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Students left behind as Chicago high school suffers from staffing issues, teacher absences: Report

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Students left behind as Chicago high school suffers from staffing issues, teacher absences: Report

Students at a Chicago high school were left without a teacher for several weeks, an issue stemming from a teacher shortage and chronic absences in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), according to a report.

Roberto Clemente Community Academy (RCCA), a high school based in Humboldt Park and West Town, is plagued with staffing issues, the Chicago Block Club reported. 

The staffing crisis at the high school is reportedly attributed to a larger problem. Teachers told the Chicago Block Club that Clemente’s issues are “compounded by the management and leadership approach of administrators.”

RCCA is an institution that has largely served Puerto Rican families since the mid-1970s.

“About 46 percent of the teaching staff had more than 10 absences in 2023, according to CPS data. That means nearly half of Clemente teachers missed the equivalent of at least two weeks of school,” the outlet reported.

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GROWING NUMBER OF TEACHERS LEAVING THE PROFESSION ACROSS THE US DUE TO BURNOUT, LOW PAY

Students were left without a teacher for a week, an issue stemming from a teacher shortage in Chicago Public Schools, according to a report. (iStock)

The outlet reported further, “Clemente is emblematic of a broader problem: CPS schools — and many other public schools across the country — are hamstrung by funding constraints and a nationwide teacher shortage, education experts said.

The outlet reported further that CPS officials “insist Clemente doesn’t have staffing issues.”

Fox News Digital previously reported on the challenges of staffing teachers across the country. Particularly in Arizona, almost a quarter of their teaching jobs are consistently vacant.

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Districts nationwide are shortening school weeks and consolidating classrooms due to the shortage of teachers.

Similar to Illinois and Arizona, other states where more than half their school districts have a tough time filling school vacancies include Nevada, Florida and Michigan.  

CALIFORNIA BILL PUSHES SCHOOLS TO DOLE OUT LESS HOMEWORK TO MITIGATE STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

Students were left without a teacher for a week, an issue stemming from a teacher shortage in Chicago Public Schools, according to a report. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

School districts around the country are hiring internationally to help with the teacher shortage.

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“They forgot about us,” Carolina Carchi, a sophomore at RCCA, heard her classmate say. Her classmates were “growing restless” and “sitting in their classroom with little to do,” the outlet reported. 

The statement from Carchi’s classmate motivated her to step up to teach chemistry.

“When I heard that, this spark and passion grew in me,” Carchi told the outlet. 

The students were told there would be a permanent teacher assigned to the classroom, but the teacher never showed up. Furthermore, they were given a substitute teacher, but the teacher did not know how to teach chemistry.

Similar to Illinois and Arizona, other states where more than half their school districts have a tough time filling school vacancies include Nevada, Florida and Michigan.   (Getty Images)

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Carchi reportedly told herself: “No, you’re not going to be left out, they didn’t forget about you, and I’m going to be here to prove that.”

The 15-year-old taught her classmates for two months during the winter of her sophomore year. 

The course was not assigned a permanent teacher until the following fall, the outlet reported.

“Clemente students are missing critical instruction because so many teachers are regularly absent and positions go unfilled for long stretches,” the Chicago Block Club reported.

“As they deal with the stresses of working with students with significant needs, teachers say they’re not getting support from the school’s principal, which has left them burnt out and demoralized — and often absent,” the outlet noted.

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CPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.



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Illinois

Illinois fines multiple Springfield-area nursing homes

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Illinois fines multiple Springfield-area nursing homes


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  • The Illinois Department of Public Health fined several nursing homes in the Springfield area for violations.
  • Violations included medication errors, abuse, neglect, and failure to prevent falls, some resulting in hospitalization or death.
  • Arcadia Care on the Hill in Springfield received a $25,000 fine for a medication error that led to a resident’s hospitalization.

SPRINGFIELD – Four times a year, an Illinois agency releases a report showing violations against nursing homes, and how much the facilities were fined.

The Illinois Department of Public Health recently released its fourth quarter report that spans from October to December of 2025.

Here are facilities within about 45 minutes of Springfield that were fined for violations.

Arcadia Care on the Hill, Springfield

Address: 555 W. Carpenter Road

Fined: $25,000

Survey date: Sept. 17, 2025

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What: The facility failed to ensure competency of the Professional Nursing staff when that staff failed to provide one resident in a crisis condition the correct medication. The resident did not receive his glucagon when needed, resulting to his blood sugar dropping to a critical low. The resident was taken to the hospital and subsequently admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.

