Daywatch: Black students far more likely to be ticketed by police for school behavior | Boeing to move corporate HQ out of Chicago | When will it feel like spring?

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Good morning, Chicago.

At Bloom Trail High School in Chicago’s south suburbs, about 60% of the 1,100 students are Black or multiracial. Police, in cooperation with school officials, have written 178 tickets for student misbehavior since the start of the 2018-19 school year. School district records show 94% of them went to Black or multiracial students.

Elizabeth Posley, whose sons Josiah and Jeremiah attend Bloom Trail, said the boys were treated too harshly after they were part of a school fight that got out of hand. “They’re young Black men,” she said. “They stereotyped them.”

Last week, the first installment of the Tribune-ProPublica investigation “The Price Kids Pay” detailed how student ticketing flouts a state law meant to prevent schools from using fines to discipline students. In response, Illinois’ top education official told school leaders to “immediately stop and consider both the cost and the consequences of these fines.”

Today, a new installment examines racial disparities in student ticketing: In the schools and districts examined, an analysis indicated that Black students were twice as likely to be ticketed as their white peers.

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Boeing to move corporate headquarters out of Chicago, but ‘maintain a significant presence’ in city

Some 20 years after Boeing arrived in Chicago, the defense contractor and airplane-maker is moving its global headquarters out of the city, the company said Thursday. Boeing will relocate its headquarters to its campus in Arlington, Virginia, and will also create a research and technology hub nearby.

Boeing is the latest company to shrink its space in Chicago, as the city’s downtown and office market reel from two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s official: Bally’s casino in River West is Lightfoot’s pick for Chicago’s gambling complex — but it’s not a done deal yet

A gambling complex in Chicago’s River West is now officially Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s pick for the city’s long-awaited casino license — an endeavor that could boost Chicago’s finances, factor into the coming mayoral election and transform the neighborhood. Lightfoot chose to advance a $1.74 billion casino, hotel and entertainment development at what is now the Chicago Tribune’s Freedom Center printing plant.

The City Council approval process could be bumpy, but Lightfoot will argue that the casino makes big tax hikes less likely in the future, a message that should appeal to aldermen who dislike nothing more than property tax increases.

Audit blasts Pritzker administration for failed response to LaSalle Veterans’ Home COVID-19 outbreak that killed 36

An Illinois state auditor general review of the COVID-19 outbreak that killed 36 elderly military veterans at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home in 2020 blames Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Public Health department for failing to “identify and respond to the seriousness of the outbreak.”

Department of Public Health officials didn’t show up at the LaSalle home until 11 days after the outbreak began on Nov. 1, 2020, even though department leaders had been receiving near daily updates on the deteriorating situation at the home, according to Auditor General Frank Mautino’s review, which was released Thursday.

Still feeling the ‘winter blues’ during this cold, dreary spring? You’re not alone.

If Chicagoland has seemed more cloudy than usual compared with previous springs, it’s not your imagination. As a result, Chicagoans may have experienced ‘winter blues’ for an extended period of time.

“This spring in Chicago has been consistently cold and has had many gloomy days that can affect the mood of those who are vulnerable to seasonal depression,” said Dr. Sheehan Fisher, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Iconic neon sign at Orange Garden restaurant winds up in surprising hands after auction

The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan used to joke to his wife, Chloe Mendel, that if she ever wanted to buy him a present, it should be the neon sign reading “Chop Suey” in bold letters outside Orange Garden restaurant on a bustling stretch of Irving Park Road in the North Center neighborhood. “It was like, ‘Of course you would ask for something I could never deliver,” Mendel said Thursday.

But then, suddenly, she could.

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