Plainfield School District 202 Board votes for optional mask wearing

All students in the Plainfield Community Consolidated District 202 will be encouraged, but not required, to wear face masks when they return to the classroom full time this upcoming school year.

The District 202 School Board approved the policy as part of its “Back to School” plan during a meeting Monday night that featured a packed audience with several attendees fervently arguing for mask-wearing to be up to parents.

The district said it will require masks to be worn on school buses and highly encourages eligible students to get vaccinated.

The district administration presented its recommendation to the board during the meeting. Assistant Superintendent for Student Services Mina Griffith said the latest state guidance gives school districts more flexibility on implementing measures such as wearing masks and physical distancing for the upcoming year.

District officials said they will not require masks to be worn because local transmission of the novel coronavirus is low, but if the spread increases it could require at least some students to wear masks.

“I do need to couch, and we all need to understand, that these metrics can change, might change, therefore our reactions to what is going on in our immediate community or schools may need to change also,” Superintendent Lane Abrell said during the meeting.

District officials said if transmission increases, they could require only unvaccinated students to wear masks. They also said they could take a more focused approach to additional measures like requiring additional mask-wearing measures only at schools which see outbreaks among their students as opposed to the whole district.

The board voted unanimously to approve the policy Monday night. Several parents in attendance applauded the decision.

Julie Sampson, a District 202 parent, said she was at the meeting to ensure “parents have an equal say in what’s going on with their own children.” Sampson and others came representing Awake Illinois, an advocacy group based in Naperville which argues for parental choice on wearing masks in schools.

Another parent, Raj Pillai, said before the meeting the District 202 board should have pushed back against the state’s actions to combat the virus, actions which he saw as overreach. Nonetheless, he approved of the board’s vote for an optional mask policy.

“I think they did the right thing,” Pillai said.

Dawn Bullock, the president of the Association of Plainfield Teachers, said it made sense for the district to utilize a mask-optional policy. She also said that having to deal with figuring out whether students were vaccinated to determine whether they needed to wear a mask was “not something I want my teachers to have to manage.”

Earlier in July, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance to recommend that unvaccinated individuals in schools should continue to wear masks to prevent viral transmission. The Illinois Department of Public Health updated its guidance to reflect the CDC’s.

Accordingly, the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending universal mask-wearing in schools for the upcoming year to protect unvaccinated students. Children younger than 12 are not eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

The wearing of face masks continues to be a divisive political issue. During Monday’s board meeting, Republican candidates for federal office attended and argued for an optional-mask policy.

Multiple speakers during public comment were wearing “Awake Illinois” T-shirts and argued for mask-wearing to be left up to parents.

Kyle Clare, a 2021 graduate of District 202, stepped to the lectern with a medical face mask on with much of the actual covering cut out.

“If you want your kid wearing a mask, that is your business, but that doesn’t mean you get to force other parents to do the same,” Clare said.

Although Clare said he was pleased with the board’s decision, he voiced concerns over how the district would implement enforcing students to wear masks if transmission increases. He wanted to know how the district would enforce it among only unvaccinated students if community transmission increased.

“We don’t trust them,” he said.

District spokesman Tom Hernandez said officials have yet to determine the details about how the district will handle requiring more mask wearing if COVID-19′s spread increases. He also said the district will ask parents and guardians for proof of child’s vaccination only in specific circumstances, such as when conducting contact tracing.