Illinois residents aren’t the only ones throwing up their hands at the gridlock and increasingly polarized politics that have defined state government in recent years. More and more, fed-up and frustrated Illinois legislators are heading for the exits.

More than two-dozen legislators — about 15 percent of the General Assembly — have either resigned months into the current session or said they won’t seek re-election. They are Democrats and Republicans, rank-and-file moderates and those in leadership posts, including House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, who said last week that she’s ending her nearly 40-year legislative career when her term expires.

After testifying against the soda tax at Wednesday’s Cook County Board meeting, Stephanie Dremonas described her title as a “second generation owner” of Pete’s Fresh Market. The distinction was a nod to her owner father, who came to the United States from Greece as a teenager, opened a produce stand on Chicago’s South Side with his brothers, and grew the business into one of Chicagoland’s most popular grocery stores.

Today there are seven Pete’s Fresh Market stores in the city and five in the suburbs: Calumet City, Evergreen Park, Oakbrook Terrace, Bridgeview and Oak Park. Five more stores are scheduled to open soon.

One of the most valuable opportunities offered to young Cook County Jail inmates is a chance to go back to school. To earn a high school diploma. To choose a different path that leads to a better life, not another jail term.

But many of those students were cheated of that chance at the CPS-run York High School in the jail, according to a report from Chicago Board of Education Inspector General Nicholas Schuler.

The Woodstock City Council will meet Tuesday to discuss and potentially take action on its controversial proposed 1 percent sales tax increase.

The tax, which was proposed in March as a way to cover a hole left by the council’s decision to reduce its portion of residents’ property tax bill by 10 percent, has drawn both criticism and support from Woodstock residents and the city’s business community.

Palatine Township Elementary District 15 and a union representing secretaries, program assistants, nurses and other support employees are squabbling over contract negotiations.

District 15 and the Educational Support Personnel Association union each have submitted what are loosely termed “final offers” to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, as required by state law. About 435 workers, whose collectively bargained contract expired June 30, are represented by the branch of the Illinois Education Association.