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This is Mila Koumpilova at Chalkbeat Chicago, here with today’s top stories. My colleague Reema Amin and I teamed up on an update about campaign spending in this fall’s historic Chicago school board races.

With just weeks to go before Nov. 3, that spending has picked up considerably. Much of the campaign cash comes from super PACs bent on wresting control of the school board from the Chicago Teachers Union. At this point, the union’s opponents appear poised to outspend the CTU significantly.

Then again, the union ramped up spending in the final weeks of the 2024 school board election — the city’s first ever — and managed to outpace expenditures by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and other political foes. But this fall’s war chests marshaled by the charter network and two newer super PACs that oppose at least some of the CTU’s endorsed candidates look formidable.

Meanwhile, Chalkbeat Chicago’s Makiya Seminera put together a dispatch from Monday’s public hearing of the Illinois State Board of Education, where calls to increase funding for public schools dominated.

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Former Evanston Superintendent Devon Horton changes plea to guilty in federal kickback case, Chicago Tribune (Paywall)

Souring instrument prices could stop the music at many schools, The New York Times (Paywall)