WGLT's Sound Ideas

A pair of McLean County judges said they’ve noticed an uptick in self-representation as the state gears up to implement sweeping changes to the public defense system. Artificial intelligence is also making its way into their courtrooms as litigants seek help from tools like ChatGPT.

Starting out as a brand-new country, the United States laid out what the people desired in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution. Barry McNealy is well aware of these principles. As part of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, he’s visiting Eureka College on March 27 to deliver his lecture, Towards a More Perfect Union. In his lecture, McNealy will explore the divisions which shaped the country’s past amid the pursuit of justice and equality.

Independent consultants are sticking with two proposals to consider for the Unit 5 enrollment study. The two options were presented Wednesday at a marathon Unit 5 school board to move forward with the districtwide enrollment study. The options were largely unchanged from how they were presented in February. Unit 5 provided more detail as to next steps if either option is taken when the board acts next month.

A Republican state lawmaker has joined Central Illinois law enforcement in calling for changes to the state's landmark criminal justice reform bill called the SAFE-T Act, but Democrats want to wait for more data before making a decision.

A trio of experts discussed changemaking pieces of legislation at a community event Tuesday at Heartland Community College. The forum held by the League of Women Voters of McLean County profiled new laws aimed at transforming Illinois' criminal justice system.

The union representing firefighters in the Town of Normal has wrapped up its series of community education forums about a study that calls for expanded services and a bigger fire department. What happens now in the effort to add to the fire service in the town?

The McLean County Board could decide to claw back more than $400,000 in budget overruns from County Clerk Kathy Michael's office. Last week, McLean County Board Executive Committee members took County Clerk Michael to task for going over her budget last fiscal year.

There are many myths about the American west. There’s the myth of bringing order out of a savage wasteland. The myth of the noble Caucasian cowboy. The myth of rugged individualists who wrested a living from the earth without help from anyone else. And the myth of women without agency who deferred to men. All of these are wrong. Yet they are remarkably sticky in American cultural consciousness, according to historian Megan Kate Nelson, a former Pulitzer Prize finalist.

A shortage of child care options has worsened in recent months following the closure of Kidsville, Bright Horizons and one of two Cadence Academy locations. WGLT's Lauren Warnecke reports.

A couple of top Bloomington-Normal elected leaders say the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council needs to change and get better, or even turn some functions over to the municipalities, following the departure of CEO Patrick Hoban. But McLean County Board Chair Elizabeth Johnston disagrees, in part, with Twin City mayors Dan Brady and Chris Koos. In a WGLT interview, Johnston said she thinks the EDC has delivered a lot of bang for the buck.

Several local governments in Central Illinois are looking to create their own data center regulations as Illinois lawmakers have yet to take action regulating this emerging industry. Data centers are seen as key to fueling an AI revolution. Critics worry they could drain water and electricity supplies that are needed to power them.

Students and staff at Normal Community High School feel that a regional Teacher of the Year award is well deserved for one of their own. Don Whitman’s philosophy of “hands-on, minds-on” has served him through 27 years of teaching STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] and technical education coursework at Normal Community. He was named the East Central Region Teacher of the Year by the Illinois State Board of Education. The ISBE will honor all 14 regional or specialist Teachers of the Year next month, with one being named as the statewide Teacher of the Year.

Leaders from the Bloomington-Normal YMCA recently attended national advocacy days in Washington, D.C., meeting with the offices of U.S. Reps. Darin LaHood, a Republican, and Eric Sorensen, a Democrat.

Bloomington Mayor Dan Brady has expressed skepticism about the focus of the annual One Voice lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., to lobby lawmakers and agencies to fund community projects. In this interview with WGLT's Charlie Schlenker Brady says the city already has gone its own way, in part by sending its representatives out a day before the One Voice trip to stump for projects not on the communitywide list.

The head of the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council has submitted his resignation. Patrick Hoban, who has led the EDC for six years, said on his LinkedIn page that he is transitioning to a job as an economic development manager at Ameren.

Bloomington-based singer-songwriter Cody Diekhoff, known as Chicago Farmer, was in Colorado Springs promoting a new album when the pandemic hit. He and his band, the Fieldnotes, packed up and went home. Diekhoff said he wasn't terribly eager to make another record after that. Six years later, Homeaid is here, dropping March 6 on vinyl, CD and streaming platforms. The band returns to the Castle Theater to promote the album on March 28.

