CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — With classes set to resume on Monday following the winter break, the Chicago Teachers Union is criticizing the Chicago Public Schools’ COVID-19 testing effort.
On their holiday break, two sets of teachers and staff from Park Manor School on 70th Street and Rhodes Avenue in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood have been working this week.
According to CTU spokeswoman Chris Geovanis, one group is working from home calling parents to get them to pick up at-home COVID-19 tests at the school. The other group has been at the school handing out the tests and offering to help parents fill out forms.
Union recording secretary Christal Williams-Hayes said COVID-19 has hit the school in a big way.
“The biggest deal is that the school has 250 students and over 174 or 175 of them were quarantined at the exit of Christmas break,” Williams-Hayes told WBBM Newsradio.
That means they weren’t at school when the school was passing out home COVID-19 tests for the students to use and return Tuesday.
CPS sent home 150,000 COVID-19 tests before winter break began.
Instructions were to have parents give their children the tests today and then drop them off Tuesday at FedEx drop boxes, certain Walgreen’s locations or at one of six Chicago Public Library branches on the East Side, Austin, Englewood, South Shore, Auburn-Gresham or Altgeld Gardens.
Williams-Hayes said the CPS testing system overall has been “a colossal failure,” that not enough students are being tested weekly by CPS. She said parents should have been given the choice to opt out of having their children tested for COVID-19 each week, not the way it is now in which parents have to opt in.
A CTU news release said CPS has failed to meet its own “modest promises in testing and contact tracing,” refused to come up with a “robust” student vaccine program, failed to document HVAC safety, has not maintained 3-foot social distancing and has failed to improve “serious problems with sanitation and cleanliness.”
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The union said that raises questions about whether CPS will be ready to safely re-open schools when winter break ends on Monday.
“We have members of the Chicago Teachers Union that have cut their break short to provide those services to the school that should have been provided by CPS,” Williams-Hayes said.
Park Manor staffer Keyonna Payton said at a news conference outside the school this morning that she’s giving up part of her vacation “because I love my students and colleagues.”
CTU Financial Secretary Maria Moreno said that, “Come Jan. 3, the board needs to have a rapid COVID test for everybody entering those buildings.”
She said CPS needs to do “what’s necessary to make students more safe.”
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