Rise Up and Fight Back: "We are all done with this mandate. It’s so dumb.”
Chicagoland students push back against school leaders, marking latest turning point in years long mask wars
Standing together a short distance from Warren Township High School’s Almond Campus Wednesday morning, three high school sophomores admitted brutal truths.
None of them had sat in a classroom that week. And when they are in class, it’s hard to concentrate. They can’t see faces, can’t hear the instruction from teachers.
Two years in, they are worried about a learning environment not what they signed up for.
“I haven’t had a day of school where we haven’t been maskless,” Austin Sowa said. “I don’t know half of my teacher’s faces. It’s harder for us to hear them.”
“It’s hard to read them, hard to see with body language,” Braden Mann said.
Mann, Sowa and several other Warren underclassmen students, who use the district’s O’Plaine campus for classes, had come down to the school’s Almond campus Wednesday as a sign of solidarity towards their peers.
That morning, dozens of students staged a walk in, attempting to enter school grounds without a mask. They were denied entrance by school administrators and security on grounds that masks are a requirement for in-person learning.
On Feb. 4, a Sangamon County judge said otherwise, that refusing entrance to maskless students was a rejection of their “due process” under the law.
The inconsistent interpretation by district leaders of the judge’s ruling has resulted in days of walk-ins and chaotic scenes at schools all over Chicagoland.
“We’re seeing a creative interpretation of Judge Grischow’s order to fit the school’s interests,” Patrick Walsh said, a partner in the Chicago-based law firm of Griffin, Williams, McMahon and Walsh that specializes in civil litigation. “Some say ‘we are not named in the suit so it doesn’t apply to us’ or some say we’re named but it only applies to named plaintiffs.”
Many, including Warren Township District 121, a large unit district of over 4,000 students located in north suburban Gurnee, have chosen the latter of Walsh’s comment.
In a statement to district families this past weekend, D121 Superintendent John P. Ahlgrim said, “WTHS will continue to follow and implement it’s safe return to school plan. Aside from the parties to the lawsuit, we will continue to enforce requirements relating to masks and school exclusion for close contacts.”
He added an ironic footnote “As always, thank you for your ongoing flexibility and support!”
Since the judge’s ruling, flexible and supportive are not accurate descriptions of the district’s actions towards students .
Wednesday, in a pre-planned protest at the Almond campus, maskless Warren students were locked out trying to enter the building just before 9:30 a.m.
“We were walking up to the doors and Dr. Alghrim and (associate superintendent Patrick W. Keeley) Dr. Keeley were there and slammed (the doors) shut and took the keys and locked the door,” Warren junior Calen Shackleford said. “We tried to catch the door before it closed.
“There were some that tried to get in but were forcefully pushed back.”
Soon chants of “let us in” started amongst the students gathered in front of the doors. Eventually, one of the school’s dean of students, Zach Pagan, directed the group away from the front doors and to the back of the school.
They were ushered through an entrance that led them to what is referred to as the “Black Box” or school theater. From there, a question and answer session with Pagan and the school’s principal, Rob Parrott, took place.
For two hours, as many as 60 students sat in the theater, asking questions and listening to responses from staffers in the room.
“They told us ‘we understand why we are there and we understand why you are upset,’” Shackleford said, who was in the room. “They answered our questions and it was mostly respectful.”
According to Shackleford, the questions from students centered around the “hypocrisies and discrepancies of the rules.”
“It was all over the place,” Shackleford said. “They were asking, ‘why can we eat lunch but not eat a snack, why can Carmel and Lake Forest have the masks off but we can’t?’ It’s been enough, we can’t see teachers faces. Students want answers, when is this going to change?”
Shackleford said even the administrators in the room found it hard to not conceal the absurdity of it all.
“(Pagan) was laughing as he knows none of it makes sense,” Shackleford said.
(Adding to the tension of the situation at D121 is how the school board is seeking a tax rate increase on a June referendum vote. A meeting was held Wednesday to discuss the referendum.)
