Masks Optional For Community High District 99 Starting Feb. 28

DOWNERS GROVE, IL — Masks in the classroom will become “respectfully recommended” later this month in Community High School District 99 schools after the school board approved a measure that will make face-coverings optional.

The decision, made at an emergency meeting on Monday night, makes masks optional on Feb. 28, which school officials deemed to be the right date for the change. Superintendent Hank Thiele initially pushed for the shift to take place on Friday, but board members said more time was needed to transition.

As part of the change, the district will no longer conduct contact tracing and while masks will no longer be required in the school buildings, students will still be required to wear them on buses due to federal law.

Thiele told board members at Monday’s meeting that the community had become fractured over the issue of masks in schools.

“Regardless of your views on the pandemic response, the adults need to take the lead and start helping this community to heal rather than working to actively to tear it apart,” Thiele said at Monday’s meeting, Shaw Local reported. “Our students will never heal from the pandemic until the adults step up and show some resilience in navigating the world by productively working with both the decisions we agree with and those we do not agree with.”

A downstate judge earlier this month granted schools a Temporary Restraining Order which, in essence, prohibited mask mandates in public school settings. Gov. J.B. Pritzker criticized the decision last week and said that while he was lifting the statewide mask mandate in indoor settings in most cases, schools would not be included in that order by Feb. 28

Pritzker said that he believed a change could be coming for schools “within weeks”. Districts who have made masks optional have said that Pritzker did not provide enough clarity as to when mask mandates for students would be lifted.

Downers Grove grade school District 58 made the shift to making masks optional last week.

School board member Mike Davenport said while he has no problem with students wearing masks, he does not feel they should be required. Thiele also told board members at the emergency meeting that in speaking to school officials around the country, many feel that making masks optional rather required improves the culture of the learning environments of which students are involved.

Board members agreed.

“I support and encourage wearing masks in our schools,” Davenport said Monday, according to Shaw Local. “However, enforcing a requirement for masking isn’t sustainable without broad community support in a time when nearly all of us are vaccinated and/or caught and recovered from COVID. Society and our partner districts are unmasking.”