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. 

A report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows a 5.4% drop in the head count of Latino undergraduates in fall of 2020. And for the first time in 20 years, the number of Hispanic-serving institutions of higher education dropped from 569 in 2022 to 559 in 2021.

The teachers say they were encouraging students to participate in the process of free speech by protesting metal scrap company General Iron, which planned to move into their South Side community.

More than one in five New York City elementary schools had fewer than 300 students last school year. In Los Angeles, that figure was over one in four. In Chicago it has grown to nearly one in three, and in Boston it’s approaching one in two, according to a Chalkbeat/AP analysis.

Developed by the Committee for Children, a nonprofit dedicated to the well-being of children, the podcast uses stories, music and activities to help children and adults talk about their feelings and solve problems together. And it doesn’t shy away from topics like racism, prejudice and equity.

The board voted 6-0 to reject the recommendation from Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez that teachers Lauren Bianchi and Charles “Chuck” Stark be terminated for violating safety rules involving protests and a trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Instead, they each got a warning and were directed to undergo training.

Former board member DwayneTruss called for the inspector general of the Chicago Public Schools to probe the deal that would allow the high school to be built at 24th and State streets, once home to the demolished CHA Harold L. Ickes homes. 

The city’s Board of Education on Wednesday will vote on a one-year, $10 million contract renewal with the Chicago Police Department that would allow it to provide school resource officers in several Chicago high schools.

Between 2000 to 2016, six of Chicago’s suburbs flipped from majority white suburbs to majority Latino.That's a reflection of a broader trend of immigrants bypassing the historical “port of entry” neighborhoods in the city and settling directly in the suburbs. And as the demographics of these communities have evolved, their institutions have had to find new ways to serve and engage residents.