The iconic space housing the Signature Room restaurant toward the top of the former John Hancock Center has been put on the market.
Real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield has been retained to sell the 26,168-square-foot property at 875 North Michigan Avenue, including the Signature Room restaurant on the 95th floor and the Signature Lounge situated on the 96th floor, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. While the property is listed on the firm’s website, an asking price hasn’t been posted.
Known for offering upscale dining and contemporary American cuisine, the Signature Room has received numerous accolades since its inception in 1993, according to its website. It’s unclear why the owner has decided to sell the property.
The first of two rounds of potentially severe storms is “quickly approaching” the Chicago area, with destructive winds up to 75 miles-per-hour, damaging hail, thunderstorms and tornadoes all threatening the entire region.
Much of the area, particularly the southern and western suburbs along with portions of northwest Indiana, are now under a moderate risk for severe weather threats, meaning widespread severe storms are likely. The moderate threat level is the fourth of five-scale system from the Storm Prediction Center.
Previously, the threat level was at enhanced risk which is the third level on the system.
Additionally, the National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch to the west, NBC 5 Meteorologist Iisha Scott reports.
However, as the fast-moving storms quickly approach, that would could extend to the east, or turn into a warning.
Here’s a breakdown of the differences between the two.
Watches
A watch is issued when conditions are such that a severe weather event, such as a severe thunderstorm, a tornado or a winter event like a blizzard, is possible.
Watches tend to be widespread over large areas, as the NWS uses them when the forecasted movement and location of a storm system is still uncertain.
When watches are issued, residents are urged to keep an eye on the forecast, and to prepare for the possibility of severe weather, taking extra precautions as needed.
Warnings
A warning is issued when a severe weather event is actively taking place. That can include a severe thunderstorm or a tornado, whether that tornado has been observed by trained weather spotters or has appeared as rotation on Doppler radar.
In the event of a warning, residents are urged to take shelter immediately, preferably in an interior room of a structure or in the basement if possible.
Jonathan Toews will return to the Blackhawks’ lineup Saturday against the Devils.
Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images
Jonathan Toews will indeed wear a Blackhawks jersey in a game again this season. In fact, he will do so Saturday.
Just four days after returning to practice, the Hawks’ captain will be in the lineup against the Devils at the United Center — much sooner than expected. It’s now possible he could make as many as seven appearances (including two more at home after Saturday) before the season ends March 13.
“He’s like, ‘Well, it’s not going to be perfect. It might be ugly,’” Hawks coach Luke Richardson said. “I said, We’re a little bit ugly right now, so you’ll fit.’
“He’s such a veteran, he knows what he can handle. I don’t think he would touch it if it was something he couldn’t handle. So you trust that about him. He has really high expectations when he plays on himself and the team, which is great. That’s why he’s the captain.”
Toews said Tuesday he has felt improvement — albeit painstakingly slow improvement — since his health issues became so dire after his last appearance Jan. 28 that he needed to take a leave of absence from the team. He has missed 27 consecutive games since.
Toews then said Friday he has felt further improvement since Tuesday, when he rejoined the team after a few days of skating on his own.
“Not only have things progressed for me on the health side, but just being on the ice and being in a few practices was always going to be an adjustment when you’ve had a month or two off,” he said. “It’s nice to get those practices under my belt and feel like I’m getting better day-by-day.
“The recovery aspect was always pretty hard because...when your immune system is always firing off, you feel that inflammation 10 times more than you would normally. It makes every little thing much more difficult. That’s getting a lot better. Everything is seeming to calm down at this point.”
He alluded Tuesday to these coming weeks potentially being his last as a Hawk — due to his expiring contract this summer — but he said Friday he’s nowhere near making a long-term decision about whether or not to retire this summer.
“I haven’t gotten too far down that rabbit hole,” he said. “But I would imagine the thought is, ‘When you remember how long and hard a season can be, you know if you either got it or you don’t.’
“I don’t feel like, with what I’ve been through this year and this past season, that I have enough clarity on what that decision will be. I’m just doing my best every day to get healthy and get back into a good place mentally and physically. I think either that decision will be clear for me this summer, or it’ll be a situation where I’m really feeling good...ready to train and prepare to get myself to a place where I can play high-level hockey again.”
This story will be updated.
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The best player in the country against the best team in the country.
Caitlin Clark and the No. 2 Iowa Hawkeyes will meet Aliyah Boston and the undefeated No. 1 South Carolina Gamecocks in the 2023 women’s NCAA Tournament Final Four.
The highly anticipated showdown will come just days after Clark was named AP Player of the Year over Boston, who won the award last season.
Clark powered the Hawkeyes to their first Final Four trip since 1993 with a historic performance. The junior guard tallied the first 40-point triple-double in March Madness history against No. 5 Louisville. And it may take another historic performance from Clark for Iowa to reach its first ever national championship game.
That’s because the Hawkeyes are up against a program that hasn’t been beaten since March of last year. Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks are a perfect 36-0 this year as they eye a second straight national title. Just five of their 36 games have been decided by single digits in what’s been a dominant title defense.
Can Clark and Co. dethrone the defending champs? Or will Boston and Co. take one more step toward perfection? Here’s what to know ahead of the Final Four heavyweight battle.
Where is the 2023 women’s Final Four?
The women’s Final Four is being held in Dallas at American Airlines Arena, home of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.
