Sycamore 427 district officials say risk outweighs reward in defying school mask state mandate

Update comes after Pritzker’s mandate to require masks indoors for all Illinois public schools, regardless of vaccination status

SYCAMORE – Sycamore School District 427 parents publicly urging the school board to make masks optional again made up the majority of those who addressed board members at the Tuesday meeting.

Sycamore resident Mike Schroeder said he “personally would like to see the board challenge” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s new mandate requiring masks indoors in day cares and kindergarten through 12th grade public schools statewide, regardless of vaccination status. He said he respects the personal decision of parents who feel like masks should be required in school but urged that group to “please respect mine.”

“It’s a gross overreach of power, with the situation of COVID in general, of parent rights to decide what’s best for our children’s health,” Schroeder said, referring to Pritzker’s mandate.

Sycamore Superintendent Steve Wilder said the risks outweigh the rewards if the district were to defy the state mandate. He said the school district would risk a loss of recognition from the Illinois State Board of Education, state funding being withheld, losing recognition from the Illinois High School or Elementary School Associations – meaning certain student activities could be pulled – and increased liability exposure.

“I’m not going to go into personal feelings about the mass mandate,” Wilder said. “But in my role, I can’t consciously recommend that we would lose an opportunity like that and funding, potentially, down the line.”

A few parents, including Sycamore resident Brian Gillet, spoke in favor of the school district’s universal indoor mask mandate at the Tuesday meeting.

“There is no better way to keep our children in school than to wear a mask,” Gillet said. “If masks are not part of our layers of protection to return to learn ... we’ll see one case in our district turn into five and 25 and 125 and then over 500 in just a few weeks,” along with hospitalizations among students unable to get vaccinated especially, he added.

Board members did not provide additional comment regarding district planning for the upcoming school year. However, general concerns about the state giving less local control to individual communities was a recurring theme throughout the Tuesday meeting.

School board vice-president Steve Nelson pointed to the importance of following state legislature updates.

“But you have to be an active participant to make any change,” Nelson said.

The update comes after Sycamore school officials confirmed earlier this month the districts, which previously approved optional masking policies, will comply with the mandate.

DeKalb County currently is designated by the CDC as having a “high” risk for community transmission spurred by the highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19. The DeKalb County Health Department also recently issued new guidance urging everyone to return to universal indoor masking.

A hyper-local set of vaccine data related to specific districts is also not available on the Illinois Department of Public Health’s public website currently. However, state health officials confirmed in Aug. 6 Illinois Freedom of Information Act responses to Daily Chronicle the data supposedly will be posted on the department’s website sometime this week.

A Daily Chronicle investigation found 52% of those living within the 60178 zip code, which includes Sycamore, were fully vaccinated as of July 18. That number was 39% for the DeKalb zip code and 45% for Genoa-Kingston as of July 18.

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