The Fourth District Appellate Court on Wednesday tossed out a temporary restraining order that had prevented CPS from taking employment action against a half dozen CPS educators who refused to comply with the school district’s vaccine requirements.

Tracie Hall, executive director of the American Library Association, says the books that are being banned in the past year target topics like racism, sexuality and sexual orientation.

New research from the University of Chicago found that an education nonprofit aimed at boosting college access for students from low-income families has had a significant impact on enrollment and graduation rates.

Many schools saw large numbers of students fall under the radar when learning went online for the pandemic. Many skipped class, tests and homework. Record numbers of families opted out of annual standardized tests, leaving some districts with little evidence of how students were doing in reading and math.

The Illinois State Board of Education is announcing a $4 million grant to cover tuition costs for teachers interested in becoming licensed to teach English-language learners.

"It ensures that if a teacher has done their part to keep their classroom safe for their most vulnerable students, they won’t have to worry for a second about their pay or their paid time off if they get COVID,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Tuesday.

Last week, the U.S. National Archives released U.S. census records from 1950, granting public access to files that documented more than 150 million people and the areas they lived, the jobs they had, and much more.

Since the pandemic started, experts have warned of a mental health crisis facing American children. That is now playing out at schools in the form of increased childhood depression, anxiety, panic attacks, eating disorders, fights and thoughts of suicide at alarming levels.

The state recently announced a $17 million grant to build the first state-funded network of Freedom Schools in the country. The schools date back to the 1960s when volunteers traveled to Mississippi to teach Black students how to read and write, along with lessons on constitutional rights and African American history.

In collaboration with Lurie Children’s Hospital, young researchers with the racial justice organization Communities United conducted a study focused on the mental health and well-being of Black and Brown young men in Chicago. 

Millionaire philanthropist Pete Kadens has created two college-scholarship programs — Hope Toledo, in his Ohio hometown, and Hope Chicago, which he co-founded with investment-management executive Ted Koenig and launched in September. The goal: provide debt-free college to public-school graduates. 

The Chicago Board of Education on Wednesday unanimously approved a calendar for the 2022-23 school year that sees students return to classes on Aug. 22, a full week earlier than they did during the current year.

Rush University medical student Dmytro Mysak left Ukraine with his parents when he was 3 years old, but still has family living there. Now, he is organizing a relief effort for refugees of the war. 

The Chicago Board of Education will vote this week on that proposed calendar, which includes a start date of Aug. 22, 2022. That’s a week earlier than this year’s start date of Aug. 30 and well before the typical post-Labor Day start time for the district.

It’s difficult to conclude how many parents of school-age children have been unable to resume working outside the home because of gaps in available care. But surveys point to a cycle of parents, mostly mothers, staying home for their children because they are unable to find after-school programming, which then causes staffing shortages at such programs that rely heavily on women to run them.

“This year’s school budgets prioritize support for core instruction to improve the classroom experience and set a new standard of excellence,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said.