State Senator Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro) and Gov. J.B. Pritzker | ILGA / Wikimedia Commons
State Senator Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro) and Gov. J.B. Pritzker | ILGA / Wikimedia Commons
State Senator Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro) said Gov. J.B. Pritzker's decision to end mask mandates for restaurants and offices but not schools.
"The plan that the Governor announced today is the height of hypocrisy," Bryant said. "Starting March 1, children will be able to go to the mall with their friends without a mask but aren’t allowed to sit in a desk 6 feet away from another student without putting on a mask.”
“Beginning next month, our state’s senior citizens will be allowed to go to the casino without a mask but can’t return to their assisted-living facility without one. It has become clear that the Governor is choosing to follow political science.”
Bryant said she believes Pritzker's mandates are worse than those in other blue states.
“Even states like New York and New Jersey have been more reasonable than our Governor who has treated our state like his personal fiefdom since the onset of this pandemic instead of the Democracy he was elected to represent," she said.
Pritzker announced Wednesday afternoon that he could lift the mask mandate for places of business on Feb. 28, but that he would still require them for schools. That's five days after a Sangamon County judge declared his statewide "emergency" school mandate school rules "null and void.”
“Statutory rights have attempted to be bypassed through the issuance of Executive Orders and Emergency Rules … This type of evil is exactly what the law was intended to constrain," she wrote.
Since, more than 200 public school districts across Illinois and most Catholic ones-- outside of those in Cook and Lake Counties-- have already announced they are "mask optional.”
In Saline County, mask-optional districts include Eldorado CUSD 4.
In Gallatin County, mask-optional districts include Greenfield CUSD 10, Minooka CCSD 201, Minooka CHSD 111, Coal City CUSD 1 and Morris CHSD 101.
In White County, mask-optional districts include Norris City-Omaha-Enfield CUSD 3.
Dan Montgomery, President of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, said Saturday that students going mask-less is "threat to public health" and that it prevents "normalcy at school.”
“We believe that what the judge ordered today is legally faulty and a threat to public health and, most importantly, a threat to keeping Illinois schools open for in-person learning," Montgomery said. "Our children and their families need certainty and some normalcy at school, not legal wrangling managed by a small minority of citizens."
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