Jessica Clements helps her sons Gavin, 7, left, and Myles, 10, during a home-school session with learning materials from The Good and The Beautiful at home on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021, in McHenry. This is the family’s first time trying home schooling. Myles is in fifth grade, Gavin is in second, and Dayne, 4, is in preschool. (Matthew Apgar/Shaw Media)
Despite past hassles of attending school during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jessica Clements and Kalyn Macchia said they never seriously considered pulling their kids out of public education before this year.
But the two McHenry County mothers of school-aged children decided to take the leap, they said, in part because of the statewide school mask mandate Gov. J.B. Pritzker imposed as mitigation effort to curb the spread of the deadly disease.
So far, with the first day of school in their respective local school districts having come and past, they said they have no regrets. Their kids are on board, too, Clements and Macchia said.
As COVID-19 cases spurred by the delta variant have mounted in the state and across the country this summer, the idea of whether students, faculty and staff should be required to wear masks in school has been a source of intense controversy in Illinois and elsewhere. Parents on both sides of the issue packed school boards and held rallies throughout the state as local education leaders were deciding whether to require masks in school buildings this academic year.
Faced with the mounting cases and varying local coronavirus mitigation policies, Pritzker announced in early August that he was imposing a school mask requirement when students returned to school because “far too few school districts” had imposed such requirements. Pritzker’s decision has been met with continued controversy as some parents throughout the state protested and have sued him over the policy.
Macchia said she was convinced to transition them into a home-schooling curriculum partially by hearing from Leslee Dirnberger, the founder and president of Aspire Educational Consultants based in Barrington Hills, at a meeting Dirnberger held with other local families in recent weeks to inform them of academic options outside public schools.
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