68% of South Side Chicago school in quarantine due to COVID-19
CHICAGO - A school in the South Side Grand Crossing neighborhood has 68 percent of its students and staff in quarantine.
Five staff members, including the principal, have tested positive for COVID-19 at Park Manor Elementary School.
Meanwhile, a source tells FOX 32 there are 15 positive students, a few positive parents, and 174 students have been put in quarantine due to close contacts with the infected in the building.
Several students from grades K through 8th are now working remote. Half of the 6th grade class is in quarantine, along with two Pre-K students because of siblings testing positive.
Administrators say they started seeing an uptick in cases earlier this month. Parents say the school should’ve gone fully remote and have been cleaned until everyone had negative test results.
"If it was a Lori Lightfoot's daughter's school, it would have been closed and deep cleaned," said parent Danelda Archer.
Sources say no kids reported for in-person learning on Thursday.
District 161 in Flossmoor is having a similar problem.
"We have 122, I put it out every week and we aren’t hiding those numbers," said Dana Smith, superintendent of Flossmoor District 161.
There’s so many positive COVID cases at Parker Junior High School that the entire school was forced to go fully remote until January 5th after winter break.
"We are seeing an uptick in positive cases in the pediatric population," said Dr. Chris Colbert, assistant professor of emergency medicine at University of Illinois at Chicago.
In Flossmoor, contact tracing is underway to make sure there’s no community spread.