As the clock neared midnight on the last day of the spring legislative session, the Illinois Senate revived a plan that could someday strip Mayor Rahm Emanuel and future mayors of the ability to handpick members of the Chicago Board of Education.

And though Illinois politics is most certainly an unpredictable endeavor, the odds of the measure becoming reality look increasingly likely.

A court hearing scheduled for Tuesday has the potential to shake up Illinois’ already-precarious financial situation. Organizations that run the state’s Medicaid program are asking a judge to speed up their payments.

There are a lot people and organizations in line to be paid by state government. The Medicaid providers are asking a federal judge to put them at the front of it.

Illinois Department of Children and Family Services Director George Sheldon’s resignation on Thursday was both necessary and inevitable.

Not simply because of the death of Joliet 1-year-old Sema’j Crosby, but because of the failure of the agency, throughout its many visits to her home, to recognize and act on the issues outlined in a 22-page report released by the agency on May 26.

For Illinois or another state to formally go bankrupt, the United States Congress would have to pass legislation.

Would they? I think so. In fact, bipartisan support is reasonably foreseeable and, ultimately, that legislation is unavoidable, which will trump any debate.

Three years after Illinois made a bold change in how science would be taught and tested, little is known about how students have performed because neither schools nor families have seen state science exam scores since 2013-14.

Whether supported or maligned, state testing gives important information to schools and families about what students know in reading, math and science, and achievement results have been released continuously in reading and math.

The state’s overall base revenue for May was up about 7% compared to May for last year, the third straight up month, according to the monthly report from COGFA, the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

However, revenue remains down for the entire year-to-date.

Unionized teachers at Chicago charter schools are set to begin voting Monday on a plan to join the Chicago Teachers Union, a merger that would alter the politics of the city’s education system by pulling the independently operated schools under the direct influence of a powerful labor group that has sought to limit charter expansion.

The Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff has framed the merger to members as one that will “help us survive and thrive in this challenging political environment.”

Two new potential bidders for the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Reader have emerged, according to Robert Feder. They are Wheaton hedge fund manager Thane Ritchie and former Chicago Alderman Edwin Eisendrath.

Closing schools is never an easy conversation with parents, students, teachers and staff members.

But it’s one officials at the state’s second-largest school district serving more than 40,000 students might need to have in the near future.

City workers will embark this week on the second year of a quest to solve a nagging mystery: What happens to more than a billion gallons of water that disappears each year after being pumped from Rockford wells?

The Rockford Water Division in 2016 pumped, cleaned and treated 6.4 billion gallons of drinking water from a series of 30 wells located across the city. (None of Rockford’s drinking water comes from the Rock River.) The water was meant for distribution to the city’s 55,000 customers for drinking, cooking, bathing, production and manufacturing.

The Chatham Area Public Library District has taken the city of Springfield to court over lost tax revenue due to the city’s annexation of 181 properties that were within the district.

Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder said the city had been working with the district to potentially make some payments that would ease the financial hit on Chatham library, which receives more than $60,000 total annually from the library tax on the 181 parcels. Langfelder thought a fair agreement was on the table when the court petition was filed in October.

Members of the Illinois Fairgrounds Foundation say they’re banking on selling the naming rights to state fair buildings to help fund capital improvements.

The foundation, established in August 2016 to aid the improvement of the state’s fairgrounds in both Springfield and Du Quoin, held its first fundraiser Sunday at The Shed on the Springfield fairgrounds.