Students at high schools in the Chicago area walked out of class on Monday to protest their district’s mask mandate.

A group of students from Vernon Hills High School and Libertyville High School arrived at school on Monday unmasked “as a sign of our desire for freedom from the mask mandate,” the students said in a statement posted on a Twitter account called “Student Voices Unmasked.”

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Illinois Retail Merchants Association CEO Rob Karr proposed a new plan on Monday to oppose the rising organized retail crime in the state.

According to a study by the Retail Industry Leaders Association, organized retail crime cost Illinois 20,252 jobs and $1,220,306,800 in wages in 2019. An additional survey by RILA found that 86% of stores have had an organized retail criminal threaten an employee, and 76% had an organized retail criminal physically assault an employee.

Illinois continues to head in the “right direction” in the fight against COVID-19, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Monday, but the state’s mask requirement remains in place – at least for now.

With declines in COVID cases, positivity rates and hospitalizations, questions have surfaced about whether the statewide mask mandate and other mitigations meant to reduce the spread of COVID-19 will be rolled back anytime soon.

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza is urging the top three credit rating firms to again bump up her state because of its mounting fiscal improvements that already led to its first upgrades in two decades last year.

“I believe Illinois is due to be recognized for our current achievements and plans to further strengthen our financial situation, and I believe these are strong indicators that favor upgrading Illinois’s credit rating,” Mendoza wrote in a letter dated Feb. 4, viewed by Bloomberg News.