Masks will be optional at Streator High

Masks will be optional for Streator High School students and staff, beginning Tuesday.

The board voted 4-2 to follow Friday’s restraining order from Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Raylene Grischow, which blocked nearly 170 school districts named in Greenville attorney Thomas DeVore’s lawsuit from enforcing mask requirements and exclusion rules for students and staff as well as vaccination and testing requirements for school staff without a “due process.”

Streator High was not named in the litigation.

The district conducted a remote e-learning day Monday to give the board time to consider its direction.

Board members Steve Biroschik, Earl Woeltje, Rich Tutoky and Eric Hoffmeyer voted to follow the restraining order, while Mike Mast and Heather Baker voted against following it. Board member Gary Wargo was not in attendance because of a personal emergency, Biroschik said.

Interim Superintendent Hank Boer, and the district’s teachers’ and paraprofessionals’ unions, recommended the district continue with following the state’s COVID-19 policy until litigation is settled — Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration are asking a state appellate court to set aside the court order from late Friday that blocked the mask and vaccine mandates.

Seven community members spoke in public comment in favor of making mask wearing optional. Other than the union representatives, no community member spoke in public comment in favor of keeping the status quo.

Each board member gave their opinion prior to their vote, Hoffmeyer said he was in favor of making masks optional, “there comes a time when enough is enough.”

Tutoky said he believed local school boards should have kept control over their own COVID-19 policies from the onset of the school year, as was initially proposed by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, and said he believed threats by the Illinois Department of Public Health or Illinois State Board of Education were “fooey.”

Woeltje, a dentist, said he read several medical journal studies on masks prior to Monday’s meeting and doesn’t believe they make as much of a difference as the role suicides and depressions are playing in teenage lives during the pandemic. He said it was time to make masks optional.

Mast said he was concerned with the legal ramifications from not following the state’s policy, noting the school’s unions, superintendent, IDPH, La Salle County Health Department, insurance carrier and lawyer all recommended the district stay the course until the court case was settled. He said he would be open to discussing the policy at or about Feb. 17 when the case the appellate process is predicted to be resolved.

Baker said she believed the best way for students to continue in-person learning was for them and their teachers to stay healthy, by avoiding COVID and keeping the mask guidelines. She said maintaining in-person learning was the most crucial issue.

Biroschik said he was leaning toward keeping the mask guidelines after hours of meeting with administrators and officials Sunday, until about three hours before the board meeting, when he spoke to his son in Georgia, who told him they didn’t have the mask requirements and continued in-person learning.

Streator High’s decision does not affect Streator Elementary schools. The elementary district is keeping its mask wearing policy in place.

While masks are optional in the building, they still will be required to be worn on any school bus or other school transportation because of a CDC order.

Streator High will not be contact tracing nor excluding close contacts. Students and staff who test positive will continue to be excluded from school. Staff members and students who are unvaccinated will not be required to test weekly. SHIELD testing will no longer take place.

If a student is quarantined after they are deemed a close contact to somebody, he/she may return to school beginning the next day. The school is encouraging families to report COVID results to the nurse’s office to keep everyone safe.

Rapid testing for symptomatic students and staff still will be available in the nurse’s office.

Woodland asks for cooperation in easing mask wearing

Woodland Superintendent Ryan McGuckin said staff at the South Streator school district will continue to ask students to wear a mask, provide masks for students that need one, clean, disinfect, test on Thursdays with SHIELD, but “we cannot and will not force your student to wear their mask,” he said. “We just ask that your student wear one if their teacher asks for certain situations for their class.”

Ottawa High reports no issues

There were no issues at Ottawa High School, said Superintendent Michael Cushing. The school district is keeping with the state’s mask wearing rules, since it was not listed in the litigation.