Sangamon Sun

Illinois State Senator Steve McClure (R-Springfield) accused Gov. J.B. Pritzker of keeping schoolchildren masked because of political calculations, not scientific ones.

McClure said Pritzker claims he is playing politics by maintaining the mask mandate in schools.

“While I’m glad that the Governor will be taking away some of the mask mandates, it’s clear that his decisions are based on political science instead of hard science,” he said in a statement. “That is the only explanation for why he is allowing adults to go mask-less, while forcing children to mask up.”

McClure noted Pritzker should have not bypassed the General Assembly in his mandates of masks and vaccines for students,

“He should have involved the General Assembly from the very beginning, shared the science and data he claimed he was using, and allowed us to hold hearings on state mitigation efforts,” he said.

Pritzker announced Wednesday afternoon that he could lift the mask mandate for places of business on Feb. 28, but that he would still require them for schools. That's five days after a Sangamon County judge declared his statewide "emergency" school mandate school rules "null and void.”

“Statutory rights have attempted to be bypassed through the issuance of Executive Orders and Emergency Rules … This type of evil is exactly what the law was intended to constrain," she wrote.

Since, more than 200 public school districts across Illinois and most Catholic ones-- outside of those in Cook and Lake Counties-- have already announced they are "mask optional.”

In Sangamon County, mask-optional districts include Springfield SD 186, Ball Chatham CUSD 5, Riverton CUSD 14, Pleasant Plains CUSD 8 and Auburn CUSD 10.

Dan Montgomery, President of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, said Saturday that students going mask-less is "threat to public health" and that it prevents "normalcy at school.”

“We believe that what the judge ordered today is legally faulty and a threat to public health and, most importantly, a threat to keeping Illinois schools open for in-person learning," Montgomery said. "Our children and their families need certainty and some normalcy at school, not legal wrangling managed by a small minority of citizens.”