Greetings Urbana Families and Friends, 

Late Friday, February 25, the Illinois Supreme Court vacated the temporary restraining order and remanded the matter back to the Circuit Court of Sangamon County. After the Supreme Court’s determination, Governor Pritzker announced that masks would be optional for schools effective Monday, February 28, based on the new rules easing mask-wearing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC updated their guidance that no longer recommends universal indoor mask-wearing in K-12 schools in areas with low or medium community-level transmission. 

What does this mean for school districts? Schools now have more local discretion to adopt COVID 19 mitigation measures like universal masking.  At our February 15, 2022 Board Meeting, our Board recommitted to following our current masking policy. Moving forward, our local decisions will need to continue to comply with Illinois law, including IDPH quarantine and modified quarantine rules. We are working with our attorneys to assess the impact of continuing to require masks following the Board’s renewed consensus on February 15, 2022.  The Board will discuss our local decision at our next Board Meeting on Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Until that time, we expect staff and students to continue wearing masks to comply with our current Board policy and Memorandum of Agreement with staff to wear masks while at school and on our buses.

I encourage us all to continue this commitment while we work behind the scenes to ensure the District’s right to keep our staff and students with underlying health conditions safe. As a District, we have been so diligent and committed to keeping one another safe, and we are reaping the benefits of our efforts.  

We will be sharing more information at our Board meeting this Tuesday evening. If you are unable to tune in to watch the meeting in real-time, we will share the details on Wednesday through the Board Update. 

Thank you for your continued support,

Dr. Ivory-Tatum