“The eyes of the world are going to be centered on” the convention, says Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who says Russian has long sought “to exploit our divisions.” “There’s going to be protests, and I think that’s sort of red meat to Russian intelligence services.”

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the school’s financial situation. When the stay-at-home order was in effect and students had to learn remotely beginning in the fall of 2020, Columbia College was hit especially hard – as the school’s academic and creative focuses are difficult to replicate online, the report said. In-person learning resumed in 2021, but safety restrictions were not completely dropped until the spring 2023 semester – and both student recruitment and retention suffered, the report said.

The decision likely sets up a legal battle in the state’s appeals court, with the company contending in a Thursday statement that the work that the ICC disallowed is required to comply with federal safety requirements and that it will appeal the decision.

“We need change. Someone in Chicago needs to step up,” the store’s management posted to social media. “Small businesses are struggling with rising taxes, food costs, and labor expenses. We keep seeing our taxes go up, but where does that money really go?”

Most of the encampments were at private schools in the Chicago area — with the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute, and DePaul University in the city; and Northwestern University in north suburban Evanston. Downstate, there were encampments at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Illinois State University, both public state schools.

Gov. JB Pritzker has been at odds with Johnson, and, in the end, the governor and legislature didn’t agree to the district’s requests for more funding. Pritzker said, “The city of Chicago is 20% of the population of the state. So we have a lot of other people, a lot of other kids across the state going to school. We need to fund their schools better, too.”

“Post-COVID, the avenue has perked up, and I have come to appreciate its mix of characters and activity — and its reminder of Chicago’s intractable problems: homelessness, mental illness, a preposterously wide income gap.”

But the plan — which will cost between $1.1 million and $3.5 million per year — isn’t slated to clear its first shovel-full of snow until the winter of 2025-26, and must be approved and funded by the Chicago City Council.

Chicagoans think the Chicago Public Schools district is doing a lackluster job, with over half giving it a “C” grade in a poll by Public Agenda, a national, nonpartisan research organization. Only 3 percent of Chicagoans think CPS deserves a grade of A.

“The Chicago Teachers Union is urging lawmakers to continue to protect the centralized command structure that allocates only 57 percent of the roughly $30,000 the district spends per pupil to local schools. While much of the remainder provides for citywide services like school psychologists, social workers, engineers, and custodians, it also finances the central administration bureaucracy and the latest district-wide programs and initiatives. This antiquated model gives maximum power to restrictive teachers’ union agreements that severely limit the use of the dollars allocated to local schools.”

One Chicago Democrat who has resisted the mayor is state Rep. Margaret Croke, lead sponsor of the bill that originally set a moratorium on closing selective enrollment schools but later expanded to include all CPS schools. “Him as well as his team should probably rethink how they want to approach the General Assembly … if he wants to achieve his campaign promises,” Croke said. “They’re acting as if they were given a mandate.”

“It will take new programs and strategies that protect and support the family, that discourage teen pregnancies and address the child-rearing needs of out-of-wedlock teens to turn the tide. Cradle to the Classroom is a program that can be transformational. I supported it when I was CEO of Chicago Public Schools.”