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The Board of Education Is Where the Money Meets the Kids If you want to know who holds power in Chicago, don’t start at City Hall. Start at 1 North Dearborn, where the Chicago Board of Education meets. That seven-member Continue reading Why Chicago Needs More Reporters Covering the Board of Education
The sign was zip-tied to a chain-link fence at 2415 West North Avenue, half-covered by a flattened Bud Light box someone had stuffed through the links. Eight and a half by eleven inches. Printed on what looked like a library Continue reading The Paper Trail Behind a Zoning Change Nobody Asked For: How Chicago’s Document Machine Creates Accountability Theater
By Toni Marchetti Take a slow ride down 63rd Street west of Pulaski, past the western fence of Midway Airport, and the blocks look fine. Mowed lawns. Flags on the porches. Brick bungalows and two-flats with the siding power-washed. That Continue reading The Disappearing Midway: Why Chicago’s Middle Neighborhoods Matter
The first time I opened the City of Chicago’s FY2025 budget book, I was at a coffee shop on Western Avenue, and the woman at the next table asked if I was reading a novel. The thing runs 642 pages. Continue reading How to Read the Chicago Budget Like a Narrative Document—And Catch What the City Is Hiding in the Footnotes