

Aside from the parties to the lawsuit, we will continue to enforce requirements relating to masks and school exclusion for close contacts.” Ahlgrim said, “WTHS will continue to follow and implement it’s safe return to school plan. In a statement to district families this past weekend, D121 Superintendent John P. Many, including Warren Township District 121, a large unit district of over 4,000 students located in north suburban Gurnee, have chosen the latter of Walsh’s comment. “Some say ‘we are not named in the suit so it doesn’t apply to us’ or some say we’re named but it only applies to named plaintiffs.” “We’re seeing a creative interpretation of Judge Grischow’s order to fit the school’s interests,” Patrick Walsh said, a partner in the Chicago-based law firm of Griffin, Williams, McMahon and Walsh that specializes in civil litigation. The inconsistent interpretation by district leaders of the judge’s ruling has resulted in days of walk-ins and chaotic scenes at schools all over Chicagoland. 4, a Sangamon County judge said otherwise, that refusing entrance to maskless students was a rejection of their “due process” under the law. They were denied entrance by school administrators and security on grounds that masks are a requirement for in-person learning.

That morning, dozens of students staged a walk in, attempting to enter school grounds without a mask. Mann, Sowa and several other Warren underclassmen students, who use the district’s O’Plaine campus for classes, had come down to the school’s Almond campus Wednesday as a sign of solidarity towards their peers. “It’s hard to read them, hard to see with body language,” Braden Mann said. “I don’t know half of my teacher’s faces.

“I haven’t had a day of school where we haven’t been maskless,” Austin Sowa said. Two years in, they are worried about a learning environment not what they signed up for. They can’t see faces, can’t hear the instruction from teachers. And when they are in class, it’s hard to concentrate. None of them had sat in a classroom that week. Standing together a short distance from Warren Township High School’s Almond Campus Wednesday morning, three high school sophomores admitted brutal truths.
