Dupage Policy Journal

Parents are irate after a high-ranking school official posted pictures of herself at a fundraiser in Chicago maskless, despite her district's mandate that students should be masked indoors. 

Erica Loiacono was pictured in close quarters with a large group.

"What a fun night at the Orange Tie Gala for a great cause with great friends!" Loiacono posted.

Loiacono has been the director of community engagement and communications at Community Unit School District 200 for 11 years. 

"I just think it shows great hypocrisy for her to post these photos, given her postion," parent Jessica Hockett told DuPage Policy Journal.

In a letter to Loiacono, Hockett expressed her concern over the perceived hypocrisy. 

“At the very least, Ms. Loiacono, please have the decency and self-awareness to suppress your desire to show yourself unmasked — with the hashtag #ServiceAboveSelf, no less — as long as you’re in a CUSD200 leadership position, submitting to and condoning the forced masking of personnel and children,” Hockett wrote. 

Hockett told DuPage Policy Journal her daughter’s lengthy application for a religious exemption to masking was denied. 

The school board said it was denied due to the representation of “harm” her daughter would represent to the school if she were maskless, according to Hockett.

Earlier this year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered a mask mandate for all schools in Illinois.

Hockett said she “staunchly oppose(s) the Governor’s and Mayor of Chicago’s unlawful school and indoor mask mandates on religious, scientific, and legal grounds.” 

Parents are asking the local school board to remove the mask mandate. 

“The District 200 Board and administrators, however, have been clear that they support forcing all students and staff to cover their faces as a condition of attending and working in school buildings. Even Picture Day at Longfellow was staged outside, evidently because it was considered 'unsafe' for students to be unmasked inside for pictures (as you and your companions did at the Chicago event),” Hockett wrote.  

Hockett said the instance of public hypocrisy is particularly stinging because her daughter is punished on a daily basis and subjected to public ridicule if she does not mask up. 

“[D]ay after day, Longfellow staff give our daughter a mask and require her to cover her face if she wants to stay at school. Throughout the day, she is scolded when her mask is not covering her mouth and nose, with her teachers enforcing the dress code requirement using fear-based language. Imagine yourself as an elementary student, being subjected to a dress code requirement for 5+ hours that interferes with your breathing, social interactions, communication, self-concept, and learning process,” Hockett wrote.

The school district has deferred to Pritzker, saying the mask mandate remains in place and to ignore it “would create significant safety risks or a risk of liability for violating state legal requirements.”