With the second week of classes already under way, WTTW News reporter Joanna Hernandez moderated a live virtual conversation on back-to-school safety for children and youth in Chicago as part of the WTTW News: A Safer City initiative.

Cooling centers and splash pads are open to help people cope with oppressive heat that will feel like 115 degrees.

Chicago Public Schools’ first day of school saw a wave of new Spanish-speaking students who arrived in Chicago after seeking asylum in the United States. Those migrant students are dealing with both trauma and language barriers.

Chicago students are still struggling to make up for COVID-era learning losses, and a local tutoring organization is trying to help students close that gap.

As students return, so to do the Safe Passage workers who are tasked with making sure students make it and from school safely.

Mayor Brandon Johnson joined CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates at Beidler Elementary School on the city’s West Side early Monday as kids began the 2023-24 school year.

Data has shown that Black students in CPS schools are disproportionately subject to discipline, underrepresented in the city’s top-rated high schools and have to travel the farthest of any demographic group to get to school.

The city’s Board of Education will vote next week on a one-year contract worth up to $5 million with the Pittsburgh-based Fisher Scientific company to provide COVID-19 testing supplies to the school district for the upcoming academic year.

The new school year is just around the corner. WTTW News asked pediatricians and physicians in the Chicago area to share what they think parents should keep in mind as their children head back to school.

Chicago Public Schools students return to class in less than three weeks. The school district said it currently has only about half the bus drivers it needs to transport the more than 17,000 students who are eligible to be bused to school.

A Cook County judge has ruled in favor of Urban Prep Academies, which had sued to maintain control of two charter campuses after Chicago Public Schools planned to take them over, amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct by UPA leadership.

At the first meeting of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new Board of Education, members announced a host of sweeping changes aimed at improving transparency, community engagement and elevating issues important to stakeholders.

While the board won’t officially vote on that contract until next week, some members questioned whether the X-rays actually improve safety for students at schools.

“I think this might be the first time in CPS history … that you have a board that’s made up of almost every one of us has some experience with CPS — either we’re parents, we’ve served on (Local School Councils), we were students or we were educators,” new board appointee Mariela Morales said

Brandon Johnson announced that Jianan Shi, the executive director of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education since 2019, will serve as the board’s president after former president Miguel del Valle stepped down after his term expired last week.

The district’s budget for the 2024 fiscal year will contain $4.8 billion in school-level funding, which officials said is an increase of more than $240 million over last year.