Will County Gazette

Chicago Morning Answer radio host Dan Proft and former state Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) are blasting Catholic Schools in the Diocese of Joliet Superintendent Michael Boyle’s recent decision to cancel area basketball games after a downstate judge granted a restraining order effectively putting an end to mask mandates for students in numerous school districts across the state.

Sangamon Court Circuit Judge Raylene Grischow’s ruling came after parents filed suit last year against more than 140 school districts, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois State Board of Education, asserting that “there was no due process in Illinois' statewide mask order.”

Announced on Feb. 4, the ruling establishes that “defendants are temporarily restrained from ordering school districts to require masks for students and teachers - unless a quarantine order is issued by a local health department.”

“I will not have any guidance completed and distributed in time to guide the expected behavior for tomorrow’s basketball games," Boyle said. "I am cancelling all basketball games for this weekend.”

Proft called foul, posting on Facebook, “What would happen if Catholic parents were left to their own devices on mask wearing at their kids’ basketball game? The horror. It’s too nightmarish of a scenario to imagine. Better to err on the side of punishing kids. Michael Boyle is an officious, P-hat wearing COVIDian minder. Catholic school parents in the Joliet diocese should be demanding his resignation.”

Ives joined Proft in expressing outrage.

“This doesn’t sound like the Mike Boyle I know who took me around to Catholic schools in the poorest parts of Chicago, who led St. Mike’s through a transition for two years, whose kids played sports with mine and who I served on a four-person committee with to improve St. Mike’s academic outcomes. I am disappointed and praying for a change of heart from him,” she said in a Facebook post.

 More than 700 parents were part of the suit filed on their behalf by attorney Thomas DeVore.