In a major departure from past policy, the Chicago Board of Education has announced it intends to move away from a system built on school choice.
Daniel Anello
On Monday, community leaders weighed in on expectations they have of Johnson’s administration regarding crucial issues that impact Chicago’s Black and Latino communities, and the city as a whole, as part of the latest edition of our WTTW News “Voices” community conversation series.
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 Internet Equity Initiative is analyzing data from the U.S. Census and city of Chicago Data Portal which shows 80% of Chicago households are online, but there are deep disparities between neighborhoods. In some neighborhoods, especially on the South and West sides, nearly 40% of the neighborhood doesn’t have internet.
In the last 20 years, the Chicago public school system has lost more than 100,000 students, with 40,000 leaving the system in the last five years. An education advocacy group digging into the root causes of the enrollment drop found some factors unique to Chicago, and some trends that are nationwide.
