CPS reports 160 COVID-19 cases and nearly 3,000 ‘close contacts,’ but CTU questions accuracy of district case tracker
The Chicago Teachers Union is criticizing the timeliness and accuracy of the COVID-19 data Chicago Public Schools is reporting once a week on its online public dashboard.
“When we look into those numbers and match them up against the reports that we are getting from schools, the reports that we are hearing from CPS themselves verbally from last week, they don’t align at all,” CTU Deputy General Counsel Thad Goodchild said Wednesday after the union and CPS met to continue negotiating a fall safety agreement.
“And this is a really big problem because this is where the public and parents go to get a sense of whether things are operating safely. And there needs to be trust, credibility and transparency in how this is reported. But just looking at a couple examples, it’s quite clear that the information on there is not accurate.”
CPS is reporting 89 student and 71 adult cases from Aug. 29 to Wednesday, an increase from the 11 student and 28 adult cases initially reported a week ago. The district has identified more than 2,900 close contacts of the cases logged from Aug. 29 to Wednesday, per its online numbers. The new tracker data comes 10 days after CPS students returned to classrooms for full-time, in-person learning for the first time since March 2020.
CPS recently changed the type of COVID-19 data it includes on its site. Last week, the district reported the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases associated with CPS buildings; the number of people who were quarantining because they were in close contact with someone who tested positive; and the number of “pods” under quarantine, with pods defined by the district as a small class size of about 15 students.
Wednesday’s data only reflected the number of confirmed cases and the number of close contacts of these cases, which are people who came within 6 feet of an infected person for 15 or more minutes in a 24-hour period. CPS noted on its site that “as our students have returned to five days a week of in-person education, pod data are no longer available.”
It’s unclear how many students and staff members have been directed to quarantine since school started Aug. 30. Entire classrooms may be asked to temporarily stay home as CPS’ team investigates a positive case and determines which close contacts are vaccinated and unvaccinated. CPS is not asking fully vaccinated, asymptomatic people to quarantine for the standard 14-day period.
The principal of Franklin Fine Arts Center, an elementary school in the Old Town neighborhood, told parents of students in eight homerooms their children needed to stay home Thursday because of a positive coronavirus case. Those classrooms “temporarily flipped to remote instruction” until CPS’ contact- tracing team makes “a final determination of the length of time certain groups of students will continue to engage in remote synchronous learning,” according to the note sent to parents early Thursday.
Franklin’s positive case was not included in the data CPS posted Wednesday evening to its online tracker.
CPS spokeswoman Emily Bolton and Chicago Department of Public Health spokesman Andy Buchanan addressed CPS’ online COVID-19 reporting practices in a joint statement Tuesday.
“The public tracker is not currently set up to report on dynamic numbers, meaning, how many people are quarantined at a given time. The tracker represents one point in time. Some who are quarantined initially are no longer in quarantine after the investigation is complete and they are found to be vaccinated. This is not reflected in the tracker,” the statement read.
John Hancock College Preparatory High School on the Southwest Side, Lane Tech College Prep in Lakeview and George Washington High School in the East Side neighborhood each logged two positive cases this week, the most of any school, according to CPS’ Wednesday data. More than 400 close contacts were identified at Lane Tech stemming from those two cases.
As of Tuesday, CPS has not identified any instances of in-school COVID-19 transmission, according to Bolton and Buchanan. They said they “remain committed to maintaining transparency in reporting and notifications to families.”
The CPS contact tracing team reaches out to close contacts of an infected person, Bolton and Buchanan said, and the district operates on the side of caution when issuing quarantine orders. The entire school is notified of a COVID-19 case — even the students who weren’t directly affected by the case.
But the online tracker doesn’t appear to be keeping pace with the school and student notifications. In the Sept. 1 tracker update, CPS did not initially report any new cases at National Teachers Academy in the South Loop. The data was later amended to reflect one confirmed case last week, with 28 close contacts identified.
Jesú Estrada received notice on Sept. 1 that her sixth grader had to quarantine after the boy was identified as a close contact of a person who was present at National Teachers Academy on Aug. 30, the first day of school. Estrada said she is keeping her first grader home as well as an extra precaution, even though the school did not direct her to do so.
“Honestly, I’ve got to tell you, I don’t feel confident sending my kids back to school. I don’t. And this was a real struggle for us because we have just tried so hard to get both of our kids into a wonderful public school like NTA, and now it looks like we’re going to have to home-school them because (CPS is) not giving us a remote option,” said Estrada, who lives in the Canaryville neighborhood.
Some CPS parents such as Estrada have been calling for a full-time remote learning program beyond the option given to “medically fragile” students enrolled in the Virtual Academy; students directed to isolate because they tested positive for COVID-19; and students directed by CPS to quarantine because they were determined to be close contacts.
These calls have intensified in recent days after CPS told unvaccinated students they need to quarantine for seven days after traveling outside of Illinois even if they tested negative for COVID-19. The district instructed unvaccinated students to quarantine for 10 days if they didn’t take a coronavirus test, as the highly contagious delta variant fuels an increase in cases around the country.
These unvaccinated students — many of whom are not eligible for the shots because they are younger than 12 — were told they would receive take-home schoolwork. They were not allowed to participate in the remote online learning instruction available to students like Estrada’s sixth grader, who was directed by CPS to quarantine because he was a close contact of an infected person.
In Wednesday’s online update, CTU chief of staff Jennifer Johnson said the quarantine policy seems to be “varying across schools. … We have to have consistency, transparency and policy.” The union is encouraging its members to report COVID-19 cases identified at their schools at tracker.ctulocal1.org, and the type of instruction being offered.
It’s unclear whether the CPS case numbers would be higher if the voluntary COVID-19 testing program was up and running in all schools. CPS is allowing parents to sign their students up for the free weekly testing program that is only mandatory for unvaccinated and half-vaccinated student-athletes during their sports seasons and unvaccinated staff members.
The program is off to a slow start, with CPS now promising to test at 100% of schools by Sept. 15. Goodchild said Wednesday that testing has taken place at 14 of CPS’ 600-plus schools this week.
“That is not near robust enough of a testing program to be operating schools safely, to be catching cases before exposure has happened in schools,” Goodchild said.
