“It’s sustainable energy but also jobs, 700 jobs in the Byron plant that people count on and they play a lot in taxes so I think that it makes sense to put together a bipartisan bill that works for everybody,” Rep. Andrew Chesney said.

Over the objections of Republicans concerned about a “lack of public and media access,” state Senate Democrats on Tuesday cancelled in-person session days for the entire month of February, announcing all upcoming committee meetings and hearings would be held online.

From two leaders at the Illinois Medical Professionals Action Collaborative Team (IMPACT): “Internet portals are no panacea. As we witness daily, the first-come, first-serve nature of myriad vaccine registration websites heavily biases against patients who lack access to reliable high-speed internet and those with limited technology literacy.”

“Our concern was that at-risk children would be confined for more time than usual within the walls of unstable, dangerous homes, and out of sight from mandated reporters of abuse and neglect, with disastrous results,” wrote Interim Inspector General Lester Bovia Jr. “That child death cases did not increase sharply in FY 2020, but instead decreased to 102, tells us that the year-over-year decrease is likely real.”

If passed into law, the Responsible Education for Adolescent and Children’s Health, or REACH Act would start sex ed in kindergarten through second grade with lessons on personal safety and respecting others. Grades 3-5 would cover anatomy, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. Grades 6-12 would build upon that and include benefits of abstinence, birth control and prevention of STDs.

When solutions would surface is still unknown. The House and Senate canceled in-person session days this month with the exception of the House planning one day Feb. 10 to pass rules to allow for some form of remote legislating because of the pandemic.

HB 7 would create the School District Efficiency Commission, tasked with making recommendations for consolidating districts. Voters in each affected school district would have to approve the consolidation by a majority vote, so one district could not force another to merge unless residents in each separately agreed.

“Wirepoints has noted that, as a procedural matter, it is concerning a rule with such wide-ranging effects on Illinois’ students, education professionals and schools should be promulgated by an unelected administrative body through rule-making, rather than passed through legislation by elected officials after debate in the General Assembly.”

“If teachers’ unions and broken education bureaucracies are going to thwart established science and the best interests of the students, the least they should do is to reimburse parents for the cost of seeking private school alternatives to get the in-person learning their children need.”

“Someone—maybe one of his family members—should pull Kinzinger aside and explain to him that the devil’s ultimate and oldest trick is the one from the Garden, when he sowed doubt about whether God really meant what he had clearly said. That trick is rampant in American culture and politics today.”

The city of Elmhurst, Illinois, for example, is asking for a 3.5 percent increase in property taxes this year to help pay for its growing public pension bill. One city councilwoman in Elmhurst said the increase is “completely driven by another increase in pension contributions”. But tax increases like this target the symptom rather than the cause of growing pension costs.

Rep. Adam Niemerg, R-Dieterich, said teachers should already be teaching inclusively. “Illinois teachers don’t have time to teach their students the tools they need to meet basic requirements in English and math. Now we’re going to make teachers prove that they are woke or progressive?”

“It’s so very obvious that there isn’t a lot of motivation or kind of ‘get up and go’ on their part to make it happen,” said said Ryan Burnett, a music teacher who was laid off from his job at a Catholic school in June 2020. “It’s the fact that it ends in .gov and not .com that it seems to be running that slow. Amazon would not do this.”

Jim Dey: “If political junkies are not speculating about Madigan himself, they’re wondering about all of the money he has stashed in four campaign committees… Madigan has sole control over Friends of Michael J. Madigan, a personal fund that holds more than $13.4 million. The other three funds are Democratic Party funds, controlled by Madigan as long as he retains his positions as chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party and boss of Chicago’s 13th ward.”

“We probably see more mental health visits than we do sick visits,” said Dr. Valerie Kimball, a pediatrician in north suburban Evanston. She’s making more referrals to mental health specialists and prescribing more antidepressants than usual. Since the pandemic began, she’s seeing younger children regress, like losing toilet training. And across age groups, more patients are gaining significant amounts of weight.

Andy Shaw: “Mike was never a readily accessible politician. I think he believed the less said publicly, the more the ‘Madigan Mystique’ would burnish an aura of power that made people cower. But this was a near-total boycott.”

“The demand is out there for the vaccine. And we know a fairly large numbers of seniors simply don’t have either access to the internet or the ability to work the technology to sign up,” said Laura Kopp, whose Center for Active Seniors, Inc. has partnered with the Scott County Health Department to help register seniors.

Illinois ranks as the 44th state for administering COVID-19 inoculations and 42nd for receiving doses of the lifesaving vaccine per capita. “We do not understand why there would be sizable geographic differences in per capita vaccine distribution across the country,” U.S. Reps. Bill Foster and Raja Krishnamoorthi wrote. “It is imperative that this lag in distribution to Illinois be rectified.”

“It’s so disappointing that rather than focusing on any of these issues, the State Board of Education has instead chosen to create pages of new rules and mandates that prioritize social activism over basic skills,” said state Rep. Dan Brady.