School is about a week and a half into session and CPS students have seen some changes around campus and in their classrooms. Also different this year - COVID protocols, which no longer require someone to quarantine if they've had an exposure. After two-plus years of work stoppages and labor disputes, will students finally get to enjoy a fully uninterrupted school year?

On Monday, “Chicago Tonight” co-host and “Chicago Tonight: Black Voices” host Brandis Friedman moderated the latest edition of our “Chicago Tonight: Black Voices” community conversation series in a discussion focused on education equity and the outlook for the new school year.

According to CPS data, fewer than 4% of CPS teachers are Black men. In a school district where 36% percent of students are Black, that’s a striking imbalance. 

A new student loan debt relief plan will cancel up to $10,000 in federal loans for individuals making less than $125,000 a year. For low-income students who received Pell Grants, they can receive up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness. According to research by Excelencia in Education, 50% of Latinos in higher education receive federal Pell Grants to help pay for college. 

Rogelio Lopez, An East Side CPS counselor, gives “Latino Voices” La Ultima Palabra on what he says is the most daunting part of bringing change to your community.

The average bus trip districtwide is 39 minutes and over 80% of rides are under an hour, according to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, but 365 diverse learners currently have rides lasting more than 90 minutes each day.

As part of the Green Schools Project, schools engage in project-based challenges to develop and implement creative, low-cost, sustainable practices. Those schools receive resources and support from the Illinois Green Alliance to collaborate on a year-long project which they can present at the end of the school year.

Starting this school year, every public elementary school and high school in Illinois must include a unit of instruction on Asian American history. Illinois became the first state to implement the requirement when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act into law last summer. 

School, city and state leaders celebrated Sunday with the Catholic nun who became something of a folk hero as chaplain for the Loyola men’s basketball team that reached the NCAA Final Four in 2018.

Monday marks the first day of the 2022-23 school year, as some 300,000-plus students head back to class on one of the earliest start dates in recent memory.

As school starts back up, students especially rely on the internet for everything from research to turning in their homework. But for some of those students, reliable internet access is still tough to come by. A few area programs are looking to change that. 

“The science is pretty much supporting all the changes that CDC is doing,” said Dr. Geraldine Luna, medical director at the Chicago Department of Public Health. “The reports of cases at school have been lower and we expect them to continue to be the lowest as we vaccinate children and send them protected to school.”

Researchers found that Muslims in Illinois were the youngest and most diverse faith community in the state and the country. The sample in the study were racially and ethnically diverse. The study also includes specific recommendations for educators, elected officials, Muslim community leaders and more on how they can better meet the needs of Muslim communities. 

The Big Ten announced Thursday it has reached seven-year agreements with Fox, CBS and NBC to share the rights to the conference’s football and basketball games. The deals go into effect in 2023 and eventually will allow the conference’s member universities to share more than $1 billion per year, a person familiar with the terms told The Associated Press.

While many schools will offer classes for credit to prison inmates, Northwestern University says its the only top 10 school that grants degrees to prisoners. And next spring, students at Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison in Will County, will be the first to receive their bachelor's degrees from Northwestern while in prison.

The Chicago Welcome Back Center launched Tuesday at Richard J. Daley College and will serve as a resource center for individuals trained internationally in health care fields who are working to receive licensure in the U.S.