The Curious Case At Joliet West

Confusion and fear over Covid-related mitigations cause the cancellation of two football games, including Homecoming at Chicagoland high school

(Photo Credit: Chicago Sun-Times)

Friday night, Joliet West High School was supposed to play its homecoming football game against Aurora West High School. But the Tigers won’t play the game as the school district, Joliet Township 204, cancelled the game. It’s the second week in a row the Tigers won’t play a football game.

Their Sept. 10 game vs. Plainfield North was also cancelled, handing the Tigers a forfeit loss.

Joliet West has four losses this season but has only played two games.

They can’t play football because a large number of the Tigers’ 60 or so varsity players are under school-ordered (but not legally binding) quarantines, either from testing positive for Covid or for being tagged as close contacts.

In a week when players should be preparing and celebrating one of the biggest weekends of their young lives, Homecoming, they are stuck inside their homes, banned from campus and unable to to take in-person instruction or practice.

And they still haven’t been told exactly why.

---

Bryan McCoy was just getting out of school on Sept. 8 when he got a text from his football coach, Bill Lech.

“He said, ‘don’t come to practice,’” McCoy said, a senior linebacker for the Tigers.

Later, McCoy learned a number of players had tested positive for COVID-19 and while the school followed up on contact tracing protocols, all football activities would be shut down until further notice.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” McCoy said.

Although football would be off-limits, he was told the path forward to returning to in-person learning –– testing every other day as part of the Illinois Department of Public Health’s “Test To Stay” program. The program is as follows, according to IDPH:

If schools test close contacts, as defined above, on days one, three, five, and seven from date of exposure by a PCR or rapid antigen or molecular emergency use authorization (EUA)-approved test, close contacts are permitted to remain in the classroom as long as the results are negative.

Joliet Township District 204, which includes Joliet West and Joliet Central High School, is one of hundreds of districts in Illinois to enroll in the SHIELD Illinois testing program for the 2021-22 school year. The program, sponsored by the state of Illinois, provides COVID-19 tests to schools, free of charge.

In a message on the District 204 website, Superintendent Dr. Karla Guseman praises the testing program:

Thank you for your cooperation as we have rolled out mitigations to keep students and staff in-person and as safe as we can.  One of these mitigations is our SHIELD saliva testing.  The SHIELD test identifies pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, which means that they can potentially quarantine before they begin transmitting the virus. All students, regardless of vaccination status, can participate in SHIELD testing.

In the same message, Guseman adds:

By opting in to SHEILD testing, a student can participate in the test to stay option if they are identified as a close contact and stay in person for learning as long as they follow the protocol and test negative for COVID

McCoy, who is not vaccinated, did enroll in the “Test To Stay” program with the belief it would do as promised –– allow him to stay in school and on the football field.

But on Sept. 9, the day after he first learned the program would be shut down, the district cancelled the Sept. 10 and Sept. 17 games. All football-related activities were suspended.

In an announcement about the cancellations, the district said, “the high transmission in the varsity football program, the test to stay protocol cannot be utilized for varsity football participation at this time. Varsity football team members may utilize “the test to stay in school” protocol for regular school attendance.”

On Sept. 8 and 10, McCoy attended classes at Joliet West and submitted to a SHIELD test. Monday, he also attended in-person classes and again was tested for COVID-19. Tuesday morning, just before leaving his house, he got call from his mother, Belinda Green.

She told him he’d have to stay home that day. The school ordered him into quarantine.

“It’s just so confusing,” McCoy said.

---

In a phone interview, I asked McCoy how many players on the Joliet West team are vaccinated.

“Maybe three or four,” he said, out of 60 or so players.

(A source told The Kerr Report that as many as three dozen unvaccinated Joliet West football players are in quarantine.)

When conversations amongst teammates steer towards Covid and the vaccine, he said players’ discomfort often stems from the novelty of the shot.

McCoy said he falls into that category.

“It’s a new thing. It’s just a new thing we don’t know (much about),” McCoy said.

He and many teammates think they may have already had Covid. If so, why take the vaccine?

His mother, Belinda, is a nurse and has not pressured him to get the jab.

