A record number of youth have been killed while in the care of Illinois’ Department of Children and Family Services, many of them victims of Chicago’s gang violence.

The Chicago Tribune reports 11 youths died during a two-year period that ended June 30, 2015.

The Chicago Teachers Union is voting this week to authorize a strike, as contract negotiations between the union and Chicago Public Schools have stalled. But the two sides seem to be on different planets when it comes to explaining what the contract means for teachers.

Here’s what’s on the table:

CPS wants teachers to pay more into employee contributions to healthcare and pension costs. It’s also offering teachers an 8.75 percent raise over a four-year contract, plus salary increases from something called steps and lanes.

So why does CPS call it a raise, and CTU call it a pay cut?

EMPEROR AUGUSTUS came to power with the help of a private army. So he was understandably keen to ensure the loyalty of his soldiers to the Roman state. His bright idea was to offer a pension for those in the army who had served for 16 years (later 20), equivalent in cash or land to 12 times their annual salary. As Mary Beard, a classical historian, explains in her history of Rome, “SPQR”, the promise was enormously expensive. All told, military wages and pensions absorbed half of all Rome’s tax revenues.

The emperor would not be the last to underestimate the burden of providing retirement benefits. Around the world a funding crisis for pension schemes is coming to the boil. Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s mayor, is struggling to rescue the city’s pension plans; the municipal scheme is scheduled to run out of money within ten years. In Britain the pension problems of BHS scuppered attempts to save the high-street retailer; the same issue is complicating a rescue of Tata Steel’s British operations.

Guess who’s having a birthday? It’s us, Illinois, and we’re turning 200 in 2018. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner just formed a committee to plan the celebration, but here are a few ideas to get the party started.

A bicentennial is too big to celebrate with just one party. Let’s start by giving ourselves two parties, the blue party and the red party, and these parties could compete for attendance through their creativity and the life-changing experiences they deliver. We just need to make sure the blue party doesn’t spend all the money and post bouncers at the door to keep out everyone but state employees.

A birthday is nothing without presents, and there’s quite a long list of possible gifts, but here are some top suggestions.

The Independent Maps initiative seems to be dead and buried, murdered by Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan and his four Democratic cohorts on the Illinois Supreme Court. There was an autopsy, but the results were withheld so that no one had a chance to learn anything from the death.

The gang of four that killed the will of 563,974 registered Illinois voters by tossing the Independent Map Amendment off the Nov. 8 ballot also refused to rehear the case. Their additional crime is their silence about why they refused to rehear the case.

A rehearing, or an opinion about why they refused a rehearing, would have been the four justices’ chance to explain themselves. They interpreted the Illinois Constitution very narrowly, saying that the petition for a maps amendment was not constitutional because it created duties for the state comptroller as well as made changes to state legislators’ powers and duties.

Trucking paid for Scott Spindola to take a road trip down the coast of Spain, climb halfway up Machu Picchu, and sample a Costa Rican beach for two weeks. The 44-year-old from Covina now makes up to $70,000 per year, with overtime, hauling goods from the port of Long Beach. He has full medical coverage and plans to drive until he retires.

But in a decade, his big rig may not have any need for him.

The woman was perched on a concrete ledge four stories above Madison Street.

She was a strange sight there in red-and-black pajama bottoms, a black sweatshirt and pink flip-flops. She hung her legs over the side of the building like a kid gathering the courage to jump into chilly water.