St. Charles School Board to ask Pritzker to rescind school mask order or let it expire next month

The St. Charles District 303 School Board plans to ask Gov. JB Pritzker to rescind his school mask order or let it expire next month.

The executive order establishing the mask mandate is set to expire March 5. At the school board meeting Feb. 14, board members voted unanimously to send a letter to Pritzker asking that he rescind the order or let it expire.

During the meeting, board members expressed frustration with Pritzker’s plan to lift the mask mandate on indoor public places by Feb. 28, but not for schools.

“I would like to advocate for continuity for rules between public places and schools,” School Board President Jillian Barker said. “I see no difference between the two.”

School board member Joseph Lackner suggested writing a letter to Pritzker “that suggests that the continuing pingponging of the implications of this executive order are really burdensome on students and they’re certainly burdensome on administrations.”

Other board members also expressed their frustrations with Pritzker’s plan.

“It seems rather nonsensical to me that we would say the only place you could possibly catch COVID would be in a school,” school board member Ed McNally said.

The St. Charles District 303 School Board decided to make masks optional after a downstate judge’s ruling Feb. 4 to temporarily restrain the district from enforcing Pritzker’s COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates.

St. Charles and Geneva school districts were among more than 140 school districts around the state named in a lawsuit designed to prevent the school districts from being able to require masks and vaccine mandates. In filing the lawsuit, parents argued there was no due process in Illinois’ statewide mask order.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is appealing Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Raylene Grischow’s ruling. St. Charles School District 303 also is appealing the temporary restraining order.

Lackner said the district’s appeal has to do with local control regarding mitigation measures. He said attorneys for the St. Charles District 303 School Board and other school boards “have read the temporary restraining order as potentially negatively impacting or limiting a school board’s local authority to make local decisions in the future.”