Masks will become optional in Community High School District 99 starting Feb. 28, a decision the school board reached Monday following a lengthy emergency meeting.

Superintendent Hank Thiele recommended that the mandate be lifted Friday, but the board agreed on Feb. 28 after some members raised concerns about discontinuing masks sooner.

Masks will be “respectfully recommended,” and the district will discontinue contact tracing. Masks will continue to be required on school buses and other forms of district transportation per federal law.

“I used the word ‘respectfully’ intentionally there,” Thiele said after making his recommendation. “In the last week, the level of respect in our halls, in our classrooms, in our community has hit an all-time low. We need this rebound back.”

A judge in downstate Sangamon County on Feb. 4 granted a temporary restraining order effectively prohibiting mask requirements for students in numerous school districts across the state.

“After the judge’s ruling was released, a flood of misinformation and frustration that had built up over the past year led to a fracturing in our school community,” Thiele said.

“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 added. “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.”

He added that masking and some other mitigations are negatively impacting students.

“I do not believe in masking in the school setting or exclusions due to close contacts should be included as mitigations at this time because of the negative impacts they’re currently having on learning and the school environment.”

Thiele said state leaders have provided no clear path forward, and the guidance from health experts has changed little since the start of the pandemic.

“All of those heath agencies are currently recommending universal indoor masking by all students, staff, teachers and visitors regardless of vaccination status,” he said.

Guidance from health experts influenced the school board’s decision in August to make masks mandatory, he said.

“What has changed since August is evidence from the educational field,” Thiele said.

Thiele said he’s talked with school administrators across the country and many agree that recommending but not requiring masks helps change the culture of school and the learning environment in a better direction.

The question becomes: how do school districts keep students healthy while not following the guidance of the health experts?

First, he said, parents generally keep students home when they’re sick and for 24 hours after a fever. Other mitigations such as washing hands, using sanitizer and regularly cleaning classrooms are also effective.

School board member Mike Davenport said a mask mandate is no longer necessary.

“I support and encourage wearing masks in our schools,” Davenport said. “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.”

Downers Grove Grade School District 58 last week agreed to make masks optional.

However, board members JoAnna Vazquez Drexler and Terry Pavesich raised concerns that discontinuing masks could impact individuals who are immunocompromised or live with those who are sick.

“I hate wearing this mask. It’s just awful. But I feel it’s a small sacrifice in order to keep those who are not as strong as others safe,” Vazquez Drexler said.

“If we make the wrong choice, there could be devastating consequences for those choices,” Pavesich added. “I would love to go without a mask. It’s uncomfortable. We all know that. But to keep our students, teachers, staff and community safe, I think keeping them on is the right way to do that until our numbers go down.”

Kupka also disagreed with ending the mask mandate.

“I advocate continuing following the recommendations of public health bodies for the nearly 5,000 students and 1,000 staff members within our buildings. I believe if we err, we should err on the side of safety.”

But Thiele cautioned about basing a decision solely on the advice of health experts.

“Health experts are not education experts,” he said. “I believed the health experts for the last couple of years because they were forced to, at the beginning, (they) were very focused on eliminating the risk of COVID. And in the beginning people were dying at unprecedented rates and we didn’t have any idea how to respond to this.

“It was our responsibility as a community to step up and protect everybody. Since then, vaccines, access to high quality masks, access to treatments, just understanding that we need to have these conversations with one another about how we behave around one another.”