Chicago Public Schools end school year with 22,000 student COVID-19 cases; CTU says safety measures should remain in the fall

CHICAGO — About one in every dozen Chicago Public Schools students contracted COVID-19 this school year, the district’s first year of full-time, in-person learning since the pandemic began.

With CPS closing out the school year Tuesday, the district is reporting nearly 22,500 cases among 272,000 students from the first week of school in August through last week. Each case represents an individual report of COVID-19, so a student reinfected with the virus would count as two cases. The data doesn’t include CPS charter, contract and alternative learning students, of which there are 58,000.

This was supposed to be a recovery year for CPS, but that’s not the way it unfolded. The district and testing and contact tracing initiatives. It faced opposition from the Chicago Teachers Union, whose members did not want to work in person during January’s omicron surge without additional safety protections, and from a downstate attorney, who challenged CPS’ mitigation strategies in court.