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According to the CPS website COVID tracker, since the start of school, 350 of the more than 340,000 students who attend CPS have had what the district calls “executable” COVID cases – that is, – say confirmed. (WTTW News)
Chicago public school students and their teachers have been back in class for about three weeks.
According to CPS website COVID tracker, since August 29 (school started August 30), 350 of the more than 340,000 students attending CPS have had what the district calls “executable” COVID cases – that is, confirmed.
The number of students in quarantine is not listed on this website.
Chicago Teachers Union, however, evaluated its memberships; according to an email from CTU on Tuesday, “the virus has forced nine out of 17 classrooms into quarantine.”
With COVID-19 testing and contact tracing that CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates calls “chaotic,” it’s hard to say.
She said the only consistent message she heard was that it was inconsistent.
“Student A could get tested, student B could not be tested and they are in the same school community. We have members who say they were in line to be tested, but they ran out of supplies so they couldn’t complete the testing. Or we have members who say ‘I got tested it was not a problem,’ ”she said.
A CPS parent supported this; her one-week-old daughter reported long queues for tests, which meant students were running out of time in class.
The union and the district have started negotiations on COVID-19 precautions, protocols and operations since the start of the school year, and had another meeting on Tuesday afternoon, but still have not reached an agreement.
In this case, it is not only the CTU that has the blame.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot told “Chicago Tonight” on Monday that she was “disappointed with the way this has been deployed.”
But Lightfoot said she was “confident things would get better” now that there is increased coordination with the Chicago Department of Public Health, headed by Dr Allison Arwady.
“It’s no longer a mystery. We know how to do contact tracing; we know how to investigate cases. And we have to make sure that CPS uses the tools at its disposal to do just that, ”said Lightfoot.
This assessment did not suit the management of the CTU.
“The mayor is going to have to do more than show contrition. She’s going to have to show leadership. We are in a pandemic, ”said Gates. “We are in a pandemic that has been very mean to black people, which has been very mean to Browns, workers and the poor. We are a low income school district. Not being prepared is something you (say) when you miss your homework; not being prepared as the mayor who controls a school district during a pandemic is dangerous and deadly. “
A few moments ago, CTU hosted a digital “Speak out” event; in which Quintella Bounds, a special education teacher at Corliss High School, said one day last week that there were only two students in class. They told him that their classmates were all in quarantine; she hadn’t heard from the district and still hasn’t heard of it.
The CPS did not immediately respond on Tuesday afternoon to a request for information on the number of students in quarantine, or to share how the negotiations are going from a district perspective.
Lightfoot recently appointed Pedro Martinez as the new CEO of CPS, but he is not yet in charge. It’s supposed to start before October.
A new decree from Governor JB Pritzker spells out some of what schools across the state should and can do when it comes to quarantining students, per CDC guidelines.
Follow Amanda Vinicky on Twitter: @AmandaVinicky
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