Arcadia Care on the Hill, Springfield

Address: 555 W. Carpenter Road

Fined: $2,200

Survey date: Oct. 17, 2025

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What: The facility failed to send the results of a urinalysis and urine culture in a timely manner to one resident’s urologist. This failure resulted in a nonverbal resident being taken to the emergency room where he was diagnosed with a UTI. IDPH said the failure caused pain, discomfort and invasive interventions during a hospital visit.

After readmission, the facility failed to reassess the resident for warning signs of sepsis for multiple days prior to having a change in condition on Feb. 20, 2024. The resident was again taken to the emergency room and diagnosed with a UTI and sepsis.

Additionally, facility staff failed to complete change in condition documentation which included current vital signs and assessment of two residents reviewed for change in condition. These residents were also taken to the emergency room.

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Curtiss Court, Springfield

Address: 2883 S. Taylor St.

Fined: $1,100

Survey date: Aug. 7, 2025

What: IDPH found the facility failed to identify two occurrences of abuse for a resident, failed to verbally notify administrator of abuse allegations per policy, failed to investigate abuse allegations and failed to protect individuals from alleged perpetrator. This failure resulted in the resident feeling targeted and anxious.

The facility also failed to prevent elopement for one resident with a known history of elopement and allergy to bee venom without an EpiPen. This failure resulted in the person walking out of the door unsupervised. Local first responders then found the resident on the asphalt in a parking lot, playing in a puddle of water, around 0.4 miles from the facility and without their EpiPen.

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Arcadia Care, Auburn

Address: 304 Maple Ave.

Fined: $2,200

Survey date: Aug. 27, 2025

What: The facility failed to ensure room temperatures were within the heat index/apparent temperature guidelines inside the facility and did not exceed 81 degrees Fahrenheit. The facility also failed to follow their Heat Emergency Policy as residents were not moved out of their rooms when temperatures were reached over 81 degrees for four residents. This failure resulted in residents being left in rooms with the heat index, indicating extreme caution to the residents.

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Sunny Acres Nursing Home, Petersburg

Address: 19130 Sunny Acres Road

Fined: $2,200

Survey date: July 26, 2025

What: The facility failed to protect a resident from staff-to-resident mental and verbal abuse for two residents. These findings resulted in a Certified Nursing Assistant yelling at a resident and causing them to feel belittled, to feel like a child, and feel verbally abused, according to IDPH.

Taylorville Care Center, Taylorville

Address: 600 S. Houston St.

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Fined: $1,000

Survey date: Aug. 15, 2025

What: The facility failed to conduct pre-employment screening and obtain results of fingerprint checks to determine if employees had a prior criminal history that would disqualify them for employment.

Sunrise Skilled Nursing & Rehab, Virden

Address: 333 S. Wrightsman St.

Fined: $2,200

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Survey date: Sept. 4, 2025

Based on interview, observation, and record review, the facility failed to provide supervision to prevent falls for one of three residents reviewed for falls.

Sunrise Skilled Nursing & Rehab, Virden

Address: 333 S. Wrightsman St.

Fined: $25,000

Survey date: Oct. 14, 2025

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What: IDPH said the facility failed to properly transfer a resident for appropriate safe transfers. This failure resulted in the resident having a fall, sustaining a right hip fracture and ultimately passing away.

Lincoln Village Healthcare, Lincoln

Address: 2202 N. Kickapoo St.

Fined: $4,400

Survey date: July 20, 2025

What: IDPH found three residents experienced symptoms after not receiving prescribed opioid medication, indicating the health facility failed to perform proper pain assessments and implement pain relieving interventions when residents were not receiving their prescribed medicine.

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Lincoln Village Healthcare, Lincoln

Address: 2202 N. Kickapoo St.

Fined: $25,000

Survey date: Sept. 10, 2025

What: IDPH said a resident was taken to the hospital after the facility failed to protect a wound from insect contamination.

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Fair Havens Senior Living, Decatur

Address: 1790 S. Fairview Ave.

Fined: $25,000

Survey date: Aug. 13, 2025

What: The facility failed to ensure physician orders were accurately transcribed and implemented for one resident reviewed for blood glucose monitoring. These failures resulted in the resident being hospitalized.

Arc at Hickory Point, Forsyth

Address: 565 W. Marion Ave.

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Fined: $25,000

Survey date: Sept. 3, 2025

What: A resident fell and suffered multiple fractured ribs and a collapsed lung. IDPH said the facility failed to ensure fall interventions were in place to prevent the resident from falling.

