Back to school. As Chicago public school students kids return to class remotely today—here’s the system’s official guide for families—Chalkbeat Chicago lists eight things to watch.
■ WTTW: Adapting to virtual education makes this feel like every teacher’s first year. (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ A Tribune editorial demands a commitment from Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union to prepare now for the prospect of hybrid learning in November.
■ Purdue University professors warn schools whose water systems have sat idle for months to check the pipes.
■ The New York Times: Many COVID-19 test sites nationwide won’t check kids.
‘They’re carrying the weight of a lot of voices on their shoulders.’ Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris visited in Kenosha Monday with the family of Jacob Blake Jr., a Black man shot seven times in the back by a white Kenosha police officer.
■ Chicago police have released surveillance photos of the car from which someone fired shots that killed an 8-year-old Chicago girl as she rode in an SUV whose occupants included her mother.
■ The girl was among at least 53 people shot over Chicago’s holiday weekend.
‘Believe anonymous sources.’ Poynter media writer Tom Jones dispels skepticism over The Atlantic’s report that President Trump has dumped on veterans and other military professionals.
■ Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg says that’s just the beginning: “I would fully expect … more confirmation and new pieces of information in the coming days.”
■ A Columbia Law School professor observes, “At the beginning of Trump’s presidency, American white supremacists carried German flags. At the end of Trump’s first term, German white supremacists are carrying American flags.”
Vote without fear. Bioethicist Zeke Emanuel—the Chicago ex-mayor’s brother—says in-person voting in the pandemic is no more risky than going to the grocery store.
■ A political scientist makes the case for international monitors to watch the U.S. election for signs of fraud.
And then there was one. With Navy Pier largely shuttered indefinitely for the pandemic beginning today, just one of its establishments will stay open.
■ The Trib’s John Keilman was among tourists on hand Monday for the Pier’s farewell.
■ Theater impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber (Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar) warns COVID-19 has brought the arts to “the point of no return.”
■ A dentist writing in the Times offers theories to explain an epidemic of cracked teeth.
‘You don’t get paid enough.’ That’s one of the many “love notes” the Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg says have been received by workers at a Madison, Wisconsin, lab processing stool samples in a do-it-yourself alternative to the dreaded colonoscopy …
■ … which Pulitzer-winning columnist Dave Barry famously described in 2008 has as having a doctor “stick a tube 17,000 feet up your butt.”
■ And, yes, that would be the same Dave Barry who, in 1996, told the boss to fire your Chicago Public Square founder.
■ Learn more about Chicago Public Square than you dreamed possible in two new podcasts, thanks to the Reader’s Ben Joravsky and Common Ground Oak Park’s Matt Baron.