The mayor said Tuesday that he will give the Board of Education the green light to end its $10.3 million contract with the Chicago Police Department. This year there are 16 high schools with two officers and another 23 schools with one cop. The rest, some 43% of district-run high schools, no longer have any police. And there are no officers in elementary schools.

The hearing was called after reports emerged of migrants sleeping upright on buses and digging food out of trash at the city’s landing zone, as well as unsanitary conditions at one of the city’s 28 shelters in Pilsen where a 5-year-old died in December. Aldermen have limited access to the shelters themselves, and must give 48 hours’ notice before a visit. The press is also barred from entering shelters or the landing zone.

In total, 96 students and 57 Ukrainian refugees – nearly half of the students at St. Nicholas Cathedral School – depend on the scholarships. The loss of the scholarship program is fording the archdiocese to close two other schools in Chicago.

“We’ve heard reports of inadequate food, bedbug, and rodent infestation, a lack of containment for infectious diseases, and failures to provide treatment for medical conditions,” said Ald. Andre Vazquez. “We’re always going to have concerns about what the treatment is at the landing zone and at the shelter. I think baseline, we’re getting limited information on what that looks like.”

The team has long said they need what they called property tax “certainty” in order to put shovels in the ground, hoping to build a multi-billion dollar stadium district with restaurants, stores, residential real estate and more. If they don’t come to an agreement, the Board of Review will rule on the dispute near the end of February, Commissioner Samantha Steele said.

The coalition whose permit was rejected includes groups like Chicago for Abortion Rights, Stop Trans Genocide, Gay Liberation Network, Reproductive Transparency Now! and more. The groups say, for years, Democrats have taken voters who care about reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights for granted.

“A third of assaults, a third of battery and theft and carjackings,” said Ald. Stephanie Coleman, chair of the Chicago Aldermanic Black Caucus. Coleman is calling for the expansion of a Chicago City Council Gender-Based Violence Task Force – with a dedication to preventing violence against Black women in Chicago – including a call for Chicago Police officers focused specifically on Black women who are victims of crime.

Chicago real estate firm R2 has purchased a Michigan Avenue office tower for about half the price it sold for just more than six years ago, the latest in a series of recent sales showing how badly remote work and higher interest rates have hurt downtown office property values.

Niles Mayor George Alpogianis responded to a public commenter from Northbrook, “When we start taking care of our veterans first and getting them out of their tents, all the homeless veterans that we have, damn right we’ll help anybody. We gotta help our own people first, our veterans.” Some members from the audience clapped after Alpogianis spoke.

At around a dozen high schools across the city Tuesday, hundreds of Chicago Public Schools students have planned walkouts to demand their aldermen vote in favor of a cease-fire resolution scheduled for City Council Wednesday. Layth Awd, an alumnus of Lincoln Park High School, said the goal of the walkout was to put aldermen on notice that “we’re watching their actions…If they want the youth to vote for them in the next election, they should stand with the cease-fire (resolution).”

The study reveals that Chicago is ranked the fifth worst city for traffic, shedding light on travel time, cost and CO2 emissions. The study notably indicates that the average travel time to cover 10 kilometers in Chicago is 17 minutes and 50 seconds, showing a slight improvement of 10 seconds compared to the previous year.

The taxpayer cost to care for the migrants is about $1.5 million per day. Mayor Brandon Johnson said that money has gone to housing, health care and meals. “Partners at the State and federal levels have coordinated 17 legal clinics since November, aiding over 2,700 eligible shelter residents in applying for work authorization,” according to a press release from the City of Chicago.

CPS officials said it used federal dollars to help expand pre-K — and sustain it — because it didn’t have enough state funding to do so, and creating more seats was a district priority. Since July 1, 2020, Chicago Public Schools had spent close to $700 million on pre-K programs through the end of last school year, including new summer initiatives and programs for children under the age of 3, according to district budget records. It has budgeted another $262.7 million for this fiscal year.

Police Supt. Larry Snelling vowed to rein in overtime spending after he was confirmed last September, and said this latest move gives commanders and deputy chiefs more autonomy and leeway to decide “the best way” to use that money. But with the Democratic National Convention looming and just $100 million budgeted for overtime, managing that pool of cash will likely prove difficult.