When is the Iowa vs. South Carolina Final Four game?
The Iowa-South Carolina game is set for Friday, March 31.
What time does the Iowa vs. South Carolina game start?
Tipoff from American Airlines Center is scheduled for 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT.
What TV channel is the Iowa vs. South Carolina game on?
ESPN will air the women’s Final Four games.
How to stream the Iowa vs. South Carolina game
You can also stream the hoops action on ESPN.com and the ESPN app.
When is the women’s national championship game?
The winner of Iowa-South Carolina will face the winner of No. 1 LSU-No. 3 Virginia Tech in the national title game on Sunday.
Bail was denied Thursday for a man and a woman charged with a fatal shooting in June of 2022 on the West Side.
Glenn Bland, 38, and Adrianna Vanzant, 18, “subleased” a rental car from someone, and four days later used it to follow the victim to the 5200 block of West Kamerling Avenue where they opened fire, prosecutors said in bond court Thursday.
The man, Laron Powell, 42, was shot in his head and pronounced dead days later, according to Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Nine 9mm shell casings and two 40-caliber casings were recovered at the scene, according to prosecutors
The pair’s rented Nissan SUV was seen on surveillance camera fleeing the scene and was also captured on tollway cameras as it headed to the suburbs. The pair's cellphone data also tracked with each other and the Nissan, prosecutors said.
Two days later, Bland returned the Nissan to the person who had rented it, prosecutors said. Police recovered the car about eight days later and found three 40-caliber shell casings from the windshield area on the driver's side — fired from the same gun as the casings found on the scene, according to prosecutors.
Vanzant is being held in Cook County Jail for allegedly killing a person a few weeks later, on June 22, 2022, at a gas station in Oak Park. Vanzant was captured on video shooting at the victim, and 9mm shell casings recovered at the scene matched those used in the earlier shooting, prosecutors said.
Bland was out on bail for a May 2022 attempted murder charge. He appeared before the same Judge — Charles Beach — when he was arrested for that case in August.
Bland owns a company called Elite Rich entertainment. His criminal background includes charges of armed robbery, rape and battery.
“Those are all indicators to me of a history of violence. I do believe he is a danger to the community,” Beach said. “I held him without bail in August, and I am going to hold him without bail today.”
Vanzant was a minor at the time of the alleged murders and has no other criminal background. She undergoes treatment for bipolar disorder, according to her attorney.
Vanzant was also ordered held without bail.
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A small plane crashed near a central Illinois church filled with worshippers, injuring two men who were aboard the aircraft, authorities said.
The single-engine Piper Cherokee Six crashed Wednesday night in the parking lot of Open Arms Christian Fellowship in Lincoln, coming to rest nose-down in a landscaped area with its left wing sheared off and other damage.
Two men who were the only people aboard the plane were taken to a Springfield hospital for treatment for injuries not considered life-threatening, The (Bloomington) Pantagraph reported.
Clyde Zellers, principal avionics inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration in Springfield, said the plane came down about a quarter-mile (.40 kilometer) from the Logan County Airport while trying to approach. He said the crash remained under investigation.
The plane crashed about 7:30 p.m. CDT as about 100 to 150 people were inside the Open Arms Christian Fellowship, a nondenominational Christian church, attending regular Wednesday evening services for its children’s ministry and some adult ministries, the church’s co-lead pastor, the Rev. Larry Crawford, said.
No one inside the church was injured and church property suffered minimal property damage, he said.
“Honestly, it’s a miracle of God,” Crawford said.
Lincoln is located in Logan County about 34 miles (55 kilometers) northeast of Springfield.
White Sox general manager Rick Hahn talks about spring training and the expectations for 2023 at Minute Maid Park on Wednesday.
Chicago White Sox
HOUSTON — Manager Pedro Grifol recently told reporters he was too immersed in spring training to even care about the White Sox’ April schedule.
“I can’t tell you who we play past Pittsburgh [next weekend],” Grifol said. “I can’t, I don’t even know. I know we got Houston, San Francisco [at home next week], Pittsburgh. Right? I don’t know who we got after that. I have no idea.”
Chances are, Grifol has looked it over by now. And it doesn’t look easy. And it starts with the World Series champion Astros, who clobbered the Sox in the postseason two years ago. It’s a four-game series, too, starting with the season opener Thursday (6:08 p.m., ESPN, 1000-AM) at loud and louder Minute Maid Park with a national TV audience watching.
And so the Sox, bent on washing away the distaste of a .500 season that no one wanted to watch in 2022, turn the page under the new management of Grifol, getting put to the test right away. It’s almost like taking a final exam the first week of class when everyone else is taking a quiz.
“Look, we have a tough April,” general manager Rick Hahn said Wednesday after the Sox participated in an optional workout at empty, quiet — for now — Minute Maid. “We have the defending champs now to start. This is obviously a very tough place to play for anyone. We have the National League champs [Phillies April 17-19] and we also go to Tampa and Toronto, which are tough places to play. Honestly, we all view that as a big positive because right off the bat we’re going to be challenged. We’re going to be tested.”
Small sample sizes and knee-jerk reactions being what they are, the difference between going 3-1 or 1-3 against the Astros will be huge. The Sox won’t say it, but they’d probably take 2-2 right now.
