To build or not to build, that is the question. The answer will depend not on the review of high school facilities needs underway at School District 186. It will be determined by the voters — appropriately, if you are concerned about democracy, inappropriately if you are concerned about education.

Now we know. The reason that Rod Blagojevich disdained the governor’s mansion in Springfield was to save his kids from, well, the mansion. “Growing up in a big governor’s mansion, surrounded by staff is not normal,” Blagojevich writes in The Governor.

In the early 1850s, the brand new Alton & Sangamon Railroad needed a north-south track corridor through the capital city. The City of Springfield also needed a railroad, so the city council grante

Poet and critic Helen Vendler has observed that an epitaph is a form of lyric that must, among other traits, “assert a final judgment.” ...

Last fall, the University of Illinois trustees approved the most recent UIS campus development master plan. The document maps the preferred locations of hoped-for new student housing and office and cl

A while back, I remarked on the spreading use of the so-called year-round school calendar to remedy so-called summer learning loss. (See “The Pause that Regresses,” Aug. 13.) The start of

The scam was, said the Sun-Times, “every family’s nightmare.” Maybe not. Some families’ nightmare is that Uncle Delbert will come back from the dead to live with them. But news

The kids at District 186’s Southern View elementary school began classes in July again this year. The school is one of two in the district that operate what is almost always called year-round sc

The now-stalled beautification project to transform Capitol Avenue into a ceremonial gateway to the Statehouse and Lincoln sites confirms what longtime residents already know, which is th

Capitol Avenue’s progress toward becoming the capital city’s Champs Elysees has hit a pothole. Completion of the latest phase of rehab work will soon leave the stretc