SE Illinois News

An Illinois school district is now on probation and faces possible closure over claims the district violated policy by relaxing mask guidelines.  

The Red Hill school board finds itself in its current predicament despite the Large Unit District Association now pushing for the state’s COVID-19 guidelines to be in lockstep with Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s statewide reopening plan.

“They made the masks optional going into this fall,” state Rep. Adam Niemerg (R-Dieterich), whose district the Red Hill board falls in, told WMIX 94 Radio. “They didn’t hear anything for quite a while from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) but just recently received a letter placing them on probation.”

According to The Center Square, the Illinois State Board of Education recently sent the school board a letter stating “Since the Red Hill board adopted its masking policy our team has reached out to you on numerous occasions to reiterate the current law and the potential, serious consequences to the district for its ongoing non-compliance. As of today, the Red Hill board has refused to rescind its masking policy or amend it in compliance with the law.”

Red Hill was officially placed on probation on June 23 and ISBE has not publicly commented since the restrictions were put in place.

Chalk Beat reports that the Large Unit District Association, which represents 52 of the state’s largest districts, recently fired off a letter to ISBE demanding that the state clearly establish health guidelines for schools that are in line with the governor’s Phase 5 reopening plan.

“We request that social distancing, quarantining, and masking guidelines in schools be consistent with health guidelines of Phase 5 as applied to other venues in Illinois,” LUDA said in its letter. “Through science, we know that children are the least vulnerable population to COVID.”

Niemerg said he doesn’t expect the mask mandate to hold up for too much longer.

“Honestly, I don’t think that people in Illinois are going to stand for it,” he said. “I think there’ll be a major pushback, not only within the legislature from legislators like myself, but also the general public. They will not let this happen this fall.”

Niemerg said he still holds out hope that lawmakers will still consider his House Bill 4083 that would ban mask requirements in schools.

A hearing for Red Hill has been scheduled for July 8.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Louisville) is blasting Democrats over a sex education bill now being considered for state schools.

“I sat here and I listen to this and participate in what I expect to be a prestigious body,” he said in a video posted to YouTube. “And here we are dealing with the absolute nonsense of putting perversion into our schools. That’s what this is. Teachers who are learning to teach our kids proper education have no reason to teach this stuff.”

Set to take effect immediately upon passage, Senate Bill 818 seeks to repeal the current sex education, family life and instruction on disease prevention guidelines and instead would require school districts “to provide comprehensive personal health and safety education in kindergarten through the 5th grade and comprehensive sexual health education in the 6th through 12th grades in all public schools.”

Now seeking the Republican nomination for governor, Bailey has been a critic of the governor, particularly when it comes to his handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

Currently, somewhere in the neighborhood of 700,000 students are still being schooled through a hybrid approach that includes both in-person and online education.

"[Gov. J.B. Pritzker] is destroying education and our children's mental health," Bailey said in a March 16 tweet. "We should have fully opened schools a long time ago, but JB is too afraid to stand up and do what's right."

“During a more recent Fox Business interview, Bailey said "parents are frustrated at the governing officials and mainly the governor of the state. What they've got to realize is many times a local school board actually holds the authority to do what they need to do and open if they so desire,"