Yesterday, City Council approved a map for Chicago’s 50 aldermanic wards. The decision comes after a many-month saga of debate both in and out of city hall.

“This has taken longer than the Sistine Chapel,” said 40th ward alderman Pat O’Connor to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Discussions got so heated in early December Aldermen almost came to blows in a racially tinged argument. According to the Sun-Times:

[Richard] Mell was described as genuinely “afraid somebody was gonna hit him.” A police officer was summoned to the third-floor to restore order. At one point, Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Council floor leader, told Mell to shut up because he was exacerbating racial tensions, a source said.

Luckily, the new map passed without too much bloodletting. However the map puts six incumbents on the chopping block, including Alderman Bob Fioretti who attempted to delay the vote by employing a parliamentary maneuver. Mayor Rahm Emanuel promptly used a different parliamentary maneuver to counter Fioretti’s motion.

In the subsequent vote, the city map passed by a 41 to 8 vote; it takes exactly 41 aldermen to skirt a costly referendum; a referendum in 1991 cost taxpayers a whopping $20 million. So when it is time for Chicagoans to vote on March 20th, they will not be forced to choose between two rival versions of the map.

Some major changes are being made. As a consequence of Chicago losing over 200,000 African Americans in the past decade, the black caucus will lose one aldermanic seat. Conversely, the Latino Caucus, due to their 25,000 person increase, will get 13 Hispanic wards as opposed to their current eight. Englewood downsized from six wards to five.

But City Council isn’t completely out of the woods; although a referendum is being avoided, other parties could potentially file a lawsuit against the city if they deem the map unfair.

For previous coverage, check out our article.

On October 28th, forty three days after parents at Whittier Elementary School in Pilsen began a sit-in to prevent the destruction of the school’s fieldhouse, CPS delivered a letter signed by CEO Ron Huberman that formalized agreements made eight days earlier. The field-house will be leased to the Parent Committee for $1 a year as soon as the group officially incorporates as a nonprofit, and a library will be built for Whittier students. The Whittier Parent Committee officially ended the sit-in that same day, but some questions remain. The parents’ group issued the following statements qualifying their victory:

1) The location of the library has NOT been determined or agreed upon by the Whittier Parent Committee. The parents DID NOT agree to the library being built inside of the Whittier school as the letter from CPS states.

3) We want to make it clear that we are ONLY ending the sit-in portion of the struggle. The Whittier Parent Committee remains in control of the fieldhouse and the programming that is currently taking place in the fieldhouse. We ARE NOT abandoning the fieldhouse nor are we ending our fight for the library. The negotiations will continue!

In the meantime, Huberman has announced that he will be stepping down as head of CPS on November 29th, his resignation apparently hurried along by Mayor Daley, the Sun-Times reports. The Sun-Times’ sources suggest that Huberman’s replacement will likely be Terry Mazany, a former public school administrator and current CEO of the Chicago Community Trust with a much stronger background in public education.

ALSO:a slight correction. In the original text of this article I wrote that proving all of the Parent Committee’s allegations “would require a thorough investigation into TIF funding records, something no major media outlet has attempted.” While it’s true that thorough database reporting is lacking, there have been some important stories on the issue. Ben Joravsky’s pieces for the Chicago Reader are worth reading.

Read the original CW feature on the Whittier occupation here.