Speaking Truth To Power
Code of silence around mask mandate continues amongst politicians and school superintendents, further elevating those with the resolve to speak out
At a Monday District 203 Board of Education meeting in west suburban Naperville, a parent spoke during public comments.
This is not news in of itself - public comments is a regular feature of BOE meetings, and pre-Covid, were mainly centralized to questions about referendum spending. In the era of Covid Hysteria, comments from parents and residents are often now transformed into compelling histrionics, making headlines over the number of arrests being made, not budget items passed.
The comment I’m referring to made at the Naperville District 203 meeting Monday night was not given in a theatrical tone. No, the words were delivered very calmly and composed, the Scottish accent of the speaker, John Blakey, adding an additional layer of coarseness to a brutal truth he was bringing to light - students are suffering while administrators continue to bend the knee to Governor J.B. Pritzker and his public health mandates.
The survey Blakey refers to in the above clip is one being issued by District 203 for students in grades 3-12, administered by the education data organization Panorama Ed.
Questions in the survey range from subjects around equity/inclusion (“How fairly do people at your school treat people from different races?”) to that of emotional wellness (“If your teacher asked you how are you, how often do you feel the teacher really wants to know the answer?”).
Blakey repeated many of the survey questions in his public comments but that was not his motive for speaking. Most everyone at the meeting had access to the sample portion of the survey and knew the questions.
The most powerful portion of Blakey’s talk was when he referenced what was not included in the survey (that’s the one-minute edited portion in the embedded tweet above).
Somehow, the survey, in sample form, doesn’t include questions about the effects of mask-wearing in schools.
Not a single one.
That’s astounding.
Imagine a tornado destroying a school gymnasium and not removing the wreckage.
Imagine not asking a rape victim how they felt about being violently attacked.
That’s the visceral equivalent of District 203’s non-survey survey.
Why would districts like the large unit one in Naperville intentionally avoid feedback on masking or quarantines?
Because they might get an answer like this:
The above tweet is from a math teacher in California. The disturbing and gut-wrenching answer is from one of his students, responding to a survey conducted by the teacher, not the school district.
The ‘Overall, I feel hopeless, useless, out of place, a fish out of water’ response from the student came not from a specific question but an innocuous Free free to share anything else prompt from the teacher’s survey. How many other students feel the way this young man/woman does? Is anyone bothering to ask?
Not in Naperville District 203 apparently.
Administrators are likely afraid of the answers they’d receive. Best to follow legal advice - what you don’t know can’t hurt you.
The tweet by the teacher has been retweeted several hundred times as of this writing. A large portion of those retweets are from teachers. I’m sure they have received similar worrisome notes from students and have empathy for him and the student.
Those teachers said as much in their retweet notes:
The original tweet’s resonance and reverberation can’t be explained as just some random act of social media virility.
It’s alarming message - that of a teenager crying out for help - brought to the surface the benign death-by-thousand-cuts casualty of Covid. One tweet by a teacher gave permission for hundreds and hundreds of teachers and others to say what they know to be true.
That continued mandates are only compounding the mental heath crisis for kids that began with our country’s initial lockdown response to Covid.
Twenty months later, when will the madness stop?
In Illinois, Pritzker won’t let it stop. He still thinks wearing masks "keep people safe.”
Tuesday, while receiving his booster shot, Prtizker said any reversal of his indoor mask mandate would be tied to a decrease in hospitalizations:
We're flat and still much higher than we were during the summer. We want them decreasing
On schools, he gave no wiggle room, adding removal of mandates would be for establishments “outside schools.”
No data was provided to support his statements.
A map provides visual support to Pritzker’s continued absurd stance on masking:
Many of us are not observing the indoor mandate.
But school-aged children have no choice.
That’s why it’s important to highlight those who raise their voices and speak the truth others in power suppress or ignore.
I offer a suggestion to school leaders in Naperville District 203 and other districts while attending board meetings this month.
Listen to anyone willing to ask questions on people’s minds but so few are willing to voice.
Questions such as these:
How comfortable are you talking about the anxieties of Covid lockdowns?
How did being forced out of the classroom impact your ability to learn?
Have your interpersonal relationships improved/worsened since Covid?
How do you feel about administrators going along with mandates with little to no resistance? Do you trust them to what’s best for you and your peers?
Why are these questions not being asked by school district leaders of their student body?
Advice from legal counsel: careful what you wish for.
For story ideas, article comments/feedback, media inquiries and more, drop note to jon@jonjkerr.com, or @jonjkerr on Twitter.