A Humble Apology

The email every Illinois parent deserves to get.

Unless you were an Illinois parent who opposed Governor Pritizker’s pandemic response measures for schools and kids, it might be hard to understand why many of us can’t simply “move on” from the past 2+ years, as though everything is suddenly okay. Most elected & appointed officials who directly harmed or failed to stand for our children are still in power and have no intention of owning the parts they played, let alone asking for forgiveness.

Most, but not all.

Last February, soon after a temporary restraining order was issued in the so-called “DeVore mask case,”¹ Superintendent Jonathan Tallman of Red Bud CUSD 132 sent this email² to parents.

Here’s the key sentence:

I’m sorry that we forced your child to wear a mask, and excluded your healthy child from school if he/she was a close contact.

As far as I know, this is the only Illinois school administrator to date who has both 1) publicly admitted that forcing children to mask in order to be in school & keeping healthy children out of school was wrong, and 2) humbly apologized.³

This may have been an easy-ish feat for Tallman, given the Red Bud community generally supported mask choice. Not all superintendents should be expected to apologize and keep their jobs. Some need to admit fault and then resign their positions, due to how vigorously they enforced unlawful mitigations and shamed or punished parents & students who dared to resist.⁴

Still, Tallman’s apology sets a high standard and shows other Superintendents that real leaders take responsibility for their actions - even when those actions were compelled.

1. Judge Raylene Grischow’s February 4th TRO explained why the order and emergency rules filed in August and September 2021 were beyond the bounds of the law. For various reasons in the sequence of legal and legislative events that followed the TRO, the issues Supt. Tallman references are still not fully resolved.

2. h/t @gracialivie

3. I’m not aware even of a Head of any Illinois private religious school that has said, “What we did was wrong; I’m sorry.” Readers can apprise me of any who have made such admissions/apologies. I’d love to highlight their conviction & courage.

4. The Madness of Mask-Enforcement in Illinois High Schools