Category: 4-FrequentNewsStreams

Mayor Lightfoot is trying to plug a Grand Canyon-sized budget hole. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $860 million. Every penny counts. So when she found out that the Chicago Police Department dished out nearly $70 million in overtime-for just the first 6 months of 2019-she called in the superintendent to find out what was going on. Sun Times reporter Fran Spielman takes us through the past, present, and future of the city’s police overtime.

Plus Lynn Scarlett, Vice President of Policy and Government Relations at the Nature Conservancy, talks about the effect of the Trump administration’s many environmental rollbacks.

Uber wants to be more than a rideshare company. They want to dominate a number of transportation markets in the same way Amazon has become a one-stop shopping experience. To that end, Uber has leased the massive old post office building that straddles the entrance to the Eisenhower expressway, with plans to turn it into the headquarters for Uber Freight. But the company hasn’t turned a profit yet, and Wall Street isn’t as forgiving with companies as they were when tech first began to boom.

Then, steel companies are dumping poisonous chemicals into rivers and streams the feed directly into Lake Michigan. We’ll find out what’s going on, and the environmental impact.

Gregory Michie was born to teach. After years as a CPS teacher, Michie took a job as an education professor. He thought he was leaving the rough-and-tumble of daily teaching for a less stressful gig at a university. But a decade later, he was back. Michie’s new book “Same As It Never Was: Notes On A Teacher’s Return To The Classroom” looks at his return to the same school, the same grade level, and the same subjects he taught before he left in the 1990’s...and how the system and the kids have changed, and stayed the same.

David Greising of the Better Government Association, Amanda Vinickey of WTTW and A.D. Quig of Crains’ Chicago Business break down the biggest news stories of the week, including Mayor Lightfoot’s twitter spat with Sen. Ted Cruz, the latest on the city budget, the most recent talk of a looming teacher’s strike, and much more.

Bears' chairman George McCaskey talks to Cheryl Raye Stout about his life and work as the grandson of the team's-and the NFL's-founder George Halas

WBEZ’s Patrick Smith explains why prosecution numbers for murder cases are so low. And things to do this weekend around Chicago with See, Hear, Eat.

In his new book, Chicago Public Schools teacher Gregory Michie writes about what it was like to return to teach in the same middle school in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood where he began his career after more than a decade as an education professor.

Morning Shift digs into what’s different about the teaching profession this decade compared with the late 1990s and how Michie navigates his role as a white teacher in a school that’s almost exclusively made up of black and brown students.

Actor, author, and woodworker Nick Offerman talks about his family, his time in Chicago, and his philosophy on life as he prepares to take his one-man show on the road. He’ll hit the Chicago Theater Sept. 15th.

Mayor Lightfoot's complete speech from 8-29-19

Mayor Lightfoot had good news and bad news when she delivered her state-of-the-city speech last night. The good was the number of reforms and cost-saving measures she implemented in her first 100 days. The bad news is, those reforms may not be enough to save us as we face major-and immediate-fiscal challenges. WBEZ political reporter Dan Mihalopoulos fills in for Jenn White, and is joined by Heather Cherone of the Daily Line and Paris Schutz of WTTW for a lively roundup of the speech, and the other important local news of the week.