St. Charles School Board would have more say about COVID-19 mitigation measures as part of proposed policy change

The St. Charles School Board would have more say about any COVID-19 mitigation measures as part of a policy change that school board members are studying.

At the School Board’s Policy Committee meeting on Monday, board members discussed amending the district’s 2021-2022 Return to School Plan. They are considering amending the plan to require that “the imposition of or addition of COVID mitigation activities that are not addressed in the Return to School plan shall require approval from the School Board through a vote in open session.”

“What this amendment says is that anything that is more stringent than that which was reflected in the July plan would require this body – the responsible body to the community – to weight in on that,” School Board member Joseph Lackner said.

He is referring to the district’s 2021-2022 Return to School plan. As proposed, the superintendent would be directed to implement, on an interim basis, any COVID mitigations that are required by the governor, Illinois Department of Public Health, Illinois State Board of Education or the Kane County Department of Public Health and that are not already mentioned in the Return to School Plan.

“The superintendent’s interim implementation of state-level or county-level COVID mitigation plans shall persist until the School Board votes in open session to accept or reject these guidelines,” the amendment states.

Mark Moore, the district’s assistant superintendent of leadership and administrative services, told board members the amendment would “give more direction to a superintendent on how those changes could occur.”

“I don’t picture that because of this change, that all of a sudden the board is going to come back and do something about rules that have been in place since August,” Moore said.

The district is following Gov. JB Pritzker’s executive order in August mandating that masks be worn indoors in schools regardless of vaccination status. Before the governor’s executive order, school board members had voted unanimously to make masks optional for the new school year.

School board members took that vote before guidance was issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that everyone in K-12 schools wear a mask indoors, including teachers, staff, students and visitors regardless of vaccination status. At the time, CDC announced the guidance to prevent further spread of the highly transmissible delta variant.

A Sangamon County judge is considering a motion to block Illinois schools from requiring people to wear face masks in classes and excluding students and staff from school buildings if they’ve had close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

Circuit Judge Raylene Grischow heard oral arguments recently in a class action lawsuit against 145 school districts – including St. Charles and Geneva school districts – that was filed last year by Greenville attorney Thomas DeVore, who has unsuccessfully challenged the state’s COVID-19 mitigation measures in several other lawsuits.

“I think we can anticipate changes coming out of the lawsuit and it behooves us to state clearly how we’re going to react to those changes and it provides us the guidepost for the process of how we’ll make those adjudications or decisions as a board,” Lackner said.