School board member Marcelo Sztainberg has said that, like students who could endanger others with different behavior, those who have opted out of the school system’s COVID-19 testing protocol should not be tolerated.
“If a student shows up (to school) with a knife, we won’t let them in,” he said in a school board meeting. “If someone is intoxicated, we won’t let them in. Why is it different with COVID? Why is the district pushing people to take a risk sitting with people who won’t take any mitigation? At what point do we say this is not safe?”
Sztainberg, an Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Northeastern Illinois University, has lived in Northbrook for 14 years and is the parent of two Glenbrook North alumni.
His comments came during a Glenbrook 225 school board meeting held Jan. 10 in which board members discussed options for handling students who opted out of testing.
Of the approximately 6,000 students on the campuses of Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook and Glenbrook South High School in Glenview, around 600 have opted out of COVID-19 testing.
Glenbrook 225 returned to remote learning in early January amid spiking COVID-19 rates. At the same time the school held “no harm” finals, allowing for its students’ grades to improve if they scored well on the final exam but enacting no penalties if students did poorly.
After Glenbrook North High School football team member Dylan Buckner committed suicide in early 2021, an outlet criticized the school system for not addressing student mental health. The Glenbrook Education Association was also accused of activating student journalists against school board candidates in the spring of 2021.
In an impassioned speech last week, a former Illinois public school teacher noted teacher union influence — particularly in advocating a leftist curriculum — was one reason he was leaving public schools for a private school.
The school has been suffering in other areas as well.
Former Glenbrook South Principal Lauren Fagel recently was accused by a whistleblower for making overtly sexual comments to employees, including about their physical attributes.
Forty-five-year-old special education teacher Paul Castelli was charged with felony sexual assault and abuse of a student, who police found with a crying and undressed female in parked in his car behind a building.
Superintendent Dr. Charles Johns was hired in 2019 for a three-year contract worth $250,000 in base pay per year.
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