Early this week, in the face of a large and loud protest from parents and students, administrators at Oak Park River Forest High School backed off their plan to suspend winter sports and other extracurricular activities at the school, citing an increase in cases of COVID-19 in the school.
But the incident – and the manner in which school officials communicated the decisions to parents and students throughout the process – has raised questions over who at the high school was actually making the decisions:
The OPRF High School District administration or the Oak Park Health Department?
David Penn
| Schmiedeskamp Robertson Neu & Mitchell
OPRF Superintendent Greg Johnson did not reply to questions submitted by The Cook County Record on Monday.
However, an attorney who specializes in Illinois education law says the incident serves to illustrate the uncertainty under which parents and students must live, over who is calling the shots concerning whether schools should be open or closed, and activities functioning or not, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
“This is one of the grey areas created by COVID,” said David Penn, an attorney with the firm of Schmiedeskamp Robertson Neu & Mitchell, of downstate Quincy.
“We all know in cases of closures or cancellations because of weather, the decision normally falls entirely to the school.
“But when you’re talking about a communicable disease, it’s more than just a snow day.”
Last Friday, OPRF High School announced to parents and students in the west suburban district that all winter sports and extracurricular activities were being cancelled for the remainder of the winter term.
In that announcement, school administrators said the decision was made at the direction of the Oak Park Health Department, a municipal government agency in the village of Oak Park.
The village of Oak Park is one of several municipalities in Cook County, including Chicago and Evanston, among others, that operates its own public health department, meaning it is not under the jurisdiction of the Cook County Department of Public Health.
For the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the village of Oak Park had delegated special emergency powers to the Health Department, allowing it to make public health decisions without first seeking village approval.
Those emergency powers were recently renewed at the end of November. Under the new authorizing ordinance, the Oak Park Health Department was granted emergency powers indefinitely, until Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker determines a health emergency no longer exists in Illinois.
Pritzker has reissued statewide disaster declarations concerning COVID every month since March 2020. Through those declarations, Pritzker has continued to claim broad, sweeping powers over much of Illinois’ economy and society. He has, for instance, used those powers to shut down many businesses for months early in the pandemic; to attempt to restrict church services and other gatherings to no more than 10 people, also primarily early in the pandemic; to shut down indoor restaurant dining at various points, most recently from last fall to January 2021; and to impose indoor mask mandates statewide, and COVID vaccination mandates on certain public workers, childcare providers and first responders, among others.
Pritzker has not publicly indicated when he might cease issuing such statewide COVID emergency declarations, nor under what conditions he might release his claim on the emergency powers.
When challenged in court, lawyers from the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, representing Pritzker, have indicated the only way for Illinoisans to win a release from the governor’s orders anytime soon may be to vote him out of office in November 2022.
In Oak Park, Health Department Director Theresa Chapple-McGruder has publicly indicated she believes her emergency powers also give her department some authority to regulate public schools in Oak Park.
OPRF High School is located in Oak Park.
Oak Park Village President Vicki Scaman did not respond to questions from The Cook County Record concerning the limits of Chapple-McGruder’s authority, and whether the village believes it has the power to regulate activities within a public school district.
Chapple-McGruder was hired by Oak Park in April 2021. She is public health professional with a PhD in epidemiology. She is not a medical doctor.
Chapple-McGruder has been outspoken on social media for her support for strong COVID mitigations and restrictions, as well as vaccinations and masking. She was skeptical, at best, about the decision to return to in-person classes at public schools in both 2020 and 2021. And she publicly criticized the city of Chicago's decision to move ahead with the Lollapalooza music festival this summer, calling it a "potential superspreader event."
Chapple-McGruder has most recently found herself at the center of the controversy surrounding the cancellation of winter extracurricular activities at OPRF High School. Administrators at the school had indicated they moved to act at her direction in shutting down all non-classroom activities.
They said the move was needed because COVID tests had revealed 17 cases of the virus at the school, which they said was well in excess of the infection rate in the surrounding community.
The cancellations sparked immediate backlash from the community, as parents and students staged public protests and rallies, demanding the decision be rescinded. Some in the community also launched an online petition at Change.org, which was signed by more than 1,900 people, similarly demanding the cancellations be revoked.
Some publicly discussed whether to sue.
Faced with such a strong response, OPRF administrators opted to resume the activities, claiming compliance by students with new, more stringent masking and distancing policies would allow them to address the perceived COVID outbreak without cancelling any activities.
However, while the parents and students won a reprieve, the decision still leaves unanswered the question of who is calling the shots at the high school.
Penn said the situation serves to illustrate a legal question that has embroiled a number of public schools in Illinois already, particularly downstate, where opposition to COVID-related restrictions has been significantly fiercer and more determined than in more politically progressive areas of the state, such as Chicago and its suburbs.
Penn said, on one hand, the Illinois School Code gives public school districts autonomy over school-related decisions, including whether to close schools or cancel activities.
But on the other hand, Illinois public health law empowers state and local health departments to regulate activities to address the spread of potentially dangerous communicable diseases.
Penn said those powers have been boosted by Pritzker’s actions, which have also spurred the issuance of guidelines and rules from such governmental and quasi-governmental bodies as the Illinois State Board of Education, which oversees public classrooms throughout Illinois, and the Illinois High School Association, which oversees and sets standards for high school athletics statewide.
At a minimum, Penn said public school districts are required by those rules and guidelines to work with local public health agencies to set appropriate COVID mitigation measures.
Public schools in Illinois could legally push back against mandates or directions from local or even state health departments. But Penn said they could still face consequences and sanctions imposed by ISBE or other regulatory bodies for not complying with the guidance of health officials.
Should the school district and health department find themselves opposed, “it could be up to a judge to sort out,” which law should reign supreme, the School Code or public health law, Penn said.
“We’ve seen it downstate here, where courts have said, ‘No, you’re not required to follow that,’” said Penn.
The bigger issue, said Penn, could come from public response to any action.
As at OPRF, parents and students could push back in opposition to any closures or cancellations, whether or not a school district attempts to cite direction from a local public health department.
“We see many parents now asking, ‘Why shut down extracurriculars, but not the school altogether?’” said Penn. “This year, much more than last year, more people are going to push back and say, ‘No way.’”