“He’s brought stability to the Chicago Public Schools, particularly to neighborhoods that need stability,” Ald. Matt O’Shea said. “I think this would be a tremendous setback. I hope it’s just a rumor.” CEO Pedro Martinez, a holdover from the Lightfoot administration, has two years remaining on his contract.

More than 30 courtrooms – including one that hadn’t been used in years – have been cleared specifically to handle possible mass arrests during the DNC, as officials anticipate as many as 30,000 pro-Palestinian protesters. Criminal jury trials have also been cleared for the week of the DNC, and criminal judges from other divisions of Cook County have been asked to clear their calendars in case they need to be called into action to help process those arrested.

The stats show why so many of Chicago’s public school teachers have put their children in private schools: just 1-in-4 Chicago Public Schools students in third through eighth grade could read at grade level in 2023; by 11th grade even fewer students could meet grade-level reading standards.

“Our Blue Carpet will be an exciting opportunity for creators and media alike to connect with delegates, leaders and surrogates and bring the stories of the Democratic Party to the American people, wherever they’re tuning in from,” said Nora Keefe, Democratic National Convention Committee Director of Surrogate Communications.

“Johnson’s anti-border policies have received pushback from Chicago residents and city council meetings on the subject have faced protests from angry citizens wondering why their needs are being ignored in favor of illegal aliens,” the Immigration Reform Law Institute wrote of the mayor.

Dolton Deputy Police Chief Lewis Lacey is the second Dolton official to be charged in federal court with bankruptcy fraud in recent months. Dolton Village Administrator Keith Freeman was also indicted on that charge in April.

Adding to the convention-specific security concerns for the CTA will likely be a desire to promote safety, and the appearance of safety, with the country’s eyes on Chicago during the event. At the end of 2023, the Tribune found the rate of violent crime on trains was dropping but remained above prepandemic levels

“More people in the city is a good thing,” Elliot Richardson, president of the nonprofit Small Business Advocacy Council, said. “But chaos and uncertainty is never good for small business.”

In a pair of rejections of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s ideas last month, CEO Pedro Martinez refused to take on a pension payment that Johnson had insisted be paid by the school district and opposed a City Hall request that CPS take out a short-term, high-interest loan to cover the payment and a new CTU contract. Tuesday, Martinez’s administration publicly painted the union’s contract proposals as unaffordable and warned they would plunge the district into a $2.9 billion deficit next year.

Four times in the past nine months, protesters have shut down traffic in either downtown Chicago or in other areas around the city. “The only role we see from the police is to not infringe on our rights to protest,” Faayani Aboma Mijana, a coalition spokesman and member of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said.

“It’s a story of the first term of the Obama presidency, but it does not adhere particularly to history or reality.”

When Kamala Harris ran for president in 2019, her Illinois supporters were the best organized in the state.

Union President Stacy Davis Gates told reporters, “The price tag is opportunity for Black children, immigrant children, and Latine children.” She said she plans to end the fight for funding with this contract, “come hell or high water, and I don’t give a damn who pay.”

Chicago Public Schools officials said Tuesday that the Chicago Teachers Union’s contract proposals would result in a deficit of at least $2.9 billion for the 2025-26 school year, a hole more than five times the current projection and growing as large as $4 billion by 2028. The union pointed to revenue initiatives that the city and state could explore, like more heavily taxing millionaires and corporations — which would require changes to state law — or seeking federal funding for school building improvements.

For Michael Thanasouras, managing director of SVN Chicago Commercial, the uncertainty of transportation convinced the company to close the office during the convention. Executives weighed the prospects of a presidential motorcade blocking streets just as employees want to head home for the evening, of an employee who needed to leave for an emergency but was trapped by closed roads, and longer-than-usual commute times. The DNC is one more hiccup for efforts to boost downtown momentum, after the pandemic roiled traditional office work patterns, he said.