CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Chicago Public Schools reported that about 3,000 students were exposed to COVID-19 in the first eight days of in-person learning; but the teachers union doesn’t trust the numbers.
Three thousand students exposed is a relative drop in the bucket, when you consider there are about 300,000 students.
Those exposed, according to CPS figures, had close contact with about 160 students who tested positive.
The administration is not reporting how many students are in quarantine and the Chicago Teachers Union Deputy General Counsel Thad Goodchild said the numbers that are being reported “don’t align at all” with what’s being reported by individual schools.
“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," he said.
One of the examples he gave was at Taft High School.
"We were told last week there were more than one positive cases at Taft High School, and one of those positive cases, the positive individual had over 100 close contacts. Well, if you look at the CPS COVID tracker right now, it says that Taft had one COVID case last week with zero close contacts," Goodchild said.
CPS said in a statement, "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."
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