Prairie State Wire

As the new school year looms, there are fears that there will continue to be illegal mandates. 

Independent COVID-19 researcher Jessica Hockett uncovered emails between state employees, and they suggest bureaucrats knew what they were doing was illegal. 

“These agencies, they knew that those were lawful objections,” Hockett told The Center Square. “They knew and I think that we can infer that they directed schools to do otherwise or just ‘Hey, don’t even deal with these religious objections.’”

Several email communications gathered from the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) imply that staffs were aware that parents and school staff could legally secure religious exemptions for testing, masking and vaccination mandates. Knowing this, preparations were made in case people leveraged such exemptions.

"We are planning a webinar with LHDs on schools and the new FAQ at noon on Wednesday," Judy Kauerauf, communicable disease chief at IDPH sent an email asking colleagues to join a webinar for local health departments. "Would you be able to join and talk about strategies for LHDs when parents defy isolation/quarantine orders, as well as the newer issue of religious exemption to masking, testing and quarantine?"

This email was sent on Aug. 2, 2021. Under Illinois law, only local health departments can issue quarantine orders, not schools. If parents filed requests with health departments, they could not handle them. In a Sept. 14, 2021 email, Jeffrey Aranowski of the ISBE again talks about these objections. He said in an email, “[Given] the language of the [Illinois Healthcare Right of Conscience] Act, we believe HCRCA violations are likely valid.” Illinois Bureaucrats knew they were likely violating state law, but they did it anyway, and they have faced no consequences, according to Emma Woodhouse's Substack article.

In Glenbrook High School District 225, community members are calling on school board member Joel Taub to resign after screaming at a man who said he had a mask exemption at a school board meeting. Taub screamed to the man “Wear the mask on your f***ing balls! If you don’t wear the f***ing mask, you get the f*** out of here!” The man said he had a medical condition, and thus, was unable to use the mask, North Cook News reported.

Lisa Katz had a son at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire who had severe autism. As a result, he was given a mask exemption. However, she said the school kept him out for 10 days noting “exposure” rather than letting him go to school maskless. She said her son has missed out on a lot of instruction because he was out of school five times because the school deemed him to be in close contact with someone positive for COVID-19. According to Lake County Gazette, her son has been harmed immensely due to the arbitrary rules and mandates the school is enforcing. She contacted the Lake County Health Department, but they forwarded her to the Illinois State Board of Education. She cannot get answers from anyone. She blames Gov. J.B. Pritzker for the situation and says that these orders come from the top down.

A mother from St. Christina, Erin Bourke has a 4-year-old son, Bobby, who has rare single-sided deafness. She said the diagnosis slipped by, and Bobby learned to read lips out of necessity. However, when masks were mandated, Bobby had trouble hearing himself and others. Bourke told Chicago City Wire that her son was doing well until masks happened and emphasized how masks affect hearing impaired people. She called on the Archdiocese of Chicago, which oversees her son’s school, to begin a process of mask exemption. Bobby’s pediatrician and audiologists supported a mask exemption for him, but the Archdiocese rejected it at first. It later reversed course. Overall, the Catholic Church received $1.4 billion in COVID-19 relief funds, mainly for schools. Schools with federal funding have been tied to enforcing mask mandates despite local laws. Furthermore, Cardinal Blase Cupich, head of the Archdiocese, has supported Pritzker's COVID-19 policies. Bourke believes the Archdiocese had an ulterior motive when denying their exemption requests and believes that it needs to stand up for the children but is choosing not to.

Hockett's Emma Woodhouse Twitter account has been suspended because of the questions and statements she posted which according to Twitter, violated their "policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19." Hocket "has been a full-time education consultant for 12 years, specializing in interactive and differentiated instruction, standards-aligned curriculum, performance task design, classroom grouping practices and program evaluation," according to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).