Vaccine Shots In Schools: "I don't want to be forced to take something. It's all about choice."
A Chicagoland high school hosts a one-day vaccination clinic. An area group arrives and pushes back against Gov. Pritzker and public health mandates
The email came in of a Covid vaccination clinic being sponsored by District 128, a two-school district in Lake County, IL.
The message said, “Community High School District 128 in partnership with the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) will be offering free vaccination clinics at both Libertyville High School and Vernon Hills High School. These clinics are open to vaccine-eligible students, staff, parents and community members.”
I decided to swing by Vernon Hills High School and check it out. There’s a big parking lot in front of the school, traffic and/or congestion shouldn’t be an issue.
There’s been quite a bit of news lately on the vaccine. Data continues to roll in questioning its efficacy on stopping the virus yet Illinois, and Governor JB Pritzker, proceed with mandates. Those who engage in non-compliance face “consequences” as Barrington 220 District Superintendent Robert Hunt said at a Monday school board meeting.
Illinois ranks 16th of all states in population with at least one dose of the vaccine (68%). Now on the re-election campaign trail, Pritzker never misses an opportunity to brag about the state’s vaccine productivity. At news conferences he spouts the same messaging about “keeping Illinoisans safe” and ignores the collateral damage caused by mandates.
My wanting to check out the school-sponsored clinic was out of curiosity. How many people would show up? Would there be any demonstrations? Would any students get the jab?
I got there between 3:30-4:00 pm, right about the time when school was letting out.
I parked my car across the street from the school, in a commercial real estate lot.
In front of the lot, Lakeview Parkway, is the main road that feeds into VHHS.
Right when I arrived, the road was backed up with dozens of cars waiting to enter the parking lot.
A student walked past and I asked him what all the cars were for.
“It’s parents picking up their kids,” the student said.
“So not for the vaccination clinic?” I asked.
“What?” he said.
“Never mind,” I responded and moved on.
Where Lakeview pulls into the school parking lot, there is a grass embankment and sidewalk. There, a few people were holding signs.
Before I got to the sign holders, I wandered the school parking lot and took an informal poll.
“Anyone know where the vaccination clinic is?” I asked two students as they walked to their cars.
“I don’t know. Sorry,” they said in unison.
I asked another group of students and one of them said, “oh, probably through the front door (of the school),” the student said.
Then one of them chimed in, “be safe!” before chuckling under his breath.
I had no intention of going inside. I’m vaccinated and don’t need a booster shot.
I approached the front entrance where there was a security guard and what looked like an administrator, before turning back. No inbound, all outbound foot traffic.
“Why are you here?” I asked one of the people standing on the sidewalk on the south side of Lakeview. She was holding a sign.
“The vaccine,” the woman said, who told me she had children who had graduated from District 128. “They are finding children don’t need it. None of us need it because of our immune systems.”
She went on to mention the number of people that have died after taking the COVID-19 vaccine and how “I don’t want to be a part of it and I don’t want children to be a part of it.”
“The opposition likes to paint people like yourself as anti-vaxxers. Is that a fair characterization?” I asked.
“I don’t want to be forced to take something,” she said. “It’s all about choice. All of my other vaccines were choice. Kind of a red flag that we were not given a choice.”
During the conversation, the flow of cars into the school parking lot began to diminish. There was no way of knowing if anyone coming into the lot was there to pick up their child or to get vaccinated.
After being on the grounds for about a half-hour, and witnessing very little traffic entering the building, my suspicion was most were there on child pick-up duty.
Before I arrived and first learned of the clinic, I researched the district’s visitation policy.
Directly from the D128 website:
Visitors
Non-essential visitors are strongly discouraged from visiting campus and, when possible, are asked instead to use video conferencing for meeting with District or School staff. Only essential in-person meetings with contractors or parents should be allowed. Face coverings are required at all times for visitors.
Why is the district labeling ‘non-essential visitors’ (i.e., parents) and discouraging their presence on school grounds yet promoting/hosting a health care clinic and inviting strangers to campus?
The optics are puzzling to say the least and something I don’t think schools districts think through, or if they do have discussions, don’t care. They are so beholden to Pritzker and his bully-boy tactics that these inconsistencies must be simply glossed over.
“They blatantly show no concern for our children’s safety. They twist their plan to suit their narrative only,” said a parent with a child enrolled in the district.
I asked the woman holding the sign about the clinic inside the school, where students are welcome to get the jab only without parental supervision.
“Parents should be taking them to their doctor but to have it done at the school? They are coercing,” she said.
Another woman wanders over dressed in a nurse’s gown. She was answering questions from the security guard directing traffic.
“It’s good to show people. Not everyone believes the television news,” she said.
I ask her why she’s here.
“I’m here to help save children’s lives because most people don’t know what’s in the shot, how it works, what it does and the side effects,” she said, identifying herself as Lynn Ulrich, a nurse anesthetist who works in a private doctor’s office.
