On Monday, “Chicago Tonight” co-host and “Chicago Tonight: Black Voices” host Brandis Friedman moderated the latest edition of our “Chicago Tonight: Black Voices” community conversation series in a discussion focused on education equity and the outlook for the new school year.

According to CPS data, fewer than 4% of CPS teachers are Black men. In a school district where 36% percent of students are Black, that’s a striking imbalance. 

Rogelio Lopez, An East Side CPS counselor, gives “Latino Voices” La Ultima Palabra on what he says is the most daunting part of bringing change to your community.

The average bus trip districtwide is 39 minutes and over 80% of rides are under an hour, according to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, but 365 diverse learners currently have rides lasting more than 90 minutes each day.

According to Chicago police, one adult and three teens were shot while at outside a restaurant across the street from Schurz High School in the Old Irving Park neighborhood.

Monday marks the first day of the 2022-23 school year, as some 300,000-plus students head back to class on one of the earliest start dates in recent memory.

As school starts back up, students especially rely on the internet for everything from research to turning in their homework. But for some of those students, reliable internet access is still tough to come by. A few area programs are looking to change that. 

The teachers say they were encouraging students to participate in the process of free speech by protesting metal scrap company General Iron, which planned to move into their South Side community.

More than one in five New York City elementary schools had fewer than 300 students last school year. In Los Angeles, that figure was over one in four. In Chicago it has grown to nearly one in three, and in Boston it’s approaching one in two, according to a Chalkbeat/AP analysis.

The board voted 6-0 to reject the recommendation from Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez that teachers Lauren Bianchi and Charles “Chuck” Stark be terminated for violating safety rules involving protests and a trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Instead, they each got a warning and were directed to undergo training.

Former board member DwayneTruss called for the inspector general of the Chicago Public Schools to probe the deal that would allow the high school to be built at 24th and State streets, once home to the demolished CHA Harold L. Ickes homes. 

The city’s Board of Education on Wednesday will vote on a one-year, $10 million contract renewal with the Chicago Police Department that would allow it to provide school resource officers in several Chicago high schools.

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.

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.

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.