Chicagoans are set to see a new office on their ballot in November 2024. For the first time, voters will elect members to the Chicago Board of Education. While election day is set, the districts that board members will run in have not been decided.
Grace Chan McKibben
A new high school is slated to be built at 24th and State streets, with the recent blessing of the Chicago Board of Education. It was a tight 4-3 vote, an indication of how controversial the plan is considering that residents of Chinatown, the South Loop and surrounding communities have been asking for a new school for decades.
Leaders of the groups that successfully pushed Chicago elected leaders to support a map that redraws the 11th Ward to include a majority of Asian American voters warned members of the City Council that asking voters to decide the boundaries of the city’s 50 wards “fans the flames of racial division.”
The final map crafted by the Chicago Ward Advisory Redistricting Commission would increase the number of wards where Latinos make up a majority of residents by one to 14, while reducing the number of wards with a majority of Black voters by three to 15 wards.
A coalition of state representatives and organizations representing the Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander community called on residents to unite against discrimination in the wake of a mass shooting in Georgia that eight people, including six women of Asian descent.
Will the lack of in-person outreach lead to a census undercount in Chicago’s greater Chinatown community?
