New Lenox mom Ruby Johnson is gearing up for a second year of home schooling her three youngest children.
She and many other parents in some southwest suburban districts had, as recently as late last month, been encouraged by news that their districts would make masks optional for the new school year. But that all changed after Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s statewide mask mandate came down Aug. 4.
“I’m just a parent who is not going to make that my kids’ school experience,” Johnson said Tuesday as she and a crowd estimated at more than 250 gathered outside Lincoln-Way Central High School, waving signs and large U.S. flags to protest the mask rule.
Many of them later attended a school board meeting of Frankfort Community Consolidated Elementary District 157C, where some spoke out against requiring masks.
Signs reading “Masks are useless” and “We don’t co-parent with Pritzker” were held aloft as people lined the north side of U.S. 30 and west side of Schoolhouse Road outside the high school.
Heidi Olson, of Frankfort, said she has two children in Summit Hill Elementary District 161 — a son at Summit Hill Junior High and a second grade daughter at Indian Trail Elementary — and doesn’t want them to go through another year of masking.
In February, they returned full time, in person, although masks were required, she said.
“They were really glad to be back in school,” Olson said. “It was hard emotionally for them not to be in school.”
She said she believes the masks did more harm than good, and fears that it might not be a short-term requirement.
“If it starts at the beginning I feel it’s going to be all school year,” she said.
Olson said she and her husband are considering home schooling, but don’t want to because they feel it’s important for their kids to socialize in a school environment.
She said she was glad to see so many people gathered.
“We need to start coming together and have a voice,” she said.
Becky Quijano, mother of a first grader in District 157C, said her daughter struggled with a mask last year when she was a kindergartner.
“She would complain that she couldn’t talk with her friends and could hardly see her teacher,” the Frankfort mom said.
She said her district was among a number preparing to make masks optional, and Quijano said her daughter was excited about going back.
“And now we have the mask mandate and everything has changed,” Quijano said. “We know our board members are in favor of parents having a choice.”
Patrick Swearingen, who has three children in 157C — a son in third grade, a daughter in fifth grade and a son in seventh grade — said in-person learning with a mask was difficult.
“You’re muffled and the teacher’s muffled,” he said. “You lose a lot of nonverbal expression.”
At the 157C meeting, his wife, Karen, told board members that she and other parents deserve to have the right to decide whether their kids will wear masks.
“I’m not anti-science, not anti-vaccine,” she said. “It is my job as their mother, not your job to decide what I should do for them.”
Cheryl Gilmartin, of Mokena, said she and her daughter have talked about home schooling her daughter’s 3-year-old daughter rather than send her to preschool with a mask. She said she also has a granddaughter attending Arbor Park Middle School in Oak Forest.
“I don’t want my grandchildren to go to school in a mask,” she said. “The government is not our co-parent.”
Lisa Hosman, a parent of a seventh grader at Mokena Junior High and a junior at Lincoln-Way Central, said her children had been hoping to ditch the masks this school year before the governor’s ruling.
“The kids are very disappointed and mom is very disappointed,” she said at the rally. “Masks should be optional.”
At a Tuesday school board meeting in Homer Elementary District 33C, parents and others urged the district to defy the mask mandate. Homer was among districts giving parents the option of whether they wanted their students to wear masks, though they “strongly encouraged” it.
Jill Thompson said her daughter was “so excited to start at Hadley mask-free,” but now prefers to stay at home and be home-schooled.
She suggested that if enough districts openly disregarded the mandate, there could be strength in their numbers.
“What if every district banded together to fight for our kids?” she told the board.