Cassie Walker Burke

The consideration to lift the mask mandate comes a week after board members voted to uphold safety measures including mask wearing across the district.
Applications are due Friday for the hyperlocal governing bodies, and hundreds of schools so far have no one running.
Day cares and child care centers can now set their own rules, public health officials said.
In Illinois, where curriculum traditionally is the domain of individual districts, the conversation is just getting started.
Illinois mask mandate will lift for residents Feb. 28, but students will have to continue wearing masks at schools. This comes as school districts scrambled to reassess COVID mitigations after a judge granted a temporary injunction last week.
For the first time since 2020, the Illinois governor has proposed an increase in the state’s education budget with investments for students from preschool to higher education.
A fresh round of departures and internal promotions come at a tenuous time for the nation’s third largest school district, which has seen several notable departures the past year.
Steering a school in the era of quarantines and closures has meant staying flexible, getting creative, and finding joy.
How have quarantine orders impacted your household? Tell us in a survey.
Chicago’s standoff stood out for its acrimony and for leading to an abrupt shuttering of campuses that left parents and students stranded without school for five days.
Chicago’s teachers have about 24 hours to vote for or against a proposal that would end a standoff between CPS and CTU over COVID safety.
Some parents and students say neither the city nor the union have polled them, making it impossible to quantify where the majority of parents and students stand on a reopening standoff that has stretched several days.
A temporary return to remote learning, a metric to close schools, and COVID testing protocols are among the sticking points in the standoff.
Chalkbeat obtained COVID vaccination rates of Chicago students by school. The findings illustrate vast disparities in vaccination rates within the city.
The district and the Chicago Teachers Union have not yet reached an agreement on COVID safety measures.
In mere days, the lives of Chicago educators, students, and families have been upended. Here are their stories.
Amid rising COVID cases, the Chicago Teachers Union voted to keep school buildings closed until Jan. 18 unless an agreement is reached.
Classrooms could close as soon as Wednesday if the teachers union and the district can’t reach agreement.
The Chicago Teachers Union is set to vote Tuesday on whether its members would refuse to report to campuses in-person until certain safety conditions are met.
Pre-existing staffing shortages have come to a head as the district contends with a spike in teacher quarantines that continue to strain schools already worn thin.
In 2022, Illinois will launch 39 regional councils of policymakers, parents, educators, and health care professionals to weigh in on spending in their communities.
Fewer than 1 in 5 Chicago third graders met state standards in reading and math on a standardized exam in spring of 2021.
Where to go and what to know for Vaccination Awareness Day in Chicago — and why some people are irked.
The district gave parents a week of notice in a month with other non-attendance days.
CPS will begin offering the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine next Wednesday at four regional school-based hubs on rotating days.
So far, only 46.7% of eligible Chicago Public Schools students 12 and up have received the vaccine. Officials say they hope to increase that number as they stage a campaign to reach families of younger children.
The median salary for chiefs of the 10 largest school districts is around $350,000, according to Chalkbeat analysis.
After-school programs are a critical piece of the caregiving puzzle for working parents. Some Chicago families say they still feel like an afterthought.
Chicago will bring in the region’s largest pediatric provider to back up surveillance efforts when multiple COVID-19 cases are reported at a campus.