1,000 Boston teachers, school staff out due to COVID-19, other reasons

Over 1,000 Boston teachers and staff have called out of work Tuesday due to COVID-19 and others reasons, according to NBC Boston.

Boston Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said that 1,074 workers in the Boston public school system called out Tuesday, including 461 teachers and 52 bus drivers, per the outlet.

“We’ll assess the health and safety issues presented as well as the operational issues that we may already have, the staffing issues,” said Cassellius Monday, explaining the situation of a dire number of staffers being unable to report to work.

“We have our central office teams, many of us are licensed teachers, myself included. If I have to go out and teach in a classroom I’m going to do that. But our goal is to keep classes going and to keep students in person,” she added, according to NBC.

The Boston Teachers Union reported on Tuesday that there were issues in the rollout of at-home COVID-19 tests, according to NBC. 

According to the union, the tests were listed as having expired in November 2021. However, Cassellius stated on Tuesday that the listed expiration dates had been extended and the tests should remain functional and reliable for an additional year, the outlet reported. 

Thank you @MayorWu for joining us this morning and helping the @BostonSchools team get our tests out to our amazing educators. #AllHandsOnDeck https://t.co/WIf6ECVFs2

— Brenda Cassellius (@BCassellius) January 3, 2022

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (D) visited Boston area schools Monday and Tuesday and helped with the rollout of masks and COVID-19 tests for distribution to staff and students. 

Over the weekend, the city stated that 155 staff members had called out sick, after previously saying that it expected the number of employee absences to increase after the distribution of COVID-19 antigen tests to public school workers, NBC reported.