing masks.
Students will still be required to wear masks while riding the school bus in accordance with a federal policy.
Pritzker on Monday said school districts that aren’t named as defendants in the lawsuit “should continue to follow the prescribed public health protocols, which have proven to reduce school exclusion rates and have made it possible for our kids to continue learning safely in person.”
“You ought to err on the side of protecting everybody in the school and particularly all the people who interact with the school,” Pritzker said. “That’s the goal here. That was always the goal.”
Grischow created “a tremendous amount of confusion even in the way she wrote her decision,” Pritzker said at an unrelated event in Chicago.
With the state’s measurements of coronavirus transmission headed in the right direction, the governor said he hopes “to provide some additional guidance (on the state’s indoor mask mandate) in the coming days as we continue to evaluate the numbers.”
Asked what would be the specific benchmark for removing the mask mandates, Pritzker said, “Hospitalizations, hospitalizations, hospitalizations.”
While he didn’t provide a specific number that would trigger a removal of the mask requirement, he pointed to the period last summer when it was lifted temporarily. When the requirement was lifted June 11, the state was averaging 760 COVID-19 patients in hospitals per day, compared with an average of 3,192 during the week ending Sunday.
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As for the ramifications of Friday’s ruling, Pritzker said, “poor legal reasoning should not take one of our most effective tools off the table.”
The ruling also has the potential to hinder the state’s ability to control future surges of COVID-19 or future pandemics, he said.
“Even when — if — we remove the requirement that people wear masks in various settings, there may come a time in the future when we would want people to put their mask back on,” Pritzker said. “That’s why we’re fighting this case and appealing this case.”
DeVore, who is representing parents and school personnel in the lawsuits, questioned the CTU’s position that their collective bargaining agreement requires they follow the virus mitigation guidance, saying “you can’t take the rights away from these families and their students, who are not part of the teachers’ contract.”
DeVore said following the judge’s ruling, around 200 Illinois school districts, including most of the districts named in the lawsuits, have moved to a mask optional or mask recommended position.
“With around 25% of those districts, nobody told them they had to do it, but this ruling gave them the courage,” DeVore said. In regards to the pending appellate court decision, DeVore said, “how do you put that genie back in the bottle?”
The differing approaches to masking have heightened tensions in the classroom. Police were called to Fremd High School after a dispute erupted Monday between students over masking.
“The classroom teacher acted swiftly to prevent the situation from escalating and immediately notified administration, who worked with the Palatine Police Department to resolve the situation,” Township High School District 211 spokeswoman Erin Holmes said. “The safety and security of our students and staff is a top priority.”
Palatine police Cmdr. Jason Watson said the incident at the high school is under investigation, “and there is no threat to the public at this time.”
Officials at the state’s largest teachers union said the ruling has “the potential to shut our schools down, effectively closing our school buildings and perhaps being potent enough to stop in-person learning altogether.”
“We’ve been able to have students in classrooms all over the state for this school year and last and that’s because public health safety measures have been taken that follow the advice of scientists and health care professionals,” Illinois Education Association President Kathi Griffin said.
“Without those safety measures in place, we risk forcing thousands of teachers, education employees and students to be out sick or forced into quarantine,” Griffin said.
Still, some parents with children who attend Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic schools, which like CPS, is continuing to follow the state’s COVID-19 mitigation guidance, said they are troubled that the private school system is not moving to a mask recommended stance.
“I think the path forward always was giving parents a choice, and the (judge’s ruling) forced people to do it sooner than they wanted to,” said Maryann Zaleski, 38, mother of two, and a former high school teacher whose daughter is a kindergartner at St. James School in Arlington Heights.
“We are realizing the emperor has no clothes, and the mandate really didn’t have the authority to tell us these things,” Zaleski said.
Arlington Heights dad Nathan Ulery disagrees, and says despite the ongoing legal battles, parents should still be adhering to the advice of public health experts, including the Illinois Department of Public Health, whose guidance is based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“My son never once complained about wearing a mask, and my personal opinion is, the only ones who say they are struggling are those whose parents don’t like them to wear masks,” Ulery said.
The confusion over masking rules for schools comes as the omicron surge in Illinois continues to subside at a rapid pace.
State health officials on Monday reported 4,701 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19, dropping the average number of new cases over the past week to 7,221 per day. That’s down from an average of 32,501 per day during the week ending Jan. 12 and the lowest level since the week ending Dec. 14.
Cases have become a less reliable indicator of the virus’s spread due to the prevalence of at-home testing and other factors, but hospitalizations have been on a similar downward trajectory.
The 2,744 COVID-19 patients in Illinois hospitals as of Sunday night was down from 3,870 a week earlier and from a pandemic high of 7,380 on Jan. 12.
Health officials on Monday reported 31 additional fatalities, bringing the statewide death toll to 31,483 since the pandemic began. But the rate of deaths also is starting to slow, averaging 81 per day over the past week after peaking at 132 per day during the week ending Jan. 25.
baiduhai’s Tracy Swartz and Joe Mahr contributed.
Twitter @kcullotta