Hours after Gov. Bruce Rauner offered two options to provide $215 million to Chicago Public Schools, Chance the Rapper cut the district a $1 million check that the Grammy-winning musician described as a “call to action” for the city’s business and philanthropic community.

Chance was critical of the Republican governor’s efforts to fix the city’s schools during a news conference in West Chatham on the South Side, not far from the musician’s old neighborhood.

The $1 million check Chance the Rapper is handing over to the broke Chicago Public Schools is coming through his relatively new not-for-profit organization, SocialWorks.

It’s a youth advocacy organization that the Jones College Prep alum says he founded with friends. People wearing SocialWorks T-shirts helped the Grammy-award winning rapper unveil his CPS plans Monday at Westcott Elementary School as a new #SupportCPS section appeared on the group’s website.

Chicago Public Schools’ financial woes fell under the glare of the national spotlight Monday — as Chance the Rapper pushed a pass-the-hat approach to helping the embattled school district hours after Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration offered up its own two options to try to solve the mess.

Rauner’s suggestions came 48 hours after the Grammy-winning rap star left the governor’s office at the conclusion of a much touted meeting, only to say he was left with “vague” answers about how to solve CPS’ problems.

CPS officials said Monday that plans to do $535,000 in work to install air conditioners in a school that would be empty before the summer was “inadvertent.”

Michael Passman, a spokesman for CPS, said Monday that CPS would cancel building permits from Feb. 23 to install air conditioners at the University of Chicago’s Woodlawn Charter School, 6420 S. University Ave.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner took his feud with Democratic Comptroller Susana Mendoza to court Monday, asking the legal system to step in and decide how nearly 600 state workers should be paid.

The administration filed suit in St. Clair County asking that Mendoza be forced to pay the workers from the general fund rather than two smaller funds. Mendoza wants to pay the workers from two revolving funds because they have millions of dollars in them while the general fund is essentially broke.

On Tuesday, members of the Illinois Senate will get a chance, yet again, to reassemble a compromise budget package that spun off course like a mis-thrown Olympics discus last week. This time, it will be up to Gov. Bruce Rauner and Republican senators who opposed the deal to repair or replace it.

We look forward to reading drafts of their legislation — the package they rejected included 12 bills — that address their concerns, and quickly. The state digs itself deeper into debt by roughly $11 million a day.

It’s hard to know what to make of voter moods when only about seven percent of registered voters came out for a primary election that, locally, only featured township races.

Governors State University will eliminate nearly two dozen academic programs and hike tuition by 15 percent to cope with the state’s historic budget stalemate, officials said Monday.

Starting this fall, 22 degree programs will be eliminated, including some within the undergraduate majors of communications, psychology, criminal justice and teacher education. Current students will be able to complete their degrees in those subjects.

Pulling back on proposed rule changes that upset some rank-and-file officers, police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has proposed a new use-of-force policy that is less restrictive than the one he floated five months ago.

A draft policy released in October drew complaints from both officers and police reform advocates. Some officers said the draft policy was too restrictive for cops making split-second decisions under pressure, while reform advocates said it didn’t spell out clearly enough when police should and should not use force.

Four Chicago cops accused of lying in their reports about the police killing of Laquan McDonald were to be the beneficiaries of a mid-March fundraiser organized by their colleagues, a lawyer for one of the accused cops says.

But nobody involved in organizing the event was willing to talk about it Monday, or to address rumors that it had been canceled.

A company on Chicago’s Southeast Side has 30 days to submit a revised plan to control the release of manganese dust, according to the city’s Department of Public Health.

In a March 3 letter to an attorney representing S.H. Bell Co., CDPH Commissioner Julie Morita said the company’s dust control plan gave “insufficient information” to ensure protection of nearby residents.

For extremely low-income households, there is a shortage of affordable housing across the U.S., according to a report released Thursday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

In Illinois, there are 32 available and affordable units for every 100 such households; that number drops to 26 in Chicago, according to the report, which identifies extremely low-income households as those with income at or below the poverty guideline, or 30 percent of the area’s median income.

The St. Clair County Board on Monday approved an expansion of MidAmerica Airport’s parking lot during a special board meeting. The project is expected to cost $749,000.

The project will add 438 parking spaces to bring the parking lot to 1,276 spaces. The parking lot currently has 838 spaces.