“The more important thing is how competitive we are here on a nightly basis,” Hahn said.
But feeling confident the process under Grifol worked in spring training, with focused and energetic players buying in and strategic decisions “where we need them to be,” allows Hahn to eagerly look forward to seeing what it looks like right away.
Hahn said the Sox’ expectations for 2023 are “extremely high.”
“We know what this team is capable of doing,” he said. “We know we have something to prove. Last year . . . maybe [there] was a thought that if you just throw the bats and balls out there, we’ll still win this division. Now there’s a bunch of guys in there with chips on their shoulders.”
That chairman Jerry Reinsdorf was on board with eating sunk cost by letting go of Leury Garcia and the $11 million owed him over the next two seasons was appreciated by Hahn, who said it underscored Reinsdorf’s desire to win.
Reinsdorf and the front office did not, however, have a desire to bring back Jose Abreu, who, at 36, signed with the Astros for three years and $58 million.
“It’s like seeing Jordan in a Wizards uniform,” Hahn said. “It still looks weird to me to this day.”
The page has been turned. The lineup had minor injury concerns late in camp with first baseman Andrew Vaughn, Abreu’s replacement, and third baseman Yoan Moncada having lower-back issues. But they are ready.
Dylan Cease, second in Cy Young voting, pitches against Houston’s Framber Valdez (fifth in voting), whose left-handedness probably delays the anticipated starting debut of rookie right fielder Oscar Colas for a day.
“We have to control what we can control,” Grifol said. “And that’s getting prepared to play [Thursday] night. You can’t win a championship in the spring, but you can certainly lose one. And I’ll say this now: You can’t win a championship in April, but you can certainly lose one.”
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Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson have both said they want an empowered, independent and energized City Council to be their partner in solving Chicago’s enormous challenges.
That’s what they’ll get, at a cost of millions, thanks to a committee expansion driven by the need to guarantee enough votes to ensure passage.
Amid charges of vote “buying” and “corruption,” the lame-duck Council on Thursday voted 34-to-10 and 33-to-11 to ratify a plan hatched by three of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s closest allies. The plan will increase the number of City Council committees from 19 to 28 and change the rules to, among other things, limit direct introductions and reduce committee membership.
The plan does not identify where the $2.5 million-plus needed annually to bankroll the nine new committees will come from.
The roster of committee chairs conspicuously excludes Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), the 24-year-veteran who is the Council’s second-most senior member.
Beale was a voice in the wilderness over the last four years, pleading with his colleagues to end what he called the “dictatorship” under Lightfoot. He claims to have been left out because he made only one request: to chair the Finance Committee, a post Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) retains in the new line-up.
Also absent from the new leadership team were two other veteran alderpersons who have joined Beale in endorsing Vallas: Anthony Hopkins (2nd) and Ray Lopez (15th).
Beale, Hopkins and Lopez let their colleagues have it.
“I am embarrassed to be a Chicagoan today,” Beale said.
“I’ve never seen a process to buy votes such as this. I’ve never seen a process to create 28 committees to buy votes such as today,” he added. “You all should be embarrassed to call yourselves elected officials to try to ram this through,” when they allowed Lightfoot to run roughshod over the Council for four years.
“This is not independence. This is a corrupt process run by the same corrupt people who ran the remap process. You should be ashamed of yourselves. … I don’t know how y’all sleep at night.”
Beale said he didn’t care about being a chairman, but he questioned the decision to give someone who’s been here two months and “doesn’t even know where the bathroom is” a committee to chair just “to buy votes.”
Hopkins asked why the council is acting five days before the election to deny incoming Council members and the newly-elected mayor the input they deserve.
“This is unprecedented and unfair. … It has never happened in the city’s history…Bathhouse John and Hinky-Dink Kenna didn’t come up with this,” Hopkins said referring to two of Chicago’s most notoriously corrupt alderpersons.
Lopez accused his colleagues of “trying to subvert the next mayor, put that person behind the eight-ball and set them up for failure” because neither Johnson nor Vallas has weighed in on the leadership team.
“You want an independent City Council? Then start with the next one that is duly elected,” Lopez said.
Ald. David Moore (17th) said he could have had a committee to chair, but refused to go along with a closed-door process that “trampled over democracy.”
“You can’t buy me. I ain’t got no price. I ain’t no prostitute,” Moore said.
“You don’t go behind closed doors and increase it to 28 committee. We’re in a financial bind as it is. Come on, y’all. Open it up. The people who put this stuff together cannot because it was about self-interest.”
Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) countered that the process that produced a line-up that anointed him Housing Committee chair was “fair and collaborative.”
Ald, Marty Quinn (13th), chief political operative for indicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), will chair the newly-created Committee on Executive Appointments.
Quinn said he was “proud to be part of this historic day.”
“It’s been a long time in the making. But we came together and seized it. We came up with a fair and equitable plan for the most diverse leadership in Chicago history. A lot of people didn’t think we could pull this off. I’m happy we proved them wrong,” Quinn said.
Waguespack, who spearheaded the reorganization, argued the nine new committees would allow the Council to get “new input from Latinas” and enable alderpersons to “focus on areas neglected that haven’t gotten he attention they deserve.”
To those who say 28 committees is too many, Waguespack noted New York City has 51 members and 38 committees.
“We’re asserting independence that’s been asked for by many for years. … We’re increasing independence and minimizing mayoral influence,” Waguespack said.
