Illinois School Superintendents: Good For Me But Not For Thee
Elitism, privilege and hypocrisy all collide at three-day conference in Springfield
The picture looks like the typical celebration-from-the stage conference photo.
A group of people assembled on a riser, cheers all around in fully realized, puffed up splendor.
This particular gathering from late last week, happened to be with members of the Illinois Association of School Administrators (IASA).
When looking carefully at the photo, it is obvious only one of them is wearing a mask.
Why does this matter? Well, it shouldn’t. But there is this pesky mask mandate in Illinois.
In late August, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker issued Executive Order 2020-21. The EO states the following:
All individuals in Illinois who are age two or over and able to medically tolerate a face covering (a mask or cloth face covering) shall be required to cover their nose and mouth with a face covering when in an indoor public place. Illinoisans should also consider wearing a mask in a crowded outdoor settings and for activities that involve close contact with others who are not fully vaccinated. Face coverings may be removed temporarily while actively eating or drinking (including in bars and restaurants), and may be removed by workers at workplaces where they can consistently maintain six feet of distance (such as when workers are in their office or cubicle space).
Effectively, the order serves as an indoor mask mandate.
The EO, as absurd as it is, remains in effect as the calendar flips to October.
Over three days last week, Sept. 29-Oct. 1, the Illinois Association of School Administrators Annual Conference took place in several indoor meeting rooms at the Doubletree Hilton in Springfield, IL.
This image, and several others from the conference, show the administrators in direct violation of the mask mandate.
So here’s what happened.
Hundreds of superintendents spent three days at a self-lauding, self-congratulatory association conference, slapping backs and hee-hawing about their accomplishments. All the while their students, the ones they claim to be serving, sat in classrooms, walked the halls, rode in busses, with their faces muzzled by useless masks.
The smiles, screams and shouts of the superintendents could be seen and heard.
The thousands of students across Illinois? Stifled and suffocated.
It’s appropriate to ask the following:
Where’s the accountability? Or the self-awareness of their public insincerity?
Or do they not care?
I posed those questions on Twitter:
Here were some of the replies:
Almost everyone who responded on Twitter or engaged in the conversation all agree on one truth - we don’t care about the masks. They don’t work and forced mask-wearing is nothing but politically-driven kabuki theater.
I’m not outing these administrators because of concern their maskless breaths will lead to the spread of an infectious disease.
No, I’m outing them because of their duplicity.
The public images of the maskless administrators, spending three days at a self-improvement seminar paid for by taxpayers while students they are charged with educating sit indoors enduring forced masking, is a striking juxtaposition.
And stunningly hypocritical.
Back to the question I posed on Twitter.
Is it awareness for which they lack or do they know what they are doing and simply do not care about the optics?
I believe it to be the latter.
It’s impossible high school administrators could be unaware of the discontent surrounding the mask mandate. While they underestimated the contentiousness around the issue over the summer - preoccupied with the lack of return-to-school guidance from the state - by the time live school board meetings began in July, there was no ignoring the loud elephant in the room. Masking dominated public hearing portions of board of education meetings. The partisanship of the topic - you either believed masks were the cure of all societies ills or believed in the right to choose - turned school board meetings into the community livestream version of British Parliament hearings on CSPAN.
Pritzker pacified school districts and their union strangleholds with his school mask mandate in early August, followed by the indoor directive later in the month. The governor has never provided any scientific justification for universal masking, a line of reasoning that continues into early fall.
Monday, he said this at a press briefing:
We’re watching to make sure that we’re on a good downward trajectory. That’s what we were looking for back in May leading into June; it’s what we’re looking for now in order for us to possibly make changes.
How Pritzker defines “good” or “downward trajectory” is guess work. He governs through executive order and with a supermajority in the state legislature and weak Republican opposition, he does whatever he feels like. And he feels like masking everyone in the state who steps indoors.
Two months into the mandates in Illinois, the issue of masking remains front and center in the state and in American culture.
A few weeks ago, images from the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles were filled with maskless celebrities. The pictures forced the Los Angeles County Health Department to release a statement defending the actions of the actors as “exemptions are provided for film, television and music productions.”
The city of Springfield, where the IASA conference took place, is located in Sangamon County. It’s health department lists no mask exemptions for indoor gatherings other than referring to Pritzker’s executive order. The EO says, “persons who cannot medically tolerate a face covering are exempt from the Order.” Is it possible that all of the maskless administrators signed their own medical exemptions?
We know they aren’t signing them for students.
Or did they use the “free exercise of religion” waiver granted as an option in the EO?
Judging by some of the tweets from the conference, the environment inside the Springfield Doubletree took on a worshipful tone.
Just what is the Supreme Being they bend the knee towards, the Divine for whom they ‘double-down?’
Entitlement. Privilege. Rules and Bureaucracy. Pritzker. The Code.
Because they are so far inside The Establishment, they don’t think what they are doing is dishonest.
It’s classic victimhood - although to blame for their own predicament, they don’t acknowledge responsibility. Create a false villain (in the case of administrators, "Covid” is the villain) and a phony self-improvement narrative around classic themes of endurance, commitment and tenacity. All the while, the collective energy in the room generates a buoyed atmosphere of birthright around the cause.
The obstacle is the virus. Stay committed to the mission. Quest trumps decree.
The end result of such boastful hubristic pride is what we saw on social media feeds…photo after photo of unmasked administrators, all of their smiling faces shining through like so many deceitful soldiers of the Dark Lord’s army, the hypocrisy of it all obvious to everyone accept the offenders.
Sometime Monday, the IASA, the organization that sponsored the conference, scrubbed the tweets of the maskless photos off their feed.
That move eliminates the ‘lack of self-awareness’ argument.
No, they know what they are doing, and simply don’t care what anyone thinks.
And that’s more dangerous than any damn virus could ever be.
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Looks like we (in Illinois, at least) are being ruled by aristocracy, on the federal, state and local levels. How they all love to control the masses, as they wine and dine on our tax dollars, living the good life. They're too arrogant to care about any suffering going on, unless it affects them. And to go ahead and delete the incriminating posts?? Utterly pathetic!
Great write-up as always!