With CDC stressing local control, Collinsville parents urge school to be mask-optional

Nearly 40 people attended the Collinsville CUSD 10 school board meeting Monday night to advocate that the district not require that students wear masks when they come back to school in the fall, days after new federal guidance emphasized local decision-making for the coming school year.

Natasha Box, a mother with four children in the district, said she was motivated to organize the group after her 9-year-old son struggled with his speech therapy last fall. With masks on, he wasn’t able to model his own mouth movements on his peers’.

As a result, Box said his communication suffered. She pulled her kids from the district to home-school them last year, but said she has re-enrolled them for the upcoming year “in good faith.”

“I understand that for some families, they need to wear masks,” she said. “We’re not enemies of the board. We’re not here to antagonize or fight.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that anyone aged 2 or older who is not vaccinated against COVID wear masks in indoor public places, though masks generally aren’t needed in outdoor settings. Children under the age of 12, which includes the vast majority of elementary school students, are not yet eligible for the vaccine.

Superintendent Brad Skertich would not say whether or not requiring masks for children too young to be eligible for the vaccine was on the table ahead of the district releasing its return to learn plan on July 23. The school board will meet July 26 for a public hearing on the plan before voting on it.

Sixty miles away, Vandalia CUSD 203 has already announced a mask-optional policy.

Neither the budget committee nor the board of education had any agenda items for Monday’s meetings related to the district’s return to learn plan, but President Gary Peccola and Skertich each shared statements detailing the newest guidance and sharing the timeline for the return to learn plan to be finalized.

Skertich noted that the district had received questions about whether masks would be required in a letter from June 30 that was published on the district’s website.

“We are planning for multiple scenarios, but please know, our goal is to start the 2021-22 school year in a ‘normal’ environment,” he said in his letter, adding that Collinsville and other Illinois school districts were waiting on guidance from the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Public Health.

That guidance came Friday, when IDPH announced they were fully adopting the school reopening guidance from the CDC that was released just hours before.

The new CDC guidance emphasizes that local needs vary and that districts should layer prevention strategies, including social distancing, testing and masking, when assessing their needs.

Schools can still choose to have a universal mandate in their buildings, and the CDC points to elementary schools, where few or no students are eligible for the vaccine, as one scenario where a district might choose to require masks for everyone.

During Monday’s meeting, no Collinsville board members wore masks, and only one district administrator wore one when the meeting room was filled.

Some of the people who demonstrated against the mask mandate were from other school districts in Madison County.

Megan Cunningham, whose children attend Triad CUSD 2, runs speakforstudents.org, a website detailing masking developments in Madison County schools. Speak for Students in the Triad School District, a private Facebook group, has 680 members.

Cunningham and other out of town attendees at the Collinsville school board meeting said they wanted to support other parents.

Box said the group wanted to show a united front by supporting each other at their respective school board meetings before going to the Madison County Health Department. A demonstration was already held in the Triad district, and one is slated for the next Edwardsville CUSD 7 school board meeting.

“If we can get the county to say ‘personal choice,’ that’s huge,” Box said.

Any plan that’s approved later in the month will be fluid, Skertich said.

Last year, Collinsville and other districts in the metro-east had to change course based on the COVID conditions in the area. Collinsville ended the school year with kids in-person four days a week on a shortened schedule. Skertich said his priority is having kids in-person five days a week, for a full day.

This story was originally published July 13, 2021 at 7:00 AM.