Three new publications by Chicago students are available for pre-order now through the work of nonprofit 826CHI, which partners with Chicago Public Schools to provide free, project-based field trips to CPS classrooms, as well as in-school programming.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has tapped former alderperson Michael Scott Jr. as a new member of the Chicago Board of Education, barely a month after the former Committee on Education and Child Development chair stepped down from the City Council.

The Illinois Child Care for All Coalition is calling for publicly-funded universal child care, saying it is unavailable and unaffordable for many in the Prairie State. 

Plans for a new Near South high school were suddenly put on hold Wednesday after Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez abruptly removed the item before the city’s Board of Education voted to approve the district’s budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.

For the last several years, the University of Chicago has faced calls to make reparations for its ties to the slave trade. The university says it was a prior iteration of the school that benefited from slavery, not its current incarnation. As Chicago Tonight’s Nick Blumberg reports, that claim hasn’t quieted calls for the university to acknowledge history and make amends.

Like all of the nation’s high school graduates, the Chicago Public Schools class of 2022 has spent more than half of their high school experience navigating the pandemic. But CPS students also had to contend with contention between the Chicago Teachers Union and CPS administration, including two strikes.

Even as COVID-19 case numbers increased in recent weeks after an early spring lull, Lightfoot said she has no intention of returning to remote learning when classes resume in August.

Juneteenth will be recognized as a federal, state and local holiday for the first time this year. The day recognizes the freeing of the last enslaved people in Texas, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. 

The new proposal, which is the first under CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, will increase school-level funding to $4.6 billion and add more than 1,600 new full-time positions across the city in the 2023 fiscal year.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday announced Chapman, a former Chicago Public Schools grad and chairwoman of the Far South Community Advisory Council, will fill the seat vacated by former board member Amy Rome last summer.

What started as a hobby to keep children active during the height of the pandemic, has since evolved into a sport that emphasizes the art of double Dutch.

Michael Hines’ book “A Worthy Piece of Work: The Untold Story of Madeline Morgan and the Fight for Black History in Schools” is the latest selection in our Black Voices Book Club Series. It tells the story of how Black history came to Chicago schools. 

The Chicago Teachers Union has elected a new president: Stacy Davis Gates. Davis-Gates will be moving up from her position as vice president when current president Jesse Sharkey steps down July 1. 

The Advanced Arts Program has been running for more than 20 years. Before the pandemic, about 150 students were dismissed from their home school in time to travel to the Gallery 37 building for two hours of instruction each day. 

With summer quickly approaching, WTTW News reporter Joanna Hernandez moderated the latest edition of our “Chicago Tonight: Latino Voices” community conversation about investments being made in young people by local organizations.

The data breach occurred Dec. 1 and technology vendor Battelle for Kids notified CPS on April 26, the district said Friday. A server used to store student and staff information was breached and four years' worth of records were accessed, CPS said.