#486 Tracking COVID-19 Data from Chicago Public Schools

In need of a portfolio project to support a career transition from infectious disease lab research technician to cloud engineer, Chicago parent Jakob Ondrey built a website that tracked and visualized Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Covid-19 case data. The website he created, cpscovid.com, went live just as students were first returning to in-school learning in February of 2021. In January 2022, at the height of the Omicron variant outbreak, Jakob noticed that the case numbers were no longer adding up.

Jakob will walk us through his investigation into case discrepancies, the experience of breaking his story, and the subsequent fallout, and discuss his realization that even when armed with facts and data, it is the narrative that you construct with those facts that has the power to move people.

ASL This event will not have an American Sign Language interpreter.