The Better Government Association and the League of Women Voters have long urged the City Council to shed its rubber stamp reputation and take back the power they have ceded to the mayor to dictate the committees lineup and chairs.
But neither watchdog group liked how Lightfoot’s allies went about it — particularly the proposal to ram the changes through in the curent Council and increase the number of committees from 19 to 28 to divvy up the spoils, appease a majority and ensure at least 26 votes, so it would pass.
Prior to the final vote, both groups reiterated that Chicago taxpayers already spend more than $5 million a year on City Council staffing, nearly all of it on committees, some of which have “rarely met during the past four years.”
Staffing hiring and responsibilities are left to the discretion of committee chairs, creating “resource disparities” between members that fuel an “ongoing perception of leadership as a `perk’ rather than an administrative responsibility.”
“Adding more committees without reforming Council’s staffing structure is a recipe for corruption and waste,” the groups have said.
Both groups also questioned the proposal to reduce the “maximum size” of most committees from 20 alderpersons to 11.
With a “minimum quorum,” that would allow legislation to be passed out of committee with only a handful of votes.
A federal judge in Texas who previously ruled to dismantle the Affordable Care Act struck down a narrower but key part of the nation’s health law Thursday in a decision that opponents say could jeopardize preventive screenings for millions of Americans.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor comes more than four years after he ruled that the health care law, sometimes called “Obamacare,” was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned that decision.
His latest ruling is likely to start another lengthy court battle: O’Connor blocked the requirement that most insurers cover some preventive care such as cancer screenings, siding with plaintiffs who include a conservative activist in Texas and a Christian dentist who opposed mandatory coverage for contraception and an HIV prevention treatment on religious grounds.
O’Connor wrote in his opinion that recommendations for preventive care by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force were “unlawful.”
The Biden administration had told the court that the outcome of the case “could create extraordinary upheaval in the United States’ public health system.” It is likely to appeal.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the ruling.
In September, O’Connor ruled that required coverage of the HIV prevention treatment known as PrEP, which is a pill taken daily to prevent infection, violated the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs. That decision also undercut the broader system that determines which preventive drugs are covered in the U.S., ruling that a federal task force that recommends coverage of preventive treatments is unconstitutional.
Employers’ religious objections have been a sticking point in past challenges to former President Barack Obama’s health care law, including over contraception.
The Biden administration and more than 20 states, mostly controlled by Democrats, had urged O’Connor against a sweeping ruling that would do away with the preventive care coverage requirement entirely.
“Over the last decade, millions of Americans have relied on the preventive services provisions to obtain no-cost preventive care, improving not only their own health and welfare, but public health outcomes more broadly,” the states argued in a court filing.
The lawsuit is among the attempts by conservatives to chip away at the Affordable Care Act — or wipe it out entirely — since it was signed into law in 2010. The attorney who filed the suit was an architect of the Texas abortion law that was the nation’s strictest before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June and allowed states to ban the procedure.
Purdue University enacted a ban on TikTok on the school’s Wi-Fi network, citing privacy concerns as the social media giant faces increased scrutiny from state and federal government officials, according to The Purdue Exponent, the school’s student newspaper.
According to The Exponent, an official from the university said that TikTok’s history of “algorithmic censorship of free speech” was one of the deciding factors behind the ban.
The report says that students are unable to access TikTok on both the mobile app as well as TikTok’s official website.
The school elaborated that TikTok has “overly invasive” privacy and use agreements that compromise the safety of users’ data, according to The Exponent.
A spokesperson for the university told The Exponent that students are still able to access both the TikTok app and website when they are not connected to a school network.
According to The Exponent, the move follows the removal of Purdue’s university-affiliated TikTok accounts earlier this year.
Chicago mayoral candidates Brandon Johnson (left) and Paul Vallas offer very different plans for Chicago Public Schools.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times file photo
Chicago Public Schools’ next chapter hangs on the result of the April 4 mayoral runoff election between two candidates boasting unusually strong ties to public education — and diametrically opposed ideas for schools.
Paul Vallas plans drastic changes to CPS structure, bolstering principals and local leaders’ power over spending and programming — and even the ability to let a charter school take over their campus. He would prioritize standardized testing and make it easier to hold students back a grade so they don’t graduate without necessary reading and math skills.
“We should be running districts of schools, not school districts,” Vallas said. “I really believe in radical decentralization.”
Brandon Johnson would rather the school district’s central office end per-pupil funding and guarantee a baseline of resources for every school — such as art teachers, social workers and librarians. This would reduce the role enrollment plays in whether a school can afford staff and, he says, help ensure every neighborhood can offer a quality education. He would focus on addressing poverty and trauma.
“We need to overhaul the CPS funding formula so that we’re fully funding every single public school,” Johnson said. “That’s the norm, that’s the baseline. Our people deserve that.”
Public education advocates worry Vallas’ plans would create a stratified school system of winners and losers. Budget watchdogs wonder where Johnson will find money to fund his plan.
The next mayor will have to grapple with an expected $600 million deficit, as well as the end of a moratorium on school closings and a new teachers contract. The first school board elections are soon after.
Spending
Vallas, 69, says his plans are predicated on changing how CPS spends the money it has rather than securing more.
