Stories by Erica Gunderson

Chicago Public School officials say they hope to have a new CEO selected by late July. Miguel del Valle, the head of the Chicago Board of Education, joins us to discuss the process of picking the next chief.

In February, we met four teens participating in a program that helps students pursue careers in classical music. Little Village resident Giovani Ibarra, 14, offers his thoughts on the oboe with this performance.

Israel slammed the Gaza Strip with airstrikes on Saturday, in a dramatic escalation that included bombing the home of a senior Hamas leader, killing a family of 10 in a refugee camp — most of them children — and pulverizing a high-rise that housed The Associated Press and other media.

The operator of the nation’s largest gasoline pipeline — hit on May 7 by a ransomware attack — announced Saturday that it has resumed “normal operations,” delivering fuel to its markets, including a large swath of the East Coast.

Student and community activists from New England to the Deep South are demanding institutions take more ambitious steps to atone for past sins — from colonial-era slavery to more recent campus expansion projects that have pushed out entire communities of color.

McDonald’s follows other chains including Chipotle, which said Monday that it will raise workers’ pay to an average of $15 per hour by the end of June. 

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, met privately with Pope Francis on Saturday, afterward calling the pope a “compelling moral authority on the subject of the climate crisis” who has been “ahead of the curve.”

The jobs are for delivery and warehouse workers, who pack and ship online orders. Amazon, which already pays at least $15 an hour, gave out raises for some of its workers last month, and the company said Thursday that new hires will make an average of $17 an hour.

Many Latinos are forgoing COVID-19 shots because of concerns about losing work hours, getting a bill, and for some, immigration worries. That’s according to a new poll that offers insights into how to raise vaccination rates among the nation’s largest ethnic minority.

The House is expected to vote next week on two bills aimed at preventing more attacks on the U.S. Capitol, with one seeking to establish a 9/11-style commission to study what went wrong on Jan. 6 and the other allocating $1.9 billion to address the security problems revealed by the insurrection.

Illinois enters the reopening bridge phase as summer festivals are announced. Leaked emails spell trouble for the mayor. Rahm may be headed to Japan. And the sudden death of a Chicago star-architect.

Adam Rapp’s “The Sound Inside” depicts the brief but harrowing relationship between Bella (Mary Beth Fisher), a lonely, middle-aged Yale professor and author who teaches a course in creative writing, and her intense, gifted, profoundly alienated freshman student, Christopher (John Drea).

Chicago officials announced Friday they will consider making electric scooters a permanent part of the city’s transportation system after the results of a second trial run found a demand for the two-wheelers.

The Chicago Police Department has announced changes to its search warrant policy that will go into effect later this month following widespread calls for reform after a botched raid at the home of Anjanette Young in February 2019.

A corner of West Virginia wrenched by opioid addiction is getting the chance to argue in a courtroom that some of the corporate giants it blames for a public health crisis that left hundreds of people dead deserve to be held accountable.

President Joe Biden planned to meet Friday with six young immigrants who benefited from an Obama-era policy that protected those brought to the U.S. illegally as children. 

More than a dozen states quickly embraced new federal guidelines that say fully vaccinated Americans no longer need to wear masks indoors or out in most cases. But other states and cities and some major businesses hesitated amid doubts about whether the approach is safe or even workable.

Gas shortages at the pumps have spread from the South, all but emptying stations in Washington, D.C., following a ransomware cyberattack that forced a shutdown of the nation’s largest gasoline pipeline. Though the pipeline operator paid a ransom, restoring service was taking time.

Annette Nance-Holt's pending confirmation will be “yet another crack in that glass ceiling,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday.

German architect Helmut Jahn died Saturday after being struck by a car while riding a bicycle in the western suburbs. Geoffrey Baer takes a look at Jahn’s work and his legacy in a special edition of Ask Geoffrey.

The beloved pair of piping plovers have established a nest, smack in the middle of habitat only just protected for the birds this spring. 

For pregnant women, fetal monitoring devices are a cumbersome array of wires and tape that require constant adjustment and, quite literally, tether the patient to a hospital bed. A team of researchers at Northwestern University is working to change that.

When she died 12 years ago, photographer Vivian Maier went from anonymous to fairly famous. Now the onetime North Shore nanny is receiving more posthumous praise, this time for a show of her mostly unseen color photographs of local people and places. 

Hamas sent a heavy barrage of rockets deep into Israel on Thursday as Israel pounded Gaza with more airstrikes and shells and called up 9,000 more reservists who could be used to stage a ground invasion.

A deeper look at the conflict in Israel. We visit the Village of Riverdale as part of our community reporting series. Transforming prenatal care with technology. Remembering architect Helmut Jahn.

The Village of Riverdale lags behind the rest of suburban Cook County in vaccinations. As part of our community reporting series, we speak with elected officials, community leaders and physicians about the vaccine rollout, and what they’re doing to make the vaccine more accessible.