“Why is there so much push from the medical community to get everyone vaccinated?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, everything is controlled by a few big corporations, politicians, all of this at the very top,” Ulrich said. “ISBE (Illinois State Board of Education) is at the top. (ISBE chief) Carmen Ayala, when was the last time she saw a patient? Dr. Fauci, when’s the last time he had a patient? They just put rules down and unfortunately, people in America have never been in a war on their grounds in awhile. In Europe, millions are on the street protesting in every country. Here people are not as informed.
“If you trust the government, you will take (the shot). If not, you are not going to take it.”
Ulrich and the anonymous woman are part of an organization called “Parents of Lake County Community.” Earlier in the summer, they demonstrated at a vaccination clinic at Warren Township High School in Gurnee and have organized other demonstrations all over the county.
This day at Vernon Hills High School, they handed out flyers and a sheet of paper with a list of “Reasons Not To Get The Covid Experimental Shot.”
I asked Ulrich about the gene therapy theory that has been pushed widely amongst the population group suspicious of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“If you look at an old book, the vaccine definition today is different than years ago. Old vaccines, they took a part of the virus, put it in your body and attacked it and it got used to killing the virus. This thing (COVID-19 vaccine) is gene therapy,” she said. “It gets into your system or DNA and it makes your own genes produce this virus. So you are a manufacture of a virus. Your body is attacking your body and there is no way to get it out.”
While we were talking, a man approaches one of the other demonstrators (there were five or six there that day) and asks for information. A student walks over and pretends to be curious about the demonstration.
“I think you all should be allowed to drop massive wet poops in the middle of class,” he said, then sprints off in mock laughter.
Another car drives by and a student yells out “you look great in that nurse’s gown!”
The heckling is relatively tame, nothing more than teenage shenanigans, and no one gives it a second thought (“It’s hard to know what these kids are thinking,” said one of the demonstrators).
Another demonstrator, Karen Jensen, said she and members of the group have attended over a dozen school board meetings all over Lake County.
“Our group has been speaking at these board meetings. They explain why we shouldn’t be wearing masks and these board members sit there like they don’t hear you,” Jensen said. “As soon as the public comment is done they invite you to leave. Most of us choose to stay and listen. They go down this protocol that is coming from above, trickling down to them. All the board meetings are speaking the same lingo.”
After about an hour, most of the cars are gone. A few drivers stop and grab flyers from the group.
Another demonstration is planned for the following weekend.
“Schools are for education strictly. They are not here to mandate health issues,” said a woman holding a sign. “Parents are in charge of their children. They are here to learn critical thinking. That’s not quite what’s going on.”
After my trip to Vernon Hills High School, I emailed D128 officials with a few questions.
I wanted to know why it hosted the clinic and how many people used the clinic to get vaccinated.
“We were asked to provide locations for the IDPH clinics. We also hosted vaccine clinics last school year for students when the Pfizer vaccine became available for those under 18 years old,” D128 associate superintendent Briant Kelley said.
Kelley added how 10 total people were vaccinated over the two-day clinic at both district high schools “but we are not aware if they were students, staff or community members.”
I asked about SHIELD testing, which D128 began instituting Monday (Sept. 20).
According to Kelley, SHIELD testing at D128 is for two groups – unvaccinated staff members and unvaccinated students that participate in athletics, fine arts and extracurricular activities.
Of the district’s 3,385 students, 202 are enrolled in SHIELD testing (required to participate in extracurricular activities). The district did not disclose the number of unvaccinated staff members enrolled in SHIELD, a requirement after Gov. Pritzker’s mandate went into effect earlier this week.
I asked Kelley the upside to SHIELD testing, which thus far, has resulted in thousands of lost class hours to quarantines.
“The COVID SHIELD test program is another mitigation measure for schools to utilize to remain open safely,” Kelley said. “This type of screening testing is recommended by the CDC and IDPH to help “identify infected people without symptoms (or before development of symptoms) who may be contagious so that measures can be taken to prevent further transmission.”
(D128 has not seen a high number of quarantined students. According to the latest figures on its website, since Sept. 6, only one student has been quarantined.)
It’s getting harder and harder to get information out of districts outside of listening in on school board meetings or filing FOIA requests. So I appreciate D128 officials responding to my questions, although I would have preferred a wider-range interview with Kelley.
This article is not meant to be a straight up opinion piece; I wanted to do some shoe-leather reporting here and have the article be told more through the voices of the subjects rather than mine.
Here’s where I will interject my point of view - regardless of what anyone thinks of what the people quoted in the article said (and there were some dubious figures and data given by the subjects that would not hold up to fact-checking) they are engaged in activists work; on the streets, in their communities, talking to people, sharing their message.
They are not alone - Chicagoland is filled with parent-driven organizations like the one in this article. They are attending board meetings, meeting during the week, talking strategy and pushing back against Pritzker and The Code.
And that’s the only way any change will come, through relentless pursuit towards fairness and reason.
There was a young man part of the group at Vernon Hills that day. He held his own sign, his own story to tell.
That’s coming next.
For story ideas, article comments/feedback, media inquiries and more, drop note to jon@jonjkerr.com, or @jonjkerr on Twitter.