Consultants will present a final recommendation to the Unit 5 School Board next week on how best to balance class sizes. One Unit 5 board member who serves on the district's enrollment planning committee said there are several factors the board will consider in realigning its schools. School Board Vice President Stan Gozur noted four of the district’s schools have mobile classrooms because they are overcrowded and the district is monitoring two other buildings that are approaching capacity.

After finishing long planned renovations and restoring old programs after the pandemic, the Bloomington Public Library [BPL] shows no signs of slowing down its progress. Now, the library is undergoing a new strategic plan. Jeanne Hamilton, director of BPL, said the library is ready to start its next chapter.

You know the voices, and you know the stories. But behind every story on WGLT is a person who calls this community home just like you do. The Meet the Newsroom series pulls back the curtain to introduce you to the team that makes WGLT possible. The series continues with reporter Joe Deacon.

A new book has a chapter on McLean County's use of restorative justice. Suzanne Montoya and Kevin Jones wrote about their efforts using listening circles to connect members of the community with differing views after a police officer shot and killed George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.

A number of Chiddix Junior High parents are frustrated by what little information the Unit 5 school district has shared about two teachers who have been removed from the classroom. The veteran teachers, Andrew Miller and Brandon Knapp, are the subject of separate police investigations.

The City of Bloomington is stepping into what promises to be a thorny issue: rules about signs. City Manager Jeff Jurgens said the city hasn't revised its sign code since the 1970s.

From ramen noodles for dinner tonight to retirement further down the road, college students face financial stress at the start of their adult lives like never before. Redbird Flight Plan, formerly Redbird FLI, is Illinois State University’s solution to teaching students skills to ease financial anxiety. It’s a part of the College of Business.

The bald eagle used to be a rare sight in Illinois. Now, there are more than 3,000 that spend the winter here. IPR's Jess Savage reports.

Four airlines now fly in and out of the Central Illinois Regional Airport [CIRA]. They carried about 325,000 passengers last year. It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when the airport that served the Twin Cities had sod and gravel runways.  

There are many myths about the American west. There’s the myth of bringing order out of a savage wasteland. The myth of disordered and uncivilized native Americans. The myth of the noble Caucasian cowboy. The myth of rugged individualists who wrested a living from the earth without help from anyone else. And the myth of women without agency who deferred to men. All of these are wrong. Yet they are remarkably sticky in American cultural consciousness according to historian Megan Kate Nelson. Nelson will speak at Illinois State University on March 19. Her talk How the Real West was Lost: The Frontier Myth and the Erasure of U.S. Western History is part of history department programming sponsored by the Sage Foundation. Nelson’s new book The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier is out at the end of the month from Simon & Schuster.

March 2 - 6 is severe weather preparedness week in Illinois, just ahead of storm season for the state. March 20, the first day of Spring, marks one of the busiest seasons for weather and safety organizations. Cathy Beck is director of the McLean County Emergency Management Agency [EMA]. She understands storm season can cause panic.

A win over Missouri Valley Conference leader Belmont on Sunday helped Illinois State carry a two-game winning streak and some momentum heading into this weekend’s Missouri Valley Conference [MVC] men’s basketball tournament.

The haunting pull of memory and its potential power to destroy or shape identity come to life in the Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home, produced for the first time in Bloomington-Normal this weekend. Based on a true events from graphic novelist Alison Bechdel and the struggle to write her autobiography as she reflects on her past will be performed by the Community Players Theatre March 5-7 at the Normal Community Activity Center.

A Chiddix Junior High School teacher being investigated by police was disciplined by Unit 5 in December for “repeated unprofessional conduct in the classroom,” according to a Letter of Reprimand obtained by WGLT through a public records request.

According to federal data, more than 100,000 students are physically restrained and secluded in locked rooms annually in U.S. schools. But a Twin City scholar on criminology and psychology said that’s an undercount. Charles Bell is an associate professor of criminal justice sciences at Illinois State University. Bell focuses on school discipline; his latest research on school seclusion and restraint is captured in a new book, No Restraint.

