Good morning, Chicago.

Across Illinois, police are ticketing thousands of students a year for in-school adolescent behavior once handled only by the principal’s office — for littering, for making loud noises, for using offensive words.

Unpaid fines are sometimes sent to collections or deducted from parents’ tax refunds. And, unlike records from juvenile court, these cases can’t be expunged under state law.

Ticketing students violates the intent of an Illinois law that prohibits schools from fining students as a form of discipline. Instead of issuing fines directly, school officials refer students to police, who then ticket them for municipal ordinance violations, an investigation by the Tribune and ProPublica has found.

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Lightfoot’s free gas and CTA fare card giveaways narrowly win City Council approval

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s free gas and public transit card giveaway narrowly passed the City Council Wednesday after aldermen debated whether the measure will truly help struggling residents or simply be a political “gimmick.”

The plan to hand out 50,000 gas cards, worth $150 each, and 100,000 Chicago Transit Authority fare cards, $50 each, passed 26-23 despite reservations from several aldermen that it was a political stunt and would be largely ineffective.

Lightfoot brushed off the criticism: “Am I solving every problem with this? Of course not.”

A coalition of news organizations convened by the Tribune is seeking to block the Chicago Park District’s efforts to seal a pending lawsuit alleging Lightfoot yelled obscenities at and defamed a Park District attorney during a call about a Christopher Columbus statue.

School resource officers are under scrutiny again in CPS as dozens of high schools reconsider the controversial police program

Forty-one high schools will once again evaluate their safety plans and decide by June 15 if they will continue in Chicago Public Schools’ controversial school resource officer program.

Last summer, 19 schools decided to retain both of their uniformed Chicago police officers; 22 schools chose to keep just one officer; and 12 schools voted to exit the SRO program. Based on the school votes, the board in September approved a one-year, $11 million agreement with the Chicago Police Department for this program.

Measures aimed at easing ongoing teacher shortage signed into law by Gov. Pritzker

Death of a dream house: Despite owner’s pleas, DuPage County tears down unfinished mansion that became trespassers’ oasis

As Masud Arjmand sat in a Naperville coffee shop last week, describing the 15-year odyssey that turned his would-be dream house into a target for demolition, an excavator was already taking bites out of the unfinished Spanish-style mansion and piling the rubble into a huge heap.

Informed of that by a Tribune reporter, Arjmand appeared stunned. “It’s being torn down?” he said. “How could they do that?”

He was apparently the last to know.

Meta expanding massive $1 billion DeKalb data center, set to power everything from Facebook to Instagram beginning next year

Meta, the social media giant formerly known as Facebook, is expanding its massive $1 billion data center under construction in DeKalb to nearly 2.4 million square feet, putting the college town west of Chicago at the center of its metaverse.

Slated to open next year, the five-building complex filled with servers and other computing equipment will create 200 jobs and power everything from Facebook posts to Instagram photos as one of 17 Meta data centers across the U.S.

In other business news, ComEd customers will begin receiving a credit for about $20 per month in June, an unexpected dividend from the state’s bailout of three struggling nuclear power plants last fall.

DeMar DeRozan is stymied by the Bucks in the Bulls’ season-ending 116-100 loss in Game 5

The Chicago Bulls season ended with an air of inevitability Wednesday night as the team crumpled against the Milwaukee Bucks in a 116-100 Game 5 loss to close their best-of-seven first-round series.

Now it’s time for the autopsy, columnist Paul Sullivan writes: Should Bulls fans focus on the progress more than the ending?

And after ending his last season under contract with the Bulls in COVID-19 isolation, the future is uncertain for guard Zach LaVine.

NFL draft storylines for Bears: Ryan Poles’ biggest dilemma, the hole at wide receiver and the appeal of trading down
12 intriguing wide receiver options for the Bears in the NFL draft
The Cubs bullpen continued to be a strength in a 10-inning win against the Braves
The White Sox snapped an 8-game losing streak
And last but not least: Our 2022 Mr. and Ms. Basketball of Illinois winners are Braden Huff of Glenbard West and Sophie Swanson of Barrington

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