The CPS CEO from 1995 to 2001, Vallas says “money should follow the students” as part of a market-driven approach to education in which funding is allocated per student and schools compete for kids. He argues this arrangement ensures quality in every school.
It’s a model that has promoted charter schools, which are privately run but publicly funded, and selective-enrollment and magnet programs in traditional public schools. CPS has moved away from that funding approach — called student-based budgeting — in recent years because disparities grew over time. As students flocked to one specialty school or another — and as population declined in some areas — neighborhood schools entered a cycle in which they lost enrollment and subsequently lost funding. That meant many buildings across the city could no longer afford basics like art classes, a nurse, a social worker or a librarian.
Vallas also wants to create a city school voucher program, mandating CPS spend millions in public dollars to send students to private schools. A state tax credit scholarship program already exists to help kids from low-income families attend private schools that Vallas supports.
A key tenet of Vallas’ education platform is pushing decisions down to principals and elected local school councils.
LSC election turnout has been low over the years, and CPS has at times struggled to even recruit candidates to run. Many LSCs don’t have enough members to function.
Daniel Anello, executive director of Kids First Chicago, a business-supported nonprofit organization, said local decision-making would be a welcome change to the parents he supports and would prove most effective for serving families. But that switch can’t be flipped overnight — it would take money and time to equip LSCs with expertise.
Johnson, 47, says he would take an approach more in line with recent changes by CPS officials.
He would focus on beefing up traditional neighborhood schools in an effort to end the “Hunger Games scenario” where kids “apply to access a quality school.” That includes fully staffed special education departments, librarians, art and music teachers and nurses and social workers, he said.
Some have wondered whether Johnson would do away with selective-enrollment and magnet schools altogether — a move that would likely anger many middle-class families who the city has tried to prevent from moving to the suburbs. Johnson has denied that’s the case.
Under the current CPS budgeting system, schools often have to choose between which positions they can afford. But given CPS’ impending budget predicament, Johnson would have trouble funding current staffing levels, let alone increasing positions.
Test scores
CPS has gone through a long journey over the last two decades on school ratings and reform, ditching punitive systems that advocates, including Johnson, have criticized.
Rating systems have taken into account test scores, academic growth, attendance and graduation rates, but not students’ external stressors, like poverty. Poor ratings have then amounted to a scarlet letter used to criticize — and sometimes close — schools which were often under-resourced.
Johnson says qualitative measurements like in-class observation, game-based assessments and online programs that track math and language assignments over time say more about a student than standardized test responses.
The Board of Education is set to vote on a new accountability system in April that adds social emotional learning to the considerations and “takes a more holistic approach to what education is and can be,” said board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland. Around 20,000 students, parents, teachers, principals and advocates weighed in throughout the development of the system.
“[We’re] really turning the page,” Todd-Breland said, “to a new framework and approach to thinking about what continuous improvement looks like for the district.”
Vallas has a radically different view on accountability and says he would once again make test scores the barometer for how schools and students are judged. He points to low scores among Black and Latino students as reasons for reform, calling them “system failure.”
“Whether it’s probation or whatever. … Should we not identify and do something about those schools?” Vallas asked. “Whether probation was a cruder term 25, 30 years ago, maybe there’s a gentler term. But should those schools not be identified and flagged for special intervention?
“I think parents want high standards. I think parents want accountability,” said Vallas.
Anello said he thinks measurement is “incredibly important” to understanding where educational gaps exist, and he doesn’t want to see a candidate remove metrics altogether — but “holding the district accountable for providing the resources” is just as vital.
“You can’t measure something and then punish someone for not getting to where you want them to be without providing the resources to then help them get there,” Anello said. “And I think, historically, accountability has been designed in a way that hasn’t really taken into account or helped schools that are struggling.”
Vallas has also decried so-called “social promotion,” which sends kids to the next grade whether or not they’ve learned the necessary material so they can stay with kids their age.
“Social promotion has been a cancer that has undermined the quality of public education,” Vallas said.
The University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research has found retaining kids because of poor test scores is more harmful than helpful to Black and Latino students. Studies have also shown retention could increase the chances a student drops out.
Funding
In the background of these plans is the fact that CPS only has 75% of the state and local funding it needs to adequately serve its students, according to state officials, leaving CPS about $1.4 billion short. That calculation takes into account poverty rates and other factors affecting kids’ educational experiences.
Add to that the pending loss of CPS’ federal pandemic relief funding in 2025, and it leaves a projected deficit of more than $600 million in 2025, officials said. Leaders at CPS, the Board of Education and the Chicago Teachers Union, along with fiscal experts, all say any plan to address the district’s problems must start with more funding.
“A lot of the really difficult decisions ahead around capacity and enrollment and accountability … all of those things require resources. And when you’re operating on 75 cents on the dollar in terms of funding, and you’re asking people to do 100% of the work, it’s really, really a hard ask,” Anello said.
The Civic Federation, which analyzes the CPS budget, has been critical that CPS has boosted staff while the number of students has decreased.
“It’s really important that CPS and all of its stakeholders work together to come up with some kind of a plan in order to close that gap well ahead of time before it turns into a crisis,” said Sarah Wetmore, acting president of the federation. She said a plan should include cuts to show taxpayers the district is trying to “live within its means.”
Vallas said the district’s central office is bloated. He maintains CPS has enough money to serve its students, claiming the school system is spending $30,000 per student.
