Legislative Alert: HB 2789, IDPH power-grab

Bottom line on top: please file witness slips and e-mail your State Senators about this bill before it comes to a vote in the Senate.

A new bill, HB 2789, has just been passed by the State House, and is up for consideration  in the Senate, having flown so much under the radar that there has been no coverage in the news media or by political pundits in the state.

Recall that in the fall, Catholic and other non-public schools stood firm and re-opened despite the public schools, under union pressure, cancelling their re-opening plans at the beginning of August.  Recall that the Chicago Public Schools cancelled their reopening on the very same day as District 214 announced its plan to do likewise.  And recall that in other states/cities/counties, the local Department of Public Health mandated that private schools close, too (though, in full disclosure, I cannot recall those locations as I type this, to share specifics and links), or attempted to mandate this.

Now, HB 2789 would give the Illinois Department of Public Health the ability not merely to issue guidance for schools to follow, but to establish firm requirements, and to shut down any school not following these requirements.  This would apply to both public and private schools.

Here’s the key text:

The Department shall establish requirements by rule for providing in-person instruction at nonpublic schools and public schools that include, but are not limited to, personal protective equipment, cleaning and hygiene, social distancing, occupancy limits, symptom screening, and on-site isolation protocols and shall disseminate information about those requirements to nonpublic schools and public schools with the assistance of the Illinois State Board of Education. . . .

If upon investigation, a school is found to be in violation of the rules adopted under this Section, the Department has the authority to take the appropriate action necessary to promote the health or protect the safety of students, staff, and the public, including, but not limited to, closure of a classroom, gym, library, lunch room, or any other school space until such time that the Department determines that the violation or violations have been remedied.

This bill was first filed by Rep. Michelle Mussman of Schaumburg in February.  In March she filed an amendment which completely replaced the initial text, and on April 20, she filed another amendment which again replaced the original text with the new provisions.  Then on April 22, two days later, the bill passed the State House on a party-line vote.

Who’s in support of the bill?  Why, the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Education Association, according to the Witness Slips they filed — which should give a pretty big clue as to the real purpose of the bill, taking decision-making out of local schools’ hands and moving it to the state, where the unions are all-powerful, and preventing private schools from competing with public schools.

What can you do?

First of all, contact your State Senator.  Especially if you are represented by a Democrat, e-mail the individual and ask them to oppose the bill, and, more generally, if they are already planning to vote for it, to justify their reasoning.  The Illinois Policy Institute has a helpful tool to find your state representative or senator.

Second, file witness slips.  Because the bill has been passed by the State House and has only just now arrived at the State Senate, it is not yet possible to do so.  This blog post will be updated with a link when this is possible.

Can these actions, by any single individual, make a difference?  I don’t know. But we have to try — and especially we need to push individual Democratic legislators to act independently rather than vote unquestioningly on a party-line basis and perhaps over time continued efforts by citizens to call on them to do so, can have an impact.