Chicago Public Schools on Wednesday voted unanimously to pass a 5-year strategic plan that vows a “renewed focus on equity” and moves away from ranking schools based on student outcomes.

“Everything is done through an equity lens,” CPS Chief Executive Officer Pedro Martinez said at the Special Board Meeting on Wednesday before the vote.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is exploring other options after the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection technology, expired.

The mayor’s office announced Sunday that Johnson has issued a Request for Information (RFI) to gather recommendations for alternative first-response technologies.

Now that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has approved Illinois’ proposal to provide broadband statewide, the program is being slammed by a government agency.

The Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment, or BEAD program, is the largest single investment in broadband infrastructure in American history, costing taxpayers $42 billion.

Ford Heights Mayor Charles Griffin was found guilty Monday of stealing from the south suburb six years after he was charged.

Cook County Judge James Obbish, hearing the case without a jury, said the prosecution had provided a “mountain of evidence” showing Griffin used more than $10,000 from the suburb’s coffers between 2015 and 2017 for “his own personal and economic benefit.”

Administrators from Evanston/Skokie School District 65 announced last week that the district will implement a deficit reduction plan that will likely include layoffs, school closures, audits, and potential bus route decreases to avoid being taken over by the state.

Robert Grossi, a financial consultant hired by the district, said the district is in danger of an Illinois State Board of Education takeover if the district does not find a way to balance its budget. The district has seen deficits of over $10 million in the last three school years due to increasing expenses and decreasing revenues, all as it prepares to build a school in Evanston’s Fifth Ward.

More than 200 men and women were sexually abused as children while in custody at juvenile detention centers in Illinois, according to lawsuits filed Monday, the latest in a string of complaints alleging decades of systemic child sex abuse.

Three lawsuits filed Monday detail abuse from 1996 to 2021, including rape, forced oral sex and beatings by corrections officers, nurses, kitchen staff, chaplains and others.