That’s only partially true. The CPS budget this year is $9.4 billion — and it’s true only 69% of that money ($6.5 billion) is directly funding schools. But of the remainder: $1 billion is funding pensions; $762 million is paying off debt; and $645 million is funding building and renovation costs — all expenses that don’t burden other Illinois districts because the state helps cover them. A total of $400 million funds the central and regional offices — 4% of the overall budget.
Johnson has talked about looking for efficiencies, but he insists the state must step up to provide more money. For decades, every school leader has pledged to boost state spending for CPS, usually unsuccessfully. Johnson says strong Democratic majorities in the Illinois General Assembly, as well as a surplus in state tax revenues, could make it easier this time.
Wetmore said the school district needs to have a plan B if the state doesn’t come through.
Nader Issa covers education for the Chicago Sun-Times.Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Lauren FitzPatrick contributed to this story.
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U.S. Senate and House members proposed a new no-fly list for unruly passengers on Wednesday, an idea that was pushed by airline unions but failed to gain traction last year.
The legislation would let the Transportation Security Administration ban people convicted or fined for assaulting or interfering with airline crew members.
It would be separate from the current FBI-run no-fly list, which is intended to prevent people suspected of terrorism ties from boarding planes.
The number of incidents involving unruly passengers dropped sharply last year after a judge struck down a federal requirement to wear masks on planes. However, incidents serious enough to be investigated by federal officials remained more than five times higher than before the pandemic.
“The violent incidents have not stopped,” Cher Taylor, a Frontier Airlines flight attendant who said she witnessed a passenger attack another in 2021 in Miami and walk away before police arrived, said during a news conference outside the Capitol. “Strong penalties are needed to curb violent and unacceptable behavior. Bad behavior should not fly.”
Civil libertarians vowed to oppose the measure. They say the FBI no-fly list is not transparent and unfairly targets people of color, and the new list would have the same problems. They also say that the Federal Aviation is cracking down on bad behavior, and that reports of unruly passengers are declining.
“If Congress wants to further reduce air-rage incidents on aircraft, it should look at forcing the airlines to make flying a less miserable experience,” said Jay Stanley, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union.
The new measure was introduced by Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Reps. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn.
Similar legislation failed to get a hearing in Congress last year. Supporters hope their chances have improved because of high-profile incidents like that involving a passenger who stabbed at a flight attendant with a broken-off spoon this month.
Individual airlines maintain lists of passengers they have banned but resist sharing names with other airlines, partly out of fear they could violate laws against cooperation among competing carriers.
This week, in response to mass demonstrations and a nascent general strike, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delayed legislative consideration of his right-wing coalition’s judicial reform agenda. Both sides in the acrimonious battle over that plan say they are defending democracy, which is a misleading way to frame an issue that should be familiar to Americans.
The controversy, which Netanyahu said threatens to become “a civil war,” is really about what sort of democracy Israel should be — in particular, how much power judges should have to override the will of the majority. While Netanyahu’s allies are right that judicial review is a constraint on democracy, their opponents are right that unconstrained democracy is a recipe for tyranny.
More than two centuries ago in Marbury v. Madison, the U.S. Supreme Court established the principle that the judicial branch can override legislation that is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution. “It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is,” Chief Justice John Marshall declared, and judges therefore must decide what happens when they “apply the rule to particular cases” and find that “two laws conflict with each other.”
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The Israeli Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion in the 1995 case United Mizrahi Bank v. Migdal Cooperative Village, asserting the power to overturn statutes that conflict with Israel’s “basic laws.” Since the 1990s, Israeli law professors Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany note, the court “has invalidated 22 laws or legal provisions” based on “its new powers of judicial review.”
Among other things, those cases involved treatment of asylum seekers, discriminatory tax rates, expropriation of Palestinian land, religious exemptions from military service and due process for detainees. But the impact of judicial review extends beyond those specific decisions, Cohen and Shany observe, because the question of whether legislation can survive it “has become a dominant consideration in the legislative process.”
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This is the “constitutional revolution” that Netanyahu’s coalition members resent, although that term is misleading, since Israel has no formal constitution and the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, can amend its basic laws at will. In response to what they see as undemocratic interference by unelected judges, legislators have proposed various contentious reforms.
The proposals include legislation that would guarantee the government a majority on the committee that selects judges, restrict the circumstances in which the Supreme Court can invalidate statutes, eliminate the precedential force of such decisions and allow the Knesset to override them by a majority vote. In practice, Cohen and Shany say, those changes would mean “the end of judicial review of Knesset legislation.”
The plan’s supporters think it’s about time. “At school they told me that Israel is a democracy,” conservative commentator Evyatar Cohen wrote this week. “They said that as soon as I reach the age of 18 I can go to the polls and influence the future of the country, its character and goals.”
Newspaper columnist Nadav Eyal, by contrast, welcomed the pause that Netanyahu announced. “Israeli democracy may die one day,” he wrote. “But it will not happen this week, nor this month, nor this spring.”
Both of those takes elide the reality that untrammeled majority rule is a threat to civil liberties. Netanyahu himself has recognized that point.
“A strong and independent justice system,” he noted in 2012, is the difference between governments that respect “human rights” and governments that merely pay lip service to them. He promised he would “do everything in my power to safeguard a strong and independent justice system.”
