his year, for the first time ever, elementary school students in sixth through eighth grade in Chicago Public Schools were able to run for their schools’ Local School Councils (LSC). These students will be working alongside parents, community members, and teachers on their LSCs to make decisions in their schools (aside from voting on contracts, […]
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Posted inEducation
Chicago Public Schools and Segregation
This is post 2 of 6 in the series “FIRSTHAND: SEGREGATION” This series was produced for WTTW’S FIRSTHAND: SEGREGATION, an award-winning FIRSTHAND multiplatform, multi-year initiative focusing on the firsthand perspectives of people facing critical issues in Chicago. South Side Weekly partnered with WTTW and the Invisible Institute to co-publish text and visual reporting and analysis […]
Posted inLatest
Perspectives from CPS Students Who Walked Out
wo days after Chicago Public Schools (CPS) resumed in-person learning after a weeklong shutdown, as City officials and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) leaders negotiated bitterly over COVID safety protocols, hundreds of students from an estimated forty-plus CPS schools walked out around noon on Friday, January 14, demanding for a safe return to classes, an action […]
Posted inEducation
Chicago’s Back-to-School Mess
ith a fifth wave of COVID picking up steam during the holiday break due to the Omicron variant, a significant number of Chicago Public School (CPS) parents were reluctant to send their children back to the classroom even before school resumed January 3. So far, the new year at school has been short-lived. After the […]
Posted inEducation
Advocates Push for Noncitizens to Vote in Illinois School Board Elections
s advocates and organizers celebrate Chicago’s first ever elected school board signed into law last month some are turning their attention to the next task: fighting for noncitizens to be able to vote for school board candidates as well. Democratic representation on Chicago’s Board of Education is something that organizers and advocates in the city […]
Posted inEducation
CPS High Schools Vote to Keep All, Some, or None of Their Police Officers
ver the past few months, Chicago high schools voted on their respective Whole School Comprehensive Safety Plans. These plans include decisions on their school’s school resource officer (SRO) status—whether to keep all, some, or none of their cops. Unlike before, a school will receive funding for each officer taken off duty. Chicago police officers are […]
Posted inHealth
Advocates Fight Against Outsourcing Chicago’s Mental Health Care
fter she lost her son in 1996, Diane Adams sought help from the Auburn Gresham Mental Health facility, where she started seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist. “He taught me ‘bout my medicine, and ‘bout my illness,” she said of her therapist. “And once he did that, then I start making goals for myself. And […]
Posted inCommunity
All Chicago Homeless Shelters to Receive Vaccines by the End of the Month
ore than 2,000 people living or working in the shelter system at more than seventy-five shelter programs have received the first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. The nonprofits Heartland Alliance Health, which serves the North/Northwest Side, downtown, and South Side regions of the city, and Lawndale Christian Health Center, which serves the West and […]
Posted inCover
Chicago Shelters Struggle to Meet the Need in a COVID Winter
s temperatures drop into the negatives and Chicagoans brace for even more snow, some people experiencing homelessness have been forced to choose between risking COVID-19 in a crowded—but warm—shelter or braving the cold to avoid an increased risk of contracting the virus. When someone calls 311 to request shelter, a service operator conducts an assessment […]
Posted inActivism
North Lawndale Teachers and Parents Tackle School Closures Head-on
ireless organizing over the past month has prevented the closure of three public elementary schools on the West Side. The North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council (NLCCC) proposal would have consolidated three neighborhood schools—Lawndale Community Academy, Sumner Math and Science Community Academy, and Crown Community Academy of Fine Arts—into a new STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts […]