Chicago Public Schools will continue to direct students who contract COVID-19 and unvaccinated students exposed to the virus to temporarily stay home, leaders said Wednesday as a group of parents called on the district to end its contact tracing and quarantine policies.
“When children are exposed, they have to quarantine for five days. When they come back, from day six to 10, they have to wear their masks‚” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said at Wednesday’s monthly Chicago Board of Education meeting.
“Those procedures will continue to be in place, and I just want to thank our families and our staff for continuing to respect each other as well as continuing to enforce those procedures.”
CPS instituted a mask-optional policy last week — a win for parents who have long called for an “offramp” to the district’s COVID-19 requirements. Now these parents are setting their sights on CPS protocols that require a five-day exclusion from school for infected people and unvaccinated students who come in contact with an infected person. Students can return on the sixth day if they are asymptomatic.
These policies have been in place since the start of the school year, though the district cut quarantine and isolation time from 10 days to five days in early February to align with government guidance. According to CPS data, 363 students and 53 adults were in quarantine or isolation Tuesday — down from several thousand students and staff members at the omicron-fueled peak in January.
About 91% of CPS staff members and less than half of CPS students are fully vaccinated, according to district data.
Other Illinois districts have lifted their COVID-19 requirements — such as universal masking, quarantining and testing for unvaccinated staff members — following legal challenges by downstate attorney Tom DeVore.
In early February, an Illinois judge granted a temporary restraining order preventing statewide enforcement of these protocols. Gov. J.B. Pritzker appealed. The appellate court dismissed the appeal as “moot” because school rules from the Illinois Department of Public Health had been allowed to expire.
The Illinois Supreme Court declined to hear the case, vacating the February temporary restraining order. DeVore has gone back to court on behalf of unvaccinated teachers and vowed to seek legal action if the children of his CPS clients are told to quarantine.
At Wednesday’s board meeting, some CPS parents urged the district to ditch its COVID-19 policies.
“We need to learn to live with COVID without putting an undue burden on students, families, teachers and staff. This means masks are optional, no quarantines and no exclusion,” parent Jennifer Connolly told the board during a public comment period.
Parent Rhiannon Midkiff said healing from the pandemic can begin by “normalizing the school environment.”
“It’s time for CPS to retire these COVID policies. The school board needs to put students first and recognize how important it is to return children’s lives to normal before it’s too late,” Midkiff said.
The Chicago Teachers Union, meanwhile, is asking for increased access to the Virtual Academy for students with certain medical conditions and more protections for medically fragile students and educators.
“For example, we have a counselor who is undergoing chemotherapy and is immune-compromised, either requiring students (who) go in to meet with that counselor to have a mask on or to put the counselor in a well-ventilated space where there’s lots of room,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said at Wednesday’s meeting.
Martinez said Wednesday that in his visits to schools in the last week he saw the “vast majority” of students and staff continuing to wear masks. He said if at any point “our risk-level changes, we will put our mask mandate back.”
Mask requirements were already restored in some classrooms at Coonley Elementary School as the North Side school experiences a spike in cases that Martinez attributed to students participating in activities outside of school. Board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland pointed out that spring break is in April.
Public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Tuesday a new version of the coronavirus’ highly contagious omicron variant — nicknamed “stealth omicron” — is on track to dominate Chicago COVID-19 cases by the end of this month.
CTU immediately opposed the end of the mask mandate, which was a provision in the hard-fought safety agreement the union and district reached in January during a work stoppage. A hearing is scheduled for April after a state labor panel declined to pave the way for an emergency injunction in the case.
Martinez said Wednesday the five days of canceled classes stemming from January’s labor stoppage will not be made up at the end of this school year, but schools can decide to offer after-school and Saturday activities. Martinez said input was sought from labor unions, parents, students and principals.
“The vast majority across every group all said that they would prefer that we continue to invest in programs right now before the school year (ends) and to not add additional school days,” Martinez said. “The funding is there for any school who wants to provide after-school activities, Saturday academies. I’ve talked to our CTU partners about even doing ... vaccination drives. We’re more than pleased to support that.”
CTU expects to bargain with the district for its members to make up the lost pay.
The board on Wednesday also approved the 2022-23 academic calendar, which features an Aug. 22 return for students, the earliest start date for the district in years. CPS recently surveyed community members on two calendar possibilities and said the votes were nearly even.
“We promised the communities that we will build on this engagement process, do it even sooner next year and look at even more options as we think about the future,” Martinez said.
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