Editor's note: This story was originally published in the Belleville News-Democrat.
After hearing emotional comments from students, parents and teachers about whether face masks should be required in schools, the Collinsville school board voted Monday night to remove the district’s mask mandate beginning Tuesday.
The vote comes in the wake of a Sangamon County judge issuing a temporary restraining order on Feb. 4 on mask mandates for plaintiffs in nearly 170 school districts statewide, including some students in Collinsville School District 10.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker had issued a mandate before the school year for all students and staff to wear a mask as part of an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. Pritzker last week said he would lift his mask mandate for most public indoor places as of Feb. 28, but that a decision on school mandates would be made separately.
Collinsville Superintendent Brad Skertich explained to the audience that the board changed its policy to say “masks will be strongly recommended in our schools.”
Many in the crowd cheered the school board’s decision to make masks optional. Crowd members who opposed the change remained quiet.
Before the vote, the board listened for nearly an hour as more than 20 people gave their opinions on whether students and the staff should have the right to decide to wear a mask.
Stephanie Biondi, a Collinsville School District teacher, tearfully urged the board to keep the mask mandate to help protect students such as her daughter Lela, who is in kindergarten and has leukemia.
Biondi was upset that “This community is comfortable with the risk of her life when it could be so easy for you to do something so small to protect her,” she said.
Sophia Brissenden, a Collinsville High School student, told the board what happened when she didn’t wear a mask at school last week: “I was bullied. I was harassed.”
Brissenden urged the board to drop the mask mandate.
“We want to make this choice for ourselves,” she said.
Board President Gary Peccola along with board members Jeree Bronnbauer, Dennis Craft, Vicki Reulecke and Michele Stutts unanimously voted to change the mask policy.
Two board members, Tim Hasamear and Jane Soehlke, were absent for the meeting conducted in the school auditorium to accommodate the crowd of about 175 people.
Masks will still be required on Collinsville buses based on federal guidelines, Skertich said.
Skertich said the school district has been in an “impossible situation” since it started dealing with the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.
“Unfortunately there is a divide completely throughout our country right now as well as in our communities whether masks should be required or they should be recommended,” Skertich said.
Before the board voted, Skertich said 87% of the staff has been vaccinated against the virus and that Madison County has had a declining number of children who have tested positive for coronavirus.
Mike Koziatek is a reporter for the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
