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Last night the judge in the covid-mitigation measures in schools case issued two rulings. The first was on class certification, whether the lawsuits could become class action suits on behalf of not just the plaintiffs, but all members of the class (the class of parents of school students and the class of school employees). This wasn’t granted (at least for now). The judge acknowledged that there is not a uniform class that wants covid mitigation measures like masks in schools lifted. Last month our director Cassie Creswell submitted a declaration as part of the lawsuit in opposition to the class certification. You can read it here. 

The second ruling was not good news for public health and public schools, certainly in the short term and possibly longer. The judge granted a temporary injunction on the rules from the IL Department of Public Health and the IL State Board of Education requiring masks, quarantining for those exposed to covid, and vaccinations and testing for employees. You can read the ruling here. See p. 28 for the actual order. 

As many districts around the state have had to take an adaptive pause after or for the first week back at school post-winter break, we are seeing lots of confusion from parents about whether ISBE needs to approve this or not, and whether districts can make this decision on their own. Some parents have told us their district has said it’s up to ISBE, which is not accurate. And Chicago Public Schools continues to tell parents the district is not currently authorized by law to do districtwide remote learning.

As we deal with the omicron surge, we are seeing wide variations in the covid testing procedures happening at schools around the state. IDPH began funding the University of Illinois’s SHIELD saliva testing for some schools last spring and expanded it to all schools in August 2021. Last fall additional capacity was added through a federal program. Chicago Public Schools, however, is using other federal covid relief funds to implement testing separately.