Ald. Debra Silverstein believes it’s time to strengthen a hate crimes ordinance last updated more than 30 years ago. At this week’s Council meeting, she and 32 co-sponsors plan to create the category of “hate incident” and allow Chicagoans to report those less-serious incidents by calling the city’s 311 non-emergency number or by using the 311 app.

The Invest in Kids Scholarship Tax-Credit Program was a bipartisan effort when it passed in 2017. Since then, the Chicago Teachers Union has fought it with claims it hurts public school funding – a hollow argument when state and local funding to CPS delivered $1.93 billion in additional funding for fewer public schools students during Invest in Kids’ lifespan.

“For certain union leaders who shout ‘racism’ to advance an agenda that strips schools of any real accountability, a return to social promotion and the diminishing of student outcomes in school evaluations is the real return to the past – specifically, the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

“And while it’s helpful to look at what’s happening in other cities, it’s important to be realistic about the housing market in Chicago. High-end home sales are already declining…Meanwhile, commercial real-estate sales have been down 51 percent through the first six months of 2023. A sluggish real-estate market combined with a tax that will presumably put a damper on property sales in the city are a recipe for failure.”

Overall, the number of suspensions across the school district dropped from 49,708 in 2014 to about 10,000 in 2022, according to CPS data. The study’s authors point to the fact that arrests both in and outside of school also dropped proves that the decrease in suspensions are due to changes in student behavior.

The robbery spike is part of Chicago’s uneven recovery from the height of the pandemic crime spikes: Shootings, murders and carjackings are down, while robberies and thefts are soaring.

The 14th Police District, which includes Wicker Park, Bucktown and parts of Logan Square, has seen at least 351 robberies as of Aug. 31, up 62 percent from the same point last year, and more than double the 152 reported during that period in 2020. In the 12th Police District, which includes parts of Ukrainian Village and West Town and stretches down through the West Loop to Pilsen, neighbors are dealing with a similar trend. Retired teacher Miriam Ruiz said this summer’s rash of robberies “has changed the fabric of our neighborhood completely.”

“I’ve looked in my ward. I just don’t have any available space. I have one of the most dense wards in the city,” Ald. Brian Hopkins said

As chair of the City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate, Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, an immigrant from Ecuador, will play an important role in finding permanent homes for migrants: ” We’re talking about making sure that we move from housing as a commodity to making housing a human right. We have a plan to build 120,000 units of housing [not just for migrants]…We need to make sure that the Chicago Housing Authority starts being the agency that they claim to be, which is an agency to invest in community housing, not to privatize and subsidize developers.”

More than a third of that deficit can be attributed to the migrant crisis. Another $90 million comes from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s decision to get rid of an automatic escalator that would have increased property taxes to match the rate of inflation, and $45 million is the pension cost former mayor Lori Lightfoot intended to off-load to Chicago Public Schools to cover nonteaching employees who draw their retirement checks from the Municipal Employees Pension Fund.

“This is a moment to restore some sanity and common sense,” Ald. Ray Lopez said. “The Left, the progressives, the socialists act as though everything is just an academic exercise in good government. They don’t realize or appreciate the real-world implications of what they do. Well, the real world has come home to the city of Chicago and the border crisis is in our backyard.”

Concerned that Blacks making $15 or $16 an hour will be fired and replaced by migrants being paid $5 an hour as new “slave labor,” Fr. Michael Pfleger urged Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker not to fast track work permits for migrants until equitable systems are in place. “We are creating an atmosphere for Black and brown to fight each other over crumbs while the power structure pulls its strings.”