“She’s said it’s up to me,” he said.

Thursday, McCoy went and got another COVID-19 test at the hospital where his mother works, AMITA Health, in Joliet.

It’s the fourth test McCoy had taken in eight days.

The first three –– administered at the school via SHIELD –– has yet to yield a result.

“I still don’t know if I have Covid. I’d like to know,” McCoy said.

---

Wednesday morning, Donte Morrow’s mother told him to go to school.

The Joliet West junior football player took his mother’s advice and went to the school’s campus on Larkin Ave. in Joliet. Morrow had been ordered to quarantine for the previous few days.

When he arrived, his coach, Bill Lech, greeted him. Morrow said Lech told he was surprised to see him as he thought he was supposed to be in remote learning.

Morrow went to his first period advanced algebra class. His teacher asked him if he’d been tested for COVID-19.

“I said, ‘no not today as I’ve already taken it three times and it came back negative each time,’” Morrow said, referring to the “Test To Stay” regimen. But the teacher told him he had to leave class and take another COVID-19 test.

“I’m like, ‘OK that’s weird. I was confused as I already did it (take the required tests),” Morrow said.

He went to the school’s testing site inside a gymnasium and took the saliva-based SHIELD test. Morrow then went back to class and finished the period. After class, the teacher called Morrow over and told him he shouldn’t be physically present; he needed to be learning virtually.

Morrow went to visit a counselor’s office who confirmed with him that yes, he would have to leave school grounds and finish the school day remotely. His mother would be called and have to pick him up, the counselor said.

Morrow said the reason he was given for being forced from school property was his vaccination status.

“I’m not vaccinated. That’s the only reason I couldn’t stay. If I was vaccinated, then I could still stay and I wouldn’t have to take the test at all,” Morrow said.

By sending Morrow home, the district’s actions conflict with Dr. Guseman’s statement on the school’s website that says, “by opting in to SHEILD testing, a student can participate in the test to stay option if they are identified as a close contact and stay in person for learning as long as they follow the protocol and test negative for COVID.'“

Morrow said that unlike McCoy, who had yet to receive a test result, he had tested negative all three test days as part of the “Test To Stay” program.

On the ride home, Morrow said his mother told him she had sent him to school believing he had tested out, allowing him to return to physical attendance. But Morrow and another student, not a football player who also thought he could return, were sent home anyway and instructed to go return to remote learning.

“I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not looking that deep into it. Whatever they tell me they tell me and if my mom knows everything she will handle it,” Morrow said.

Calls and emails by The Kerr Report to the Will County Health Department and District 204 offices for clarification on the school’s testing guidelines and procedures went unanswered.

In an email obtained by TKR, Dr. Guseman said the following about the Joliet West football situation:

This was not a decision from JTHS. Our plan was to continue to test every two days through the end of this week as we had been doing. Joliet West was notified by the Will County Health Department that we could no longer use the test to stay protocol for the Joliet West Football team due to the number of positive COVID cases. We share your frustration. This was ordered by the Health Department. I have contacted the Health Department to reconsider, but we have to follow their directive.

Gusman told NBC Chicago that the number of positive cases on the football team is nine and “the Will County Health Department notified the school district that it could no longer use the test-to-stay protocol and that all unvaccinated close contacts individuals had to quarantine until Sept. 22.

On it’s website, Will County Public Health refers to IDPH regarding the “Test To Stay” guidelines.

IDPH grants itself leeway in pulling the “Test To Stay” option for a school, stating, “local health departments have the authority to assess high-risk exposures and order a traditional quarantine without the option for Test to Stay.”

Although he doesn’t know for sure, Morrow said based on conversations in a group team chat he estimates, “at least 10 or 12 guys” have tested positive. He is not one of them, he added.

Morrow shares McCoy’s hesitancy about getting the vaccine. “I’ve been around so long during Covid and haven’t had any symptoms and I’m not going to worry about getting it,” Morrow said.

But after losing two football games to forfeit, he is reconsidering.

“With us being shut down for two weeks, I started to think about it like, well maybe I should (get vaccinated),” Morrow said.

Other teammates are also rethinking their decisions to not get vaccinated, Morrow said.

