Courtesy of The Stay-in-School Coalition
Edited by Lawndale Bilingual News

Frustrated by the Chicago Board of Education’s continued refusal to audit and revise its extensive regime of COVID-19 mitigation measures in the Chicago Public Schools, local parents have joined the national movement calling for a full return to normal.  Meanwhile the Board of Education is set to authorize up to $100 million for unspecified spending under “emergency operations plans” related to COVID-19. Chicago parents from the Stay-in-School Coalition have joined an international group of scientists and pediatric, infectious disease, emergency, mental health and ICU physicians, in signing an open letter to the White House and CDC.

The letter emphasizes that CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines for children do more harm than good and continue to cause significant disruption to children’s education and to working parents, while providing no demonstrable public health benefit in limiting spread. Currently, nearly all U.S. adults and children are protected by either vaccination or infection-acquired immunity, and the U.S. is seeing far lower hospitalization and mortality rates than in prior surges. CDC policies have serious unintended consequences–-such as school closures, increased school absences, forcing parents to miss work, and the expense and time of testing.

Chicago’s public school system stands virtually alone nationwide in its continued use of punitive quarantines for unvaccinated children identified as “close contacts” of a COVID-19 case–-a protocol long abandoned by other large urban districts in the United States.  Under CPS policy, tens of thousands of healthy children were excluded from school throughout the past academic year.  Members of the Stay-in-School Coalition suspect that these disruptive measures are a significant driver of ongoing drops in enrollment numbers in the city’s public school system, as parents seek alternatives in private, parochial, and suburban schools.

Meanwhile, despite five consecutive months of public testimony by parents calling for an end to these measures, and despite the absence of any scientific evidence that CPS protocols made any difference whatsoever in the spread or severity of COVID-19 in Chicago, the Board of Education will vote on Wednesday to reauthorize a broad array of “emergency operations plans,” empowering CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to spend up to $100 million on an unspecified bundle of supplies, contracts, products, services and staff without the need for Board approval.