At the first meeting of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new Board of Education, members announced a host of sweeping changes aimed at improving transparency, community engagement and elevating issues important to stakeholders.

Experts now say they expect “complete mortality” of the bleached reefs in just a week, and worry reefs at greater depths could face the same fate if the unprecedented ocean warmth continues to escalate.

Police overtime spending balloons. Ethics investigations at City Hall. Two attorneys filing lawsuits in the Northwestern hazing scandal. And early garbage pickups persist.

“These are the rules that stand between us and government illegitimacy,” Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said.

The hazing scandal at Northwestern University has widened to include a volleyball player who on Monday became the first female athlete to sue the university over allegations she was retaliated against by the coach for reporting her mistreatment.

Under the city’s noise ordinance, private waste haulers can’t make pickups before 7 a.m. But WTTW News spotted trucks making multiple early-morning stops.

It took less than five months for the Chicago Police Department to exhaust the $100 million earmarked for overtime set by the Chicago City Council as part of the city’s 2023 budget, according to data obtained by WTTW News through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The governor’s office said the contract is projected to cost an additional $204 million in the first year and $625 million over four years.

Top Democratic officials on Tuesday signed a “labor peace agreement.” The deal means that the Democratic National Committee will use union labor when available and that the unions won’t strike during the four-day convention scheduled for next August.

The last time the Bureau of Labor Statistics officially tracked workers with alternate job arrangements was 2017. But workplace experts say the number of gig workers is growing and their impact is being felt throughout the economy. It could even be distorting government economic data.

Attorneys for Marilyn Mulero filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the city, disgraced former Chicago police Det. Reynaldo Guevara and others in a 13-count complaint alleging Mulero was the victim of a malicious prosecution and forced into falsely confessing to the murder of two men in 1992.

UPS has reached a contract agreement with its 340,000-person strong union Tuesday, averting a strike that had the potential to disrupt logistics nationwide for businesses and households alike.

The city and its lawyers will now have to convince a jury that two officers did nothing wrong when they fired 16 shots at Darius Cole-Garrit, 21, at 9:30 p.m. Aug. 19, 2014, after a brief foot chase on the city's Far South Side.

The latest in our series WTTW News: A Safer City — is social media behavior a predictor for crime? How the news media outlets contribute to perceptions of violence. And meet a young group of storytellers.

The relationship between social media and violence might not be as cut-and-dry as some make it to be. There’s sometimes a perception that social media apps fuel violence, but researchers say that correlation can be overblown.