The Rundown Podcast - Show Tile
Stay in the loop with the Windy City’s biggest news. Angela Cheng / WBEZ Chicago
The Rundown Podcast - Show Tile
Stay in the loop with the Windy City’s biggest news. Angela Cheng / WBEZ Chicago

It’s Election Day, and hundreds of teens are serving as election judges. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in a case that could impact more than one million student people in Illinois with college debt. Local groups are stepping up to provide shelter for asylum seekers arriving in Chicago.

The Rundown Podcast - Show Tile
Stay in the loop with the Windy City’s biggest news. Angela Cheng / WBEZ Chicago
The Rundown Podcast - Show Tile
Stay in the loop with the Windy City’s biggest news. Angela Cheng / WBEZ Chicago

It’s Election Day, and hundreds of teens are serving as election judges. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in a case that could impact more than one million student people in Illinois with college debt. Local groups are stepping up to provide shelter for asylum seekers arriving in Chicago.

Erin Allen: Good morning, it's Tuesday. I'm Erin Allen, and this is The Rundown. Election day is finally here. The polls are open. The people are voting. And the kids are judging. So a few days ago, I mentioned that The city was in need of election judges, and apparently not enough people signed up. So today, nearly 900 high school students stepped up to the plate. If you’re voting today, you might see one of them. My colleague Susie An spoke to Naysa Sutherlin. She’s a senior at Lincoln Park High School. And she says she was galvanized, along with several other students, by the 2020 elections.

Naysa Sutherlin: We’ve seen that carry on even into 2022, 2023 with just elections in general and how many people and youth are deciding to become election judges. And I think it’s just great that so many youth want to get involved, even before they can vote.

Erin Allen: And not only will Sutherlin be working some long hours as an election judge, but she’ll be casting her own ballot for the first time today. Now a couple of reminders for this election day, on the ballot today are the offices of mayor, city council, and police district councils. Experts are saying it’s unlikely that any of those nine candidates for mayor will actually get more than 50% of the vote today. If they’re right, the top two candidates will go to a run-off election on April 4th. If you’re voting in-person today, get in there before 7 p.m. That’s when the polls close.

If you’re like me, you’ve been trying to curb your enthusiasm at the possibility that your student loans will be forgiven. To jog your memory, back in August, President Biden announced a plan to cancel up to $20 thousand in student debt, based on borrowers' income. But, right quick the plan got tied up in court. Well there’s gonna maybe be a stride forward today. U.S. Supreme Court justices are gonna hear oral arguments in a case that could impact more than 1.5 million people in Illinois who owe college student debt. My colleague Lisa Philip reports on higher ed, and she says that, yeah there have been legal challenges to student loan forgiveness, but a lot of folks still applied, just in case. And according to some new federal data, the three congressional districts with the highest response rates were all here in Illinois. More than 70 percent of eligible borrowers in these districts, all in the Chicago area, either applied or automatically qualified. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling sometime this summer, so those borrowers will have to wait until then to find out if their debt will be canceled.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking about the thousands of asylum seekers who have arrived in Chicago. Actually it’s been more than 5-thousand people since August. And they are urgently in need of a place to stay, but Mayor Lightfoot has been saying for months that the city doesn’t have the space to house all these folks or provide some of the supplies and resources they need. Luckily, the kindness of community never ceases to amaze. Local community groups are providing clothing and connecting new arrivals with medical care and grief sessions. Evelyn Figueroa is director of the Pilsen Food Pantry. She spoke to WBEZ’s daily show Reset.

Evelyn Figueroa: Work locally, there are groups all over the place that are helping. We need people to drive things around, we need people to accompany folks, we need supplies et cetera, and we really appreciate that consideration.

Erin Allen: The pace has slowed down since last year, but experts are saying the new arrivals still comes to Chicago every day

A lot of those new families seeking asylum in Chicago have kids, and kids have to go to school. The Chicago Teachers Union estimates that there have been roughly 12 hundred new arrivals enrolled in public schools since fall 2022. My colleague Nereida Moreno is reporting on this. She says that Chicago Public Schools is working with city and state officials to enroll young people in schools located near the shelters where they’re staying. But some educators told her that neighborhood schools are lacking in the staff and curriculum to work with non-English-speaking students. Folks are requesting bilingual staff, but those requests are being delayed. And at one school on the West Side, some teachers lean on custodians to help translate. Others are having attendance issues because kids are skipping class in order to go to work.The teachers union is calling on CPS to allocate more resources to schools accepting large numbers of migrant students. In response, CPS said it has partnered with several organizations to support students, and the budget for this school year includes money for more dual-language program coordinators and more bilingual teachers.

And now for a few quick hits. If you’re the type to stay up and watch election results like it’s your job... Well it is our job to do that, so we’ll be up with you. You can stream election coverage all day and into the evening at wbez.org or if you have a radio, turn to 91.5 FM. Our amazing reporters and anchors will meet you there. I personally like to just wait and see what happened, when I wake up in the morning, so I will be asleep tonight. 

And yesterday morning’s windy rain situation ended up being pretty serious. The National Weather Service reports that tornadoes touched down briefly in Joliet and West Suburban Naperville. Rainfall in Chicago has been a little high so far this month. Totals are up roughly two inches compared with February last year. As for the weather today partly cloudy, partly sunny. The high is in the mid 40s. Maybe a chance of more rain later tonight.

And that's it for The Rundown today. Thank you for listening. I'm Erin Allen I'll talk to you tomorrow.


WBEZ transcripts are generated by an automatic speech recognition service. We do our best to edit for misspellings and typos, but mistakes do come through.