“In reality, the policy puts the bow on Northwestern’s gifting of degrees, not education. Promising credit for a hidden ‘D’ assures tuition payments from the wealthy students and is a cheap way to increase the likelihood that students receiving financial aid will graduate, a key metric for the university’s improvement in the national rankings.”

“In cities as distinctly different as Washington; Newark, New Jersey; Chicago and Pittsburgh, government officials have found ways to restore essential goods and services to neighborhoods devastated by population loss and the flight of business…Each approach has its limitations and lessons. Here are a few of them.”

“I’ve seen other districts have had a lot more detailed plans, but that’s just how CPS does things. They just create a general plan and expect everything to fall in place. There’s too diverse of needs to really do that,” said a school clinician who asked not to be named.

“We’ve been working closely with the Chicago Department of Public Health to ensure all necessary measures are taken and school will look and feel very different,” said Erik Olson, principal of Hamline Elementary in an informational video produced by the district.

The e-mails released, which date back to Nov. 2019, detail communication between City of Chicago employees and Chicago police regarding Freedom of Information Act requests from both Young and CBS2, as well as how Lightfoot was informed of the incident. (Note: this report includes links to all the documents released.)

“The proof is in the pandemic, in big cities across the country, where homicide rates are way up for one reason above all: More people are struggling, hurting, alienated and lost.”

And having an EU passport allows unencumbered travel and permission to work in more than two dozen EU member countries. That’s a big advantage over just having a U.S. passport, says Ekaterina Dimakis, the Greek consul general in Chicago. Many applicants at the Croatian consulate want to study in Europe, which is easier – and cheaper – to do with an EU passport.

Most schools that are anticipating few students are in Black and Latino neighborhoods with high rates of COVID-19 infections or deaths. In addition, the schools serve high numbers of low-income students. Of the 156,000 students considered low-income that were offered in-person instruction, just 32% of them say they are coming.

In all, city inspectors conducted 103 investigations from Thursday through Sunday and issued citations to four businesses for violating COVID-19 regulations by allowing indoor dining.

Lightfoot No. 3.

People who work in the city will have new employee protections in the new year. Attorney Brian Weinthal shares the important details of Chicago’s Fair Workweek Ordinance.

Chicago Public Schools officials say they weren’t aware of how many schools remain named for slaveholders until shown the Sun-Times’ findings. They also say they didn’t realize before being asked about those findings regarding the nation’s third-largest public school system, in which nine of 10 children identify as Black, Brown or indigenous, that schools named for white people outnumber those named for African Americans by a ratio of four-to-one, Latinos by nine-to-one and indigenous people by more than 120-to-1.