ABINGDON, Ill. — UPDATE: The Abingdon-Avon school board voted Wednesday night to follow Governor J.B. Pritzker's mandate requiring masks in schools.
The school board also voted to require all staff in the district to be tested for COVID-19, regardless of vaccination status. The approved plan also outlined contact tracing protocols the district will use, on a county-by-county basis.
The mask mandate will take effect on Friday, September 10, 2021.
According to Superintendent Mike Curry, the district had four positive cases and 30 people quarantining from COVID-19 as of Wednesday night's meeting time.
ORIGINAL STORY: The Abingdon-Avon school board is meeting tonight to discuss their decision to disregard Governor Pritzker’s mask mandate in all Illinois schools. The board voted 6-0 to defy the mandate and will go over that decision at tonight’s meeting.
Superintendent Mike Curry expressed to News 8 that he hopes the board does reconsider their decision and chooses to comply with the mandate to make sure the school keeps its status with the state. Alongside him are two students who have been directly affected by the virus in the past couple of weeks.
Taylor Larson tested positive for COVID-19 about two and a half weeks ago. She says she started to realize her symptoms were more than a cold when she lost her taste and smell. She also had shortness of breath. Larson saying, “Now I carry an inhaler. I can’t do a lot of stuff that I could do before. I have to stay out of volleyball for a little bit now, and P.E.”
Since masks aren’t mandatory in her school, she wasn’t wearing one. She says it was peer pressure tha caused her to go without her mask saying, “There’s maybe three in each grade that wears them, maybe. It’s not very common. So that’s why I didn’t want to be the only one that did.”
She’ll be wearing a mask when she gets back however. “That definitely changed my mind of what I’m going to wear now.”
Through contact tracing Taylor says her classmates that sit near her were also put on quarantine. In addition to that, her best friend Kylie Sandmon is out of school as well. Sandmon says she wore a mask during classes throughout the day accept for when she is in gym class.
She tested negative for COVID-19. Sandmon saying, “When it’s your best friend, someone very close to you, that it’s happening to, it’s the scariest thing in the world. I would never want to risk that again, or risk anyone in my family or loved one’s health.”
Both girls say it’s difficult to keep up with school work at home. There isn’t a home learning option in the district this year. The girls get homework like they would for any other sick day. Sandmon saying, “They just tell us go on google classroom and email us and we'll just show you what to do. And then you do it by yourself. So, it's very difficult, I think. And I'm very behind right now. I need to catch up from all of last week that I've missed.”
The struggle to keep up with classwork is just one of the reasons the girls want to see the district enforce the mask mandate. In addition to that they are hoping to get back to more normal activities that come with high school.
Sandmon saying, “People say that they don’t want to wear masks because it makes the school year not normal. But I say if we wear masks, it makes it more normal because we actually get to have our dances and our activities. But when we don’t wear them, we don’t get a chance to have that.”
The school board meets Wednesday September 9th, at 6:00pm in the Abingdon-Avon High School auditorium. They plan to discuss staff vaccination and a testing program, contact tracing protocols and quarantines according to the school board agenda.