At around 11:30 a.m. Parrott reiterated to the students that they would not be allowed to attend in-person class without a mask.
Promptly, half of the students stood up, grabbed their back packs and walked out and left the building.
“They were just done,” Shackleford said.
A few did comply and masked up before entering the hallway. Shackleford, maskless all school year on a medical exemption, hung around for a little while before getting to class.
He said the meeting, while disappointing in the school’s continued unlawful stance on forced masking, did provide a positive outcome.
“It was so refreshing to see people standing up for this. We had students trickle in throughout the meeting. They would leave class and come join us. One student stood up on her chair and said, ‘this is wonderful. I can see all of my friends and hear them and see their faces. This is normal!’” Shackleford said.
During the uncertainty before classes, while the crowd gathered in front of the school, I approached a small group of girls.
They were unmasked and chatting amongst themselves. I walked up, introduced myself and asked them what they felt about the current state of affairs.
"We’re here because our school will not let us unmask and see our smiles,” sophomore Jaylynn Worley said.
“It’s been 698 days today (Wednesday) since we last went to school without a mask on,” said a Warren freshman. “It’s safe to say we are all done with this mandate. It’s so dumb.”
So dumb.
She’s so right.
“We’re worried more about the masks than the actual learning and that’s what’s getting in the way,” said freshman Sophia Gonzalez. “It’s a common thing that we bring up.”
That’s a worrisome comment is it not?
How masks get in the way of learning?
“You can’t see the bottom half of people’s faces to see their emotions and what they are saying. It effects you so much in school and in life in general,” Worley said.
Yet boards of education administrators, under the guise of ‘health and safety,’ want to hide behind legalese semantics. The hill they prefer to die on is ‘doesn’t apply to us.’
They are too busy listening to lawyers to grasp the inhumanity of their actions.
There has to be consequences. Has to be.
Later, with a CBS 2 Chicago news truck parked nearby, a small group gathered across the street from campus.
While parents stood by the road, holding up posters and signs, more students hung around, not sure what to do.
For many, it was the third consecutive day they had not been in class.
I asked them if they knew of anyone most effected by the last two years of masking and unnecessary mitigations.
“I have a kid on my club soccer team who went from being one of the most outgoing guys. We had four months off and he hasn’t been the same person. He doesn’t want to play anymore,” sophomore Luka Ahonen said.
“My sister used to love school and get good grades. She just hates it now and can’t stand it. She’s having a hard time and doesn’t enjoy school,” another sophomore said.
I asked them what they thought of the school administration, of the leadership they’ve shown throughout Covid.
“I feel like it’s almost not 100 percent about politics but it leans towards politics,” a Warren sophomore said.
“I think they’ve shown very much a bias towards one side of the political spectrum,” another sophomore student said. “They are just doing what they are told and are forcing it on us. If they rule its constitutional to not mask certain kids, why is it constitutional to mask others? You can’t have one district apply certain things to certain kids because of a lawsuit.”
Listening to these teenagers talk, I wonder how much would be accomplished if board of education members and top administrators did the same as I did Wednesday.
Just asked questions and listened.
I don’t think most of them have. Or will. If so, they’d be embarrassed by what students would say.
Of how dumb the whole thing is.
And they’d be terrified of this slowly emerging reality – of how they are losing. Losing their grip on two things they covet most, power and control.
“They want to control us and don’t want us to voice our opinions and try to scare you,” Ahonen said. “They gave us two options, ‘do want to talk to us or put a mask on or go inside? They probably hoped that we would put a mask on. But we’re not going to. Kids aren’t in danger. We’ve been doing this for two years now.
“If the masks work so well, why are we still doing this?”
For story ideas, article comments/feedback, media inquiries and more, drop note to jon@jonjkerr.com, or @jonjkerr on Twitter.
I just came from the Vernon Hills D73 school board meeting. Many were there to fight the mask mandate so they canceled the meeting citing they couldn’t hold it since not everyone there was wearing their mask properly. They refused to hear us out but rather ran out of the meeting.