Netanyahu, who faces corruption charges that will be adjudicated by that system, now presents himself as a mediator between his coalition partners’ demands and the concerns that have driven hundreds of thousands of Israelis to the streets in protest. The question is not only whether he can broker a compromise but whether it will preserve the safeguards he rightly described as essential to the rule of law and the protection of individual rights.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
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With former CPS CEO Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson in a dead heat in Chicago’s mayoral runoff election, many voters are heading to the polls in advance of next week’s election.
While the runoff elections will be held on April 4, early voting in all 50 wards began more than a week ago.
Since the start of early voting on March 20, 114,136 voters have cast their ballots in the runoff election, a significant increase over the 70,006 ballots cast six days out from Election Day in 2019.
The early voting turnout also shows a jump over 2015’s numbers, where turnout ended up eclipsing 40% in the runoff. Six days out from the 2015 runoff election, 94,885 total ballots were cast.
In addition to polling places in each ward, voters can also cast their ballots at the city’s Supersite, located at 191 N. Clark St.
While the mayoral election continues to grab headlines, 14 of the city’s 50 wards will also be voting in an aldermanic runoff race, due to no candidate receiving at least 50 percent of the vote.
For Chicago residents who choose to vote by mail, ballots can be returned to a secure drop box at any of the city’s early voting locations or Election Day polling places.
Voters can continue to send in vote-by-mail applications through Thursday, which is the final day the city’s Board of Elections can receive new applications.
If you’re looking for where to cast your vote in your community, the city’s early voting locations can be found below. Sites are open between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays, Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Election Day from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Ward 1 – Goldblatt’s Building, 1615 W. Chicago Ave.
Ward 2 – Near North Library, 310 W. Division St.
Ward 3 – Dawson Technical Institute, 3901 S. State St.
Ward 4 – Dr. Martin Luther King Center, 4314 S. Cottage Grove Ave.
Ward 5 – Southside YMCA, 6330 S. Stony Island Ave.
Ward 6 – Whitney Young Library, 415 E. 79th St.
Ward 7 – Trumbull Park, 2400 E. 105th St.
Ward 8 – Olive Harvey College, 10001 S. Woodlawn Ave.
Ward 9 – Palmer Park, 201 E. 111th St.
Ward 10 – East Side Vodak Library, 3710 E. 106th St.
Ward 11 – McGuane Park, 2901 S. Poplar Ave.
Ward 12 – McKinley Park Library, 1915 W. 35th St.
Ward 13 – Clearing Branch Library, 6423 W. 63rd Pl.
Ward 14 – Archer Heights Library, 5055 S. Archer Ave.
Ward 15 – Gage Park, 2411 W. 55th St.
Ward 16 – Lindblom Park, 6054 S. Damen Ave.
Ward 17 – Thurgood Marshall Library, 7506 S. Racine Ave.
Ward 18 – Wrightwood Ashburn Library, 8530 S. Kedzie Ave.
Ward 19 – Mt. Greenwood Park, 3721 W. 111th St.
Ward 20 – Bessie Coleman Library, 731 E. 63rd St.
Ward 21 – West Pullman Library, 830 W. 119th St.
Ward 22 – Toman Library, 2708 S. Pulaski Rd.
Ward 23 – Hall – St Faustina Kowalska Parish, 5157 S. McVicker Ave.
Ward 24 – St. Agatha Catholic Parish, 3151 W. Douglas Ave.
Ward 25 – Rudy Lozano Library, 1805 S. Loomis St.
Ward 26 – Humboldt Park Library, 1605 N. Troy St.
Ward 27 – Union Park, 1501 W. Randolph Ave.
Ward 28 – Westside Learning Center, 4624 W. Madison St.
Ward 29 – Amundsen Park, 6200 W. Bloomingdale Ave.
Ward 30 – Kilbourn Park, 3501 N. Kilbourn Ave.
Ward 31 – Portage Cragin Library. 5108 W. Belmont Ave.
Ward 32 – Bucktown-Wicker Park Library, 1701 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Ward 33 – American Indian Center, 3401 W. Ainsle St.
Ward 34 – UIC Student Center, 750 S. Halsted St.
Ward 35 – Northeastern IL University El Centro, 3390 N. Avondale Ave.
Ward 36 – West Belmont Library, 3104 N. Narrangansett Ave.
Ward 37 – West Chicago Library, 4856 W. Chicago Ave.
Ward 38 – Hiawatha Park, 8029 W. Forest Preserve Dr.
Ward 39 – North Park Village Admin Bldg, 5801 N. Pulaski
Ward 40 – Budlong Woods Library, 5630 N. Lincoln Ave.
Ward 41 – Roden Library, 6083 N. Northwest Hw.
Ward 42 – Maggie Daley Park, 337 E. Randolph St.
Ward 43 – Lincoln Park Branch Library, 1150 W. Fullerton Ave.
Ward 44 – Merlo Library, 644 W. Belmont Ave.
Ward 45 – Kolping Society of Chicago, 5826 N. Elston Ave.
Ward 46 – Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson Ave.
Ward 47 – Welles Park, 2333 W. Sunnyside Ave.
Ward 48 – Broadway Armory, 5917 N. Broadway St.
Ward 49 – Willye B White Park, 1610 W. Howard St.
Ward 50 – Northtown Library, 6800 N. Western Ave.
