Kane County Reporter

Elgin parent Joshua Martin said he has had enough of Elgin Area School District U46 not caring for his son’s needs.

Martin, a father of five, backed up other reports that U46 students were ganging up on others and using violence against students who are anti-mask.

“My son had to have a phone with him to protect himself. He was recording a girl that was hitting him. He got beat up for doing that. The bus driver laughed, everybody is laughing in there. He's holding the phone in the video very clearly for his own protection,” Martin told the Kane County Reporter.

Martin said the school system, instead of protecting him, has been allowing other students to carry out schoolyard justice.

Other parents have have reported the same.

“They are letting the anti-mask children –– they’re calling them –– be assaulted, literally assaulted, and they are congratulating those students,” Martin said. “She got her hand shook by the teachers and my child.”

Elgin Area School District U46 serves almost 37,000 children, all of whom are currently subject to the mask mandate, which requires them to wear masks for virtually the entire school day. 

He said those in charge of the school are “sick, sick individuals” and noted the harassment has continued against his son.  

“Now, my son protecting himself with his phone, gets him locked in offices. He's beaten on the bus. They did not suspend the girl. They did not even reprimand that girl. My son is probably one of the smallest kids in the school,” Martin said.

He said after the video was released U-46 revise its cell phone rules to make it more difficult for kids to capture such videos.

“You can't have your phone out of your pocket when they always were able to do it (before),” he said. “You know why? Because they're protecting themselves. These kids are protecting themselves. That's the only way that my kid can protect himself there, because if he hits back, he's the bad guy.”

Martin said he has been restrained thus far but is losing his patience.

“They're letting the kids that don't put the mask over their faces get beat up. They're letting them get away with it, and they're encouraging for it,” Martin said.  

Martin paints houses for a living. He is the winner of 25 Painted Ladies awards for painting Victorian era homes, according to the Daily Herald. 

Martin said his son is serving a suspension now due to not using the proper pronouns when addressing a fellow student.

“He's sitting on suspension right now because he wouldn't say him/her to a girl,” Martin said. “I don't know. He wouldn’t re-gender the person he was talking to and he chose to avoid the pronouns completely and that is also an ‘act of violence’ if you don’t. If you don't live in their land of what they want you to say, they suspend you. So he's suspended for not saying them.”

Martin said his son has fixed on a strategy when he returns and has created his own pronoun others will be mandated to address him by.

“Now he wants to be identified as the ‘King of Abbott School,’ so that's how he's dealing with it and then I'm backing him 100%,” Martin said.

Martin is a lifelong Elgin resident who said he is surprised by the radical changes has seen in the taxpayer funded local school system in recent years.

He noted he is considering legal action against the school system over the treatment his son has received.

Martin also has been rumored as mayoral candidate for Elgin.