Northside College Prep teacher Nora Flanagan said she spent part of her weekend searching for a rapid COVID-19 test after learning one of her students tested positive for the virus.
“I desperately wanted to make sure that I did not bring the infection in front of more students or that I didn’t send my sons into their school communities and put more people at risk,” Flanagan said Monday at a Logan Square rally.
“CPS has no testing plan to support situations like that. There’s no rapid test for exposed students or teachers, so I had to take care of it myself. And there’s even less of a plan if any of us had been sick.”
Flanagan — who is the mother of two Chicago Public Schools students — was one of more than two dozen protesters calling attention to the district’s “chaotic” fall reopening. Those in attendance Monday demanded more COVID-19 testing in schools, faster contact tracing when there is a positive case, quicker disclosure of cases and expanded access to remote, synchronous learning for students who don’t feel comfortable with the safety protocols in place.
The demonstration comes two weeks after CPS welcomed students back for full-time, in-person learning for the first time since March 2020 and days after the district reported logging 160 student and adult coronavirus cases since Aug. 29. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS officials have expressed confidence in their reopening plans, which include an indoor mask mandate, a vaccination requirement for district employees and 3 feet of social distancing where possible — which is less than the 6-feet standard once in place. The protesters said the measures are not enough to ensure the safety of students and staff.
“We’re still in the pandemic, but we continue to see crowded classrooms, crowded lunchrooms that have us all concerned about the infections that are happening in our communities. We cannot roll back those protections and those guidelines,” Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th said, later adding, “It is appalling. I have been in several meetings with the Chicago Public Schools representatives. They don’t even have the decency to provide answers to the parents and educators that they’re supposed to represent. Today we demand those answers.”
Among the questions that remain is when weekly testing for students and staff members will be available in all schools. The testing program — which is voluntary, except for unvaccinated staff members and student-athletes who are unvaccinated or half-vaccinated — was initially supposed to start everywhere Sept. 1, but then that goal was pushed to Sept. 15.
Interim CPS CEO José Torres and interim Chief Education Officer Maurice Swinney said in a districtwide note to families Friday that CPS “will continue scaling up our COVID-19 testing program in all schools in the coming weeks.” A district spokeswoman could not say Monday how many schools offer the testing.
On its website, CPS says 1,054 tests were administered from Aug. 29 to Sept. 11 through its screening program, with no positive cases and 85 “invalid” results.
It’s also unclear how many students and staff members have been directed to quarantine since the start of school. CPS has only been updating its online case tracker once a week, on Wednesdays. The district reported 160 cases from Aug. 29 to Sept. 8, with more than 2,900 people deemed a close contact of an infected person, according to Wednesday’s data. Some parents have complained CPS contact tracers have not been notifying close contacts fast enough, and schools have not been disclosing positive cases to their communities in a timely manner either.
The principal of Drummond Montessori Magnet School alerted parents Monday night about a person who was present at the Bucktown school on Thursday testing positive for COVID-19. The parents of affected students had already been contacted, according to the principal’s note, and those students moved to remote learning while CPS’ contact tracing team completes its investigation.
Even before the school year started, some parents were calling for more remote learning options as the highly transmissible delta variant sparked an uptick in coronavirus cases in Chicago and around the country.
CPS says remote, synchronous instruction is only available to “medically fragile” students enrolled in the district’s Virtual Academy, students isolating at home because they tested positive for COVID-19 and students quarantining because they were determined to be a close contact of someone who tested positive.
The protesters at Monday’s rally demanded a remote learning option for everyone as they marched to an area near Lightfoot’s home. Northwest Side parent Jim Santoyo pointed to recent CPS case numbers and said Lightfoot is not prioritizing student safety.
“Lori Lightfoot decides that it is not up to us to determine what is the safest for our students. It is up to her and her unelected school board,” Santoyo said.
tswartz@tribpub.com