Board Supersite – 191 N. Clark (Clark & Lake)
Board Offices – 69 W. Washington, 6th Floor (not open on Election Day)
There will be some interesting narratives to follow on the North and South Sides this season.
John Antonoff/Sun-Times
It has been excruciating, but the wait is over. Baseball is back and both Chicago teams have interesting storylines entering this season. I’ll get to those in a minute. First, I want to express gratitude to the World Baseball Classic for bringing back some joy to my cold, dead, baseball heart.
The three-week tournament provided a much needed energy boost to what has been a tedious spring training slog. Baseball is our summer companion, but the MLB variety comes with unwritten rules and gatekeeping that keeps it from reaching its full potential. The WBC was cool, fun and colorful. It’s a reminder of how global the game is. Shohei Ohtani striking out Mike Trout to end the title game was like a Hollywood script. It was a distilled version of the game itself. Pitcher versus batter. Top player versus top player. The probability of that matchup happening was tiny. And we got to witness the magic in the highest leverage situation possible. How can you not love that?
Now we get back into routine and there are some interesting narratives to follow North and South.
CUBS
Things will look and feel different for David Ross’ crew this season. With Willson Contreras moving on to St. Louis, there’s very little championship DNA left at Wrigley. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins have reshaped the Cubs to be a team built on run prevention. That doesn’t sound sexy, but the Cubs have the pieces to be one of the best defensive teams in baseball.
They’re relying on the adage of “being strong up the middle” as they deploy their defense. Catchers Yan Gomes and Tucker Barnhart are on the roster mostly for their defense. Dansby Swanson is one of the best defensive shortstops in the league and Nico Hoerner is a secret weapon. Having someone at second base with the range of a shortstop is the wave of the future. With shifts being outlawed, you better have someone who can cover a lot of ground. In center field, the Cubs added Cody Bellinger, who’s a plus-defender.
I love the philosophy of what the Cubs are building, but I’m still skeptical about their ability to score runs.
Player to watch: Hayden Wesneski. Wesneski was part of the 38-32 run that finished the Cubs’ 2022 season. He’s fun to watch and his “Sweeper” is cartoonishly unhittable.
WHITE SOX
From what Rick Hahn has said about this season, it’s clear the Sox realize the last two years were wasted opportunities. This season offers a chance to pay a debt that they owe to themselves and Sox fans.
Manager Pedro Grifol has impressed. His Glendale camp was built on an intense attention to detail. The Sox have talent, but they have yet to prove that they can win games in the margins. In fact, last season, that’s where opponents punished and exposed them. Grifol’s philosophy is putting pressure on opponents. So we shall see if the Sox take the extra base and hit the cutoff man more consistently than they have in recent seasons.
It is a roster filled with tantalizing possibilities, but it’s also flawed. The Sox still have some square pegs that are trying to fit into round holes at a couple positions, but Eloy Jimenez has the ability to hit 40 homers, if healthy.
“If healthy” could seriously be this team’s slogan. Much hinges on the Sox keeping their best players on the field. For the most part, they’ve done that this spring, although hearing that both Yoan Moncada and Andrew Vaughn have had back issues is a sobering reminder of seasons past. Players such as Lucas Giolito, Lance Lynn, Elvis Andrus and Liam Hendriks make you want to root for this team, but they have a ton to prove.
Player to watch: Tim Anderson. It’s pretty easy to see the impact a healthy Tim Anderson has on the Sox. He’s the spark plug. Anderson had a wonderful WBC experience and opened some eyes. His leadership is critical for the Sox to thrive, but you can’t lead from the injured list. If healthy, he’ll be an All-Star again and maybe an MVP candidate.
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Mourners pray at the entrance of The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, where three students and three adults were killed on Monday.
Getty
Here we go yet again. March 27 was just another Monday in today’s America, where three 9-year-olds and three adults were slaughtered in another school shooting, this time in Nashville. The question is asked over and over again: Why do these mass shootings continue to occur, not only in our schools but countless other venues?
We all know the answer to that question, and one is kidding themselves by claiming not to know. Spoiler alert: It’s guns.
While it’s very easy to blame the deranged psychopaths who carry out these atrocities, the real blame should be aimed towards the spineless, gutless members of Congress (and various state legislatures) who continue to weaken existing gun laws and who actually go out of their way to make it easier for virtually anyone to own and carry a gun. When I say spineless and gutless, I’m referring to the Republicans and a handful of Democrats who continue to acquiesce to the National Rifle Association.
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There have always been, and will be, lunatics in this country determined to cause death and destruction. Why make it easier for them with the most lax gun control laws in the world? To take it a step further, I want to ask those who vote to elect and re-elect these ultra-pro-gun politicians: Are you too, not contributing to this epidemic of mass murder?
The next time one of these school shootings takes place — probably next week I’m sickened to say — save your thoughts and prayers. Instead, vote these cowards out of office. To do otherwise would be to accept these atrocities as just another day in the good old USA.
If we do not purge ourselves of these politicians, when this happens again, you may not have squeezed the trigger, but you will have blood on your hands.
Tom Scorby, St. Charles
Moratorium on thoughts and prayers
Since it is apparent that we cannot and will not ban deadly assault weapons, I propose a moratorium on thoughts and prayers. They are obviously not working.
Steve Fortuna, Naperville
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