The school’s homecoming dance is Friday night. There will be no football game and he and other quarantined athletes are not allowed on campus.

“We can’t go to homecoming so I’ll do whatever my friends are doing after,” Morrow said.

McCoy bought a suit for the homecoming dance. It will likely remain hung up in a closet this weekend.

“I don’t know when I’ll (wear it),” McCoy said.

---

EPILOGUE

I know what you are thinking after reading this story.

WTF?

So many unanswered questions. I know. I’m trying to get more answers, but it’s not easy when public heath officials and do not respond to inquiries (not uncommon in this era of Covid).

For instance:

*why did the health department rule that football players were not eligible for “Test To Stay?”

*was the outbreak labeled 'high risk’ and thus not granted the “Test To Stay” option?

*how was the school first made aware of the positive tests within the program?

*why are students going to school believing they tested out of quarantine, yet then told they have not?

*why had McCoy not gotten results from his tests yet Morrow had?

*are the parents of the quarantined students aware of how recent legal decisions make the quarantining of students unenforceable?

*why are they not pursing legal action?

None of those rulings have occurred north of I-80, but Joliet West’s campus is close enough –– only seven miles north of the Interstate (get off the Larkin Ave. exit ramp).

As schools re-opened in August and September, courts in several downstate counties ruled schools were improper in mandating quarantines of students. An order of quarantine must be issued from a public heath department first, according to a temporary restraining order in Clinton County.

According to an article in The Center Square, the district is, “enjoined from excluding [the unidentified student] from the facilities for being an individual public health risk unless an order of quarantine issues against [the student] from the local health department as required by the Illinois State Board of Education.”

One other thing –– this thought stems from a comment Morrow said to me during my interview (and what McCoy alluded to as well).

Morrow said how, “most of the people who tested positive don’t really have (Covid), they just have it in their system.”

I asked Morrow if what he meant is how his teammates are testing positive but are not contagious. He said yes.

According to the CDC:

Patients who have recovered from COVID-19 can continue to have detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA in upper respiratory specimens for up to 3 months after illness onset in concentrations considerably lower than during illness.

What that means is how someone who had Covid can test positive for up to three months. Three months!

More from the CDC on an infected person’s ability to spread the virus after 10 days:

However, replication-competent virus has not been reliably recovered and infectiousness is unlikely. The circumstances that result in persistently detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA have yet to be determined. Studies have not found evidence that clinically recovered adults with persistence of viral RNA have transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to others. These findings strengthen the justification for relying on a symptom-based rather than test-based strategy for ending isolation of most patients.

Symptom-based rather than test-based strategy.

State and local health care agencies, certainly those partnering and promoting SHIELD, are ignoring this guideline. When school districts sign the testing contract, they are complicit.

In an interview on WJOL-AM radio Thursday morning, Dr. Guseman said this about the school’s testing results:

I understand how hard this is for everyone. The one villain here is Covid and we have to continue to work on that issue.

Later in the interview, Dr. Guseman said that the district has administered over 1,800 SHEILD tests since the beginning of the school year.

So I beg to differ on Dr. Guseman’s villain identification. Yes, Covid sucks.

But the real enemy here is testing. All of this damn testing of healthy teenagers.

And we haven’t even got to the subject of natural immunity.

How it is almost completely ignored by federal, state and local public health agencies and dismissed by corporate media as some conspiratorial alt-right theory.

It’s not a conspiratorial theory. It’s real, and we have data from Israel and Europe that proves it. No one in the United States wants to admit it.

But check the CDC/IDPH/local county public health websites. Not a peep about natural immunity.

Instead, all the messaging signals how the way out of Covid is testing, testing, testing. Sure, get vaccinated. But even after getting the shot, get tested again. Just to be on the safe side. Come on, it’s SHIELD! What can go wrong?

It’s like handing the guillotine to the axeman.

What you get with all the testing is what happened at Joliet West High School.

And young men losing out on days in school, football games and lifelong memories.

For story ideas, article comments/feedback, media inquiries and more, drop note to jon@jonjkerr.com, or @jonjkerr on Twitter.