Tom Ackerman covers breaking news and trending news along with general news for the Springfield State Journal-Register. He can be reached at tackerman@usatodayco.com.



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Indiana

Republican primary voters sent dangerous message to America | Opinion

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Republican primary voters sent dangerous message to America | Opinion



A handful of Indiana Republican state senators saw this abuse of power unfolding and said, ‘Not on our watch.’ And now they’ve been voted out by those who placed loyalty to Trump ahead of democracy.

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Donald Trump, even more so than other presidents, needs guardrails to keep his worst impulses in check. 

But on May 5, Republican primary voters in Indiana further weakened the political and legislative guardrails around the president when they threw out of office at least five GOP state senators because they put the Constitution ahead of Trump’s partisan demands.

It wasn’t just those relatively obscure legislators in Indiana who lost. We all did.

That’s because the message delivered to GOP members of Congress, as well as to Republican lawmakers in other states, is that defying even Trump’s most outrageous demands is still the path to defeat within their own party.

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The vote also helps accelerate both political parties’ obscene rush to gerrymander congressional maps beyond any reasonable facsimile of fairness.

Indiana primary sent message to Republicans who stood up to Trump

In 2025, the Indiana Senate, thoroughly dominated by conservative Republicans, said no to Trump’s partisan order to redraw the state’s congressional maps to favor GOP candidates even more heavily than the current districts already do. The senators’ thoughtful independence not only drew Trump’s wrath but also triggered his vow to punish the legislators in the next election cycle. 

Now, five senators whom Trump targeted have lost their reelection bids, and one other race is too close to call. Only one Republican incumbent targeted by Trump managed to withstand the president’s onslaught.

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Message sent and received.

Our constitutional system is, of course, designed to provide checks and balances, but the system works only if we follow it. 

Trump helped kickstart the rush to prematurely redraw congressional boundaries ahead of November’s midterms elections in a desperate bid to salvage Republicans’ tenuous control of the U.S. House.

Congressional redistricting normally takes place every 10 years, following the national census, as prescribed in the Constitution. Trump, as is his wont, ignored historical standards to advance his own interests. 

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Redistricting push in Tennessee, South Carolina and others won’t help voters

So far, GOP lawmakers in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas have redrawn districts in ways that could enable Republican candidates to flip 13 Democratic-held seats in November.

Other Republican-dominated states, such as South Carolina and Tennessee, may push forward their own reconfigured maps. 

In response, Democrats in California and Virginia adopted heavily gerrymandered maps that favor their party. Democrats could pick up nine seats in those two states, as well as one in Utah, from court-ordered redistricting.

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None of this partisan manipulation helps ordinary Americans, and it certainly doesn’t strengthen the public’s trust in our democracy.

A handful of Republican state senators in Indiana saw this abuse of power unfolding and said, “Not on our watch.” They should have been rewarded for their political courage. Instead, they were bullied for months by our nation’s commander in chief and the mercurial leader of their own political party.

And now they’ve been turned out of office by voters who placed loyalty to Trump over allegiance to democratic values.

I scoffed at liberals who claimed before and after the 2024 election that Trump’s win would destroy our democracy. Their self-serving hysteria was over the top then and remains so now, even in light of the president’s heavy-handed redistricting push.

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American democracy will be just fine, long after Trump has shuffled out of the Oval Office for the last time. But just as fences make good neighbors, guardrails make better presidents.

It’s our nation’s loss that the guardrails built by brave Republican leaders in Indiana didn’t hold.

Tim Swarens is a former deputy opinion editor of USA TODAY and opinion editor of The Indianapolis Star.



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Iowa

Harkin backs Turek for Iowa Senate

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Harkin backs Turek for Iowa Senate


Scoop: Iowa Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek snagged a major endorsement for his Senate bid from former Sen. Tom Harkin.

Harkin, who retired in 2015, was the last Democrat to represent Iowa in the Senate. Turek is locked in a competitive primary with state Sen. Zach Wahls in a race that has divided major factions of the Democratic Party.

“I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to win an election, and then to faithfully represent all Iowans, not just those who voted for you,” Harkin said in his endorsement. “That’s why I’m supporting Josh Turek.”

Harkin served in the Senate for 30 years and is the author of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Turek, who was born with spina bifida and uses a wheelchair, was 11 when the ADA was enacted.

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Harkin is a widely sought after endorsement in the Hawkeye State. His decision to wade into the race is notable because Harkin also has a relationship with Wahls.

Wahls called Harkin “one of my closest political mentors,” and said the former senator officiated his wedding in 2021.

Iowa’s Senate primaries are June 2.



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