The Evanston Township High School Teachers’ Council sent a cease-and-desist letter to ETHS Superintendent Eric Witherspoon on Friday, calling on him to reverse his decision to make masks optional at the school building starting Monday, Feb. 28.
According to a Friday afternoon press release from the Illinois Education Association, the ETHS teachers’ union is demanding an opportunity to negotiate with administrators on any changes to COVID-19 mitigation measures, including universal masking and weekly testing requirements.
“Superintendent Witherspoon’s decision to go from masks required to masks optional while at the same time cutting back weekly testing was made without input from our community, without input from our teachers and without input from the families we serve,” Teachers’ Council President Rick Cardis said in the press release. “The Evanston Township High School Teachers’ Council today submitted a demand to bargain these major changes that impact the health and safety of everyone in our schools.”
A spokesperson for ETHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the RoundTable on Friday afternoon.
Over the last two weeks, confusion over mask requirements has dominated school districts across Illinois after a downstate judge granted a temporary restraining order against Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s statewide mask mandate. That ruling initially only impacted just over 100 of the state’s 859 districts, but in recent days, more than 700 school districts have decided to make masks optional.
“Due to the lack of clarity and the fluidity about the state mandates, ETHS highly recommends, but does not mandate, wearing masks while indoors for all students and staff as of February 28, 2022,” Witherspoon wrote in an email to students and families on Tuesday, Feb. 22.
But Cardis told the RoundTable on Friday that the Illinois Department of Public Health has not changed its stance that schools should follow universal masking guidelines, and he said that ETHS teachers need more time to prepare for such a major change in protocols.
“What do we do about students and staff who are high risk if they catch the virus? How do we prepare our students to handle a classroom environment where some students are masked and others are not?” Cardis said. “This change is unnecessary. It’s not following the guidance of medical experts. It’s not giving consideration to or time to prepare for the very real challenges educators will face on Monday.”
Now that Evanston schools have lifted the mask mandates, it’s time to return cigarettes to classrooms. Just as people can choose to put disease into the air for others to breathe in, smokers should be able to put cigarette smoke into the air for others to breathe in. Forcing others to breathe in second-hand smoke is a basic freedom. Everyone gets to make their own health decisions. Surely the two anti-maskers will agree with me.
I feel like as a resident of Evanston, many of my liberties as a human and as an American are being infringed upon with mask mandates. You can’t force someone to do something they don’t want to do, so why try ? I personally don’t care about the who wears a mask or who doesn’t. If the mandate returns I will be annoyed, but I will still comply; however, if say, someone who strongly opposes masks is forced to do so in a place where they are forced to go (school), then on a fundamental level we would be overturning our own Declaration of Independence in which liberty is outlined as an intrinsic right of humanity. The administration would be imposing on our freedom by allowing people of power (that we had no say in choosing) to inhibit our freedoms in a ‘free’ country. I have no quarrels with masks, and will happily wear one if asked to, but I should have the basic right to CHOOSE. How can students expect to grow up in a society that respects their rights, if said rights are being institutionally revoked by the very same government ?
exactly! enough is enough and we should be able to choose and respect on decisions about mask wearing. our covid rates are down and are vaccinations are up so it’s time for a change.
We have seen where “enough is enough” have gotten some people. As you and I know they are no longer around to tell the story. They are 6 foot 6! For God sake, Covid is still alive and well and killing people every day. For some people it was too late. Why can’t people corporate? Gosh!