From staffing shortages to stumbles with school-based COVID testing, Chicago Public Schools has faced a number of challenges as it reopened campuses this fall.

The city’s board of education heard a rundown of the district’s safety efforts — including successes and where improvements still need to be made — on Wednesday in its last meeting of 2021. The numbers provide an overview of the district’s COVID response at the traditional midpoint of the academic year, as students and teachers prepare to go on winter break.

District officials have managed to avoid large-scale school closures as students returned to in-person learning. Still, critics have questioned the district’s mitigation efforts, including its school-based testing opt-in rates as well as contact tracing.

Here are five things we’ve learned about Chicago’s efforts so far:

  1. School-based transmission remains low.
  2. School district caseloads have largely followed the rise and fall of the city’s positivity rate.
  3. Chicago has tested 400,000 students. The union says it should have done much more.
  4. Contact tracing remains slow, despite pledges to speed it up.
  5. Quarantines have complicated the return to learning — and that’s something Martinez plans to address.

Read the full article about lessons from COVID-19 by Mauricio Pena at Chalkbeat Chicago.