Ald. David Moore plans to camp out on 73rd Place between Ada Street and Racine Avenue for the “next few weeks” in an effort to shut down “an open air drug market” that he said has been tied to at least three recent homicides.

As of Friday, only 6,649 people were staying in city shelters. Capacity is more than double that. The city admits it is not asking migrants where they will go next if they leave the shelter system.

The Chicago City Council has approved bond deals to fund airport expansion and downtown redevelopment. “As we continue to invest in our airports and create opportunities, we will ensure all of Chicago’s residents can benefit from these projects. It’s my vision for all of our investments,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.

“Much about what is wrong with the Chicago Teachers Union’s approach to education can be seen at two schools within blocks on Chicago’s West Side, Manley High School and Chicago Hope Academy. The Chicago Public Schools institution is chronically under-enrolled and underperforming. The private parochial school has a long wait list and a 100% college acceptance rate.”

Line items approved, according to the city’s agenda packet, include three payments to the Sheraton Hotel in New Orleans of $930 each made last November that Ald. James Patton said should not have been paid by the city. He also questioned numerous smaller charges, such as $410 spent at Chicago Cut Steakhouse and $200 spent at Hooters within a four-day period in January.

While the math proficiency rates inched up, the percentage of students who are proficient still lags behind pre-pandemic levels.

Eighteen people died while incarcerated at the jail in 2023, the most deaths at the jail since 2013, when the daily population was twice as high. A review of thousands of pages of internal jail records, police investigations, and autopsy reports found inadequate supervision and medical care preceded at least half of those deaths, almost all of which have gone unpunished.

Cook County has devoted $44 million in federal American Rescue Plan tax funds to behavioral health grants. The money is going to 53 organizations as part of the county’s Stronger Together Initiative, which aims to address behavioral health inequities.

Douglass Academy High School spends $68,091 per student compared to the district’s average of $18,287. The most recent test data available shows no 11th grade students could read or perform math at grade level on the SAT in the 2021-2022 school year, and 86 percent of tested students scored in the lowest proficiency level for reading. The school also experiences an absenteeism problem.

“If we’re not compelling people [who run the district] and requiring them to think differently about the world that we’re living in today — versus the world that we were living in five years ago — they’re not going to just figure it out by themselves,” union president Stacy Davis Gates said. The union’s demands will hold the district accountable to its goals, she said, while using its power to compel more action. That’s especially important, she added, to a union that’s mostly female and facing a power structure that’s dominated by white men.

City officials said the pressures, which also include the end of pandemic-era support from the federal and state governments, would have been worse if it hadn’t been for an increase in shelter capacity.

Said Ald. Andre Vasquez, chair of the City Council Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, “The part that to me is puzzling is the governor, the mayor, and the Cook County Board president had an agreement on 15,000 beds throughout the end of the year—or at least even until the DNC.”

Pastor Jonathan Johnson was in disbelief when he was told his church would need to register for a business license. “It was almost $700. I said, where did this come from? We are federally and state exempt from taxes,” said Johnson, “and I really do feel like it’s more of a dictatorship here in the city of Harvey at this point.” One alderman wants the State of Illinois to get involved.