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Councilwoman Christina Henderson has been pushing for answers to some of the questions asked by parents. Below is one of the responses. “If a student tests positive for COVID-19, siblings who reside in the same household as the positive student are considered close contacts and must quarantine. We are updating the guidance for schools to clarify the treatment of siblings in much greater detail,” said DC Health Department's Director LaQuandra Nesbitt.

Some elected officials have criticized the arrangement to keep city-contracted nurses out of providing care for students with potential COVID symptoms. The arrangement is “inefficient & a mess in waiting,” At-large D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson said on Twitter.

When Christina Henderson, a new at-large member of the Council of the District of Columbia, first considered running for office, one of her worries was whether she could raise enough money to be competitive. “I was not independently wealthy. Most of my friends worked in the public sector,” says Henderson, who was previously a staffer on the Council.

That job falls largely to the redistricting subcommittee, which is made up of the Council’s three at-large members: Elissa Silverman (who chairs the committee), Anita Bonds, and Christina Henderson. The redistricting hearing in September will be DC’s first since the Census Bureau released local-level data from the 2020 census. An initial hearing was held in May.

Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large) on Wednesday tweeted a copy of the letter, which was signed by fellow council members Anita Bonds (D-At Large), Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1), Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) and Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), WJLA-TV (Channel 7) reported. “Today 7 of my colleagues joined me in a letter to @MayorBowser asking her to issue an updated Mayor’s Order to require all public school employees, child care facility employees, & DC gov connected individuals who have regular contact with minors to vaccinate against COVID-19,” Henderson wrote.

Councilmember Christina Henderson shared the letter on her Twitter page Wednesday afternoon. "Today 7 of my colleagues joined me in a letter to @MayorBowser asking her to issue an updated Mayor’s Order to require all public school employees, child care facility employees, & DC gov connected individuals who have regular contact with minors to vaccinate against COVID-19," she tweeted.

Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large) wrote the letter. A majority of the 13 D.C. Council members signed a letter Tuesday calling on Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) to mandate coronavirus vaccines — without a testing option — for all public school employees and day-care workers.

“I really want us to shift the conversation to talk about how do we get more Black and brown residents as homeowners in the District, because that allows us to establish some semi-permanent population, if you will, and then also helping those families build generational wealth,” says Henderson.

At-Large Council member Christina Henderson asked City Administrator Kevin Donahue what the process would be like, and if students would be tested without consent. “It is students who submitted consent forms,” Donahue said, though the target is still 10% of the student body. “So if you have some number of people who have submitted consent form, say it’s half the student body, they’ll still be … aiming to sample and test 10% of the overall student body. However, that 10% sampling will come from a smaller number of people,” he added.

Patrick Ashley, who leads DC Health’s emergency preparedness response, confirmed on Twitter Thursday that the city had made the option of booking a home vaccine appointment available to all unvaccinated residents. “Don’t have to be homebound in DC (recently changed),” Ashley wrote. “Just give us a call and we’ll come!”

But it also showed that the council’s progressive wing can now wield some power. Emboldened by the addition of new lawmakers Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) and Christina Henderson (I-At Large), the bloc successfully pushed through a tax hike on residents who make more than $250,000 a year to help pay for homeless services, early childhood education, and financial assistance for low-income families. (The same tax increase proposal failed last year.) They also helped fight off a last-minute request from Bowser for $11 million to hire 170 new police officers; the council gave her less than half that for cops, with the remainder going to violence interruption efforts.

Additionally, the auditor found that candidates who participated in the program were successful — Christina Henderson (I-At-Large) and Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) won their respective races — and the usual dynamic favoring incumbents weakened slightly. “Between 2012 and 2018, incumbents won 77.3% of their elections for D.C. offices. In 2020, two of the six incumbents running for office were unseated by challengers,” reads the report.