Two Illinois lawmakers have introduced a bill that would remove the two-year foreign language requirement for high school. The requirement was signed into law in 2021 but does not go into effect until 2028. High school students will need to have completed the requirement to graduate.

Parents of students at Glenn Elementary School have taken their pleas to keep the school as it is to the Normal Town Council. Ideally, they would like to see the council release a statement of support for their cause. One of two proposed fixes for enrollment imbalance in the Unit 5 school district would move the students there to Sugar Creek Elementary, so Glenn could house the district’s transitional services program for 18 to 22-year-olds.

Last month, Carle Health named Dr. Robert Cavagnol the new president of its central region, which includes Bloomington-Normal. He replaced the retiring President Colleen Kannaday on Feb. 2. Kannaday was president of the service area for over 15 years. Although she was an amazing leader, Cavagnol said, he isn’t sure right now what substantial changes need to happen in the organization.

A new reading curriculum already used in some other McLean County school districts is coming to Unit 5. The Unit 5 School Board approved districtwide adoption of UFLI [University of Florida Literacy Institute] for K-2 classrooms during its February meeting, to begin in the 2026-27 school year. UFLI introduces well over 100 new sight words over the course of a school year between kindergarten and second grade. It provides a scripted curriculum with an evidence-based and research-based guide for how to most effectively teach reading to kids.

The City of Bloomington doesn't know what's happening to up to 3 million gallons of water per day — and it could be more during the summer. An aging treatment and distribution system is a root cause.

Dozens of people gathered Saturday afternoon to dig into the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, and how its principles fit into America’s culture today. The program, focusing on the phrase “Life and Liberty,” was at the McLean County Museum of History and is part of the Democracy Dialogues series of public discussions this year, marking the the museum’s celebration of America 250, the nationwide focus on the milestone anniversary of the Declaration's signing.

They were mummified a long time ago and only came out once or twice before getting stuck back in their sarcophagi for several thousands of years. Then the band got together in 1999. That’s what Mummy Cass told WGLT in an interview for Sound Ideas. Frontman Cass got together with Eddie Mummy around that time to create their eight-piece funk band Here Come the Mummies. They’re playing the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on March 1.

State Farm had a good year in 2025 and is sharing some of that with policyholders in a company record dividend.

Illinois residents soon have a big choice to make: who should represent them in the U.S. Senate for the next six years? And because Illinois is such a heavily blue state — all eyes are on the Democratic primary in the race to replace longtime retiring US Senator Dick Durbin. WBEZ political reporters Mawa Iqbal and Mariah Woelfel report.

It has been about a year since the Trump administration started to ramp up open hostility toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion [DEI] in higher education. Initially, Illinois State University signed onto a letter from about 400 university presidents objecting to government overreach. Since then, a lot of institutions have quietly deemphasized DEI, dropped public rhetoric about it, and reworked grants or programs to avoid courting federal displeasure. ISU President Aondover Tarhule on Friday took a practical stance as litigation continues over a lot of federal mandates.

The Music Shoppe, a family-owned instrument sales and service center headquartered in Normal, is celebrating its 65th anniversary—a rare achievement among family businesses. For the current and previous owners, what began as a summer job became a lifelong commitment to the store. Randy Wood and Jonathon Breen both started working at the shop as teenagers, cleaning instruments and cases, before eventually taking ownership of the Music Shoppe.

Immigrants with asylum cases are increasingly missing their court hearings, leading to an increase in deportation orders. In McLean County, community members with ongoing immigrations cases said news headlines and social media posts are fueling fear and distrust in the legal immigration system.

Gamers from Illinois State University, the broader Bloomington-Normal community and elsewhere gather every Thursday night during the academic year for one reason: to play Super Smash Bros. The weekly tournaments, hosted by the Redbird Super Smash Bros. Club, are open to anyone who loves the game. On Feb. 28, the club will take things to the next level by hosting its first international tournament.

The Meet the Newsroom series pulls back the curtain to introduce you to the team that makes WGLT possible. The series continues with news director Eric Stock.

A team in the department of communication sciences and disorders at Illinois State University partnered with the Alzheimer’s Association for a yearlong collaboration including a film screening next week