Parent Of Exposed CPS Student Dies, Family Blames School District

CHICAGO – The mother of two Chicago Public Schools students was afraid of leaving the house and didn’t want her kids in school over ongoing fears and concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

But less than two weeks after Shenitha “Angel” Curry tested positive for COVID-19, she died. She said her fifth-grader daughter was exposed to the virus at Jensen Elementary on Chicago’s West Side. She was 43.

Her sister, Jasyma Johnson, has started a GoFund Me effort that, as of Wednesday, has raised more than $5,700. On the fundraising page, Johnson wrote that Curry felt like she had no choice but to send her kids to school even though she faced medical issues. She also wrote that Jensen Elementary and CPS failed to administer health screenings, temperature checks, spit tests and other precautions to keep students and staff safe.

“Her daughter brought COVID-19 home,” Johnson wrote.

A message left for Johnson by Patch on Wednesday was not immediately returned. She told the Chicago Sun-Times that her sister went into cardiac arrest in the days after testing positive for COVID-19 and was sent to intensive care, where she died last week.

Curry is one of two mothers two die in the Jensen Elementary community, which has sparked outrage within the district. On Tuesday, angry parents rallied outside of the school calling for change while they mourn the loss of the two women, Chalkbeat Chicago reported.

“We are demanding a shutdown, we are demanding that CPS do something. We are going to demand action until something is done,” Jermaine Thomas, a member of the Local School Council said at the rally, Chalkbeat reported.

Dr. Allison Arwady, the city's top medical officer, said that the city is investigating the two deaths at Jensen, Chalkbeat reported. She warned against misinformation, but said Tuesday that there "is a lot of desire to pin blame", adding "I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the blame here is on the virus at the end of the day.”

The Sun-Times reported this week that hundreds of students were forced to quarantine due to being in contact with students who tested positive for COVID-19. Curry, who died last Thursday, would have turned 44 later this week and told family members that she was almost certain that her illness was brought on by the coronavirus. Curry, her sister told the Sun-Times, was not vaccinated.

In a Facebook post dated Sept. 16, Curry wrote that she had received an email from CPS stating that her daughter had been in contact with someone who had tested positive for COVID-19 and that she would be permitted to return to school on Sept. 27.

"Someone please educate me on how contact tracing is done," she wrote. "Ain't a (expletive) called my phone to see if we were sick over here. My daughter and I have been sick since Thursday. She better but I'm not! You want these kids in school so bad. If I'm ill who the (expletive) is gonna take care of my kids? Not CPS." The post included the hashtag, #ISAIDWTFISAID."

The Sun-Times reported that over the past two weeks, 205 students at Jensen were sent home because they had come into contact with one or more of the eight students and staff members at the school who had tested positive for COVID-19. The school had been operating remotely for the past two weeks, and 11 of the 17 classrooms at the school were in quarantine.

The school, which is located in the Lawndale neighborhood, has just under 300 students.

Parents at the school received an email from CPS officials on Sunday, the Sun Times reported. In the email, officials wrote that they are “saddened by the devastating impacts of COVID-19 on our community and understand the fear and anxiety you must be feeling from this tragedy.”

According to multiple media reports, representatives from Lurie Children’s Hospital were scheduled to be at the school to offer free COVID-19 testing, which had not been offered at the school before this week. Johnson said in an interview with ABC 7 that she feels like things were different if her sister lived in another area of the city.

"If my sister had to live three blocks west of where we are standing right now, and crossed over into Oak Park, it would be different," Johnson told the station. "Because they have different safety protocols, different safety measures in place."

On the GoFundMe Page, Johnson wrote that even though her sister’s fifth-grade class was one of the effected rooms at the school, a contract tracer never contacted Curry to alert her that he daughter had been in contact to a positive case.

“Her three children are faced with burying her because they were forced to go to school,” Johnson wrote. “This could have all been avoided if proper safety protocols and/or given the option to send your child back to school were in place as they are in suburbia educational districts!”

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