Stories by Matt Masterson

Chicago Public Schools is recommending school leaders schedule community town hall meetings as more and more local school councils consider votes to eliminate their resource officer programs.

Some 10,000 scooters will be scattered throughout Chicago when the city’s second pilot program starts next month. It’s designed to settle once and for all the question of whether scooters should be allowed on Chicago’s streets.

With temperatures set to soar in Chicago in the coming days, Dr. Allison Arwady reassured residents that it’s “safe and appropriate” to use air conditioning in their apartments and homes without risking the spread of COVID-19.

Watch the July 15, 2020 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

Chicago’s top cop says his department is heading into the “next generation” of policing as two of its most senior leaders head into retirement and more than a dozen others have been promoted into command staff positions.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday delivered a blunt warning to young adults in Chicago: you are spreading the coronavirus, and threatening the tentative progress Chicago has made in fighting the pandemic.

The first COVID-19 vaccine tested in the U.S. revved up people’s immune systems just the way scientists had hoped, researchers reported Tuesday -- as the shots are poised to begin key final testing.

The decision was announced at the start of a hearing in a federal lawsuit in Boston brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Anthony Riccio, the Chicago Police Department’s second-in-command, is retiring. The move comes as police departments nationwide are under the microscope — including in Chicago.

An effort to ease Chicago’s affordable housing crisis by permitting coach house dwellings stalled Friday amid opposition from aldermen concerned they would not be able to stop unwanted units from being built in their wards.

The comet has been delighting sky gazers across the globe. Catch it now, because it won’t swing back our way for another 6,800 years.

While the Chicago Police Department is increasing its community policing efforts, a new behavioral health task force on the West Side is convening to address trauma as a root cause of violence.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools leadership say the decision to remove police officers from schools should lie with individual local school councils. Now, some schools are taking action.

The Museum of Contemporary Photography is rolling out resistance. That’s the theme of their long-delayed show that just opened on the Columbia College campus in the Loop. We go for a look.

Watch the July 14, 2020 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

Chicago Vegan Test Kitchen has found a new home for its farmers market — Vegan Paradise — at Bubbly Dynamics’ The Plant, a former meat processing facility in Back of the Yards.  

Aldermen unanimously agreed Tuesday to ban demolitions near the 606 Bloomingdale Trail for another six months as aldermen craft a measure to blunt rapid gentrification along the popular trail.

Students held back by debt who dropped out of the City Colleges of Chicago system before completing their studies can now re-enroll and finish their degrees through a relief program that promises to forgive those unpaid dues.

A significantly revised measure that would give long-term renters more notice before they are evicted without cause cleared a key city panel Tuesday after progressive aldermen stalled its passage for a month.

“I will not hesitate to reimpose some mitigations if we see (coronavirus) numbers moving upward,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Tuesday. “My concern again is all about the health and safety of the people of Illinois.”

The 14-day quarantine order currently covers travelers to Chicago from 15 states, including California and Florida. Starting Friday, it will also apply to those coming from Iowa and Oklahoma, according to the mayor’s office.

Chicago residents who don’t have a city sticker will get another two weeks before they risk seeing that dreaded bright orange envelope on their windshields.

A look back at Chicago’s deadly heat wave — and how it compares to the coronavirus pandemic — with Eric Klinenberg, author of the 2002 book, “Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago.”

President Donald Trump is pressuring schools to fully reopen in the fall. But as many teachers, parents and even some students are expressing fears over returning to school, cases of COVID-19 are rising across the country.

COVID-19 numbers are rising nationally to startling new highs. Cases in the city and state are also climbing. What’s going on? We check in with Dr. Emily Landon of UChicago Medicine.

Personal protective gear is often in short supply, but a group of people in the Chicago area have made a serious dent in that shortage. And, as we found out, they were inspired by “Chicago Tonight.”