Chalkbeat Chicago

In the first seven months of this fiscal year, which began in July, the pace of turnover picked up among all employee groups. Teacher retirement and resignations jumped roughly 85 percent.

The district is extending an April deadline to unveil a policy until spring 2023 at the latest.

Chicago has struggled with school bus driver shortages since the start of the school year, leaving thousands of students without a dependable ride to school.

CPS reported 439 students and 121 staff members tested positive for COVID-19 last week, a drop of about 60 percent compared to two weeks ago.

About 22 percent of all 5- to 11-year-olds in the district have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while 34 percent have received at least one dose, but uptake varies widely by neighborhood.

In Chicago, a safety agreement with the district’s teachers union upholds mask-wearing and guards against immediate change. 

Sharkey said he will return to the classroom in the fall, though he did not rule out a possible mayoral run when asked. He is backing his second-in-command, Stacy Davis Gates, in a May union leadership election.

Shorter quarantine, a push for testing, school-level closures when cases rise: January has brought a round of changes to Chicago’s COVID-19 school safety protocols.

Since the start of the school year, Chicago, along with districts nationwide, has been plagued by school bus driver shortages, leaving thousands of students without a dependable ride to school.

The rules will apply to unvaccinated students in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, or students and staff instructed to quarantine or isolate after testing positive.

The district has 83,000 students signed up for testing, just under one-third of students in district-run schools. CPS is aiming to all 100 percent of students signed up.

Teachers going into the vote said they had mixed feelings about the proposal, which the union's rank-and-file finalized with 56 percent in favor of resuming in-person classes.

At more than 200 schools, the opt-in COVID testing rates fall short of the city’s 10% threshold goal. At 70 schools, 10 or fewer students are enrolled in the school-based testing program.

Despite the district’s payments, which came to total more than $53 million, bus companies struggled to ramp up operations this past fall, stranding thousands of students without transportation.

A report paints a picture of a school culture where sexual harassment and charges of abuse and inappropriate behavior were overlooked or brushed under the rug by those in charge at Marine Leadership Academy in Logan Square.

Over the summer, the district gave $47 million to its roughly 500 campuses, allowing them to spend the money as they saw fit to address the pandemic’s academic and mental health fallout.

District officials have avoided large-scale school closures as students returned to in-person learning. But critics have questioned the district’s efforts with testing and contact tracing.

Students with disabilities are still having trouble difficulty getting reliable transportation, and special education assistants have been pulled from classrooms because of staff shortages.

The post-Thanksgiving spike in COVID-19 cases and the emergence of the Omicron variant could further complicate existing staffing problems.

The test-to-stay pilot comes amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases across the city, as well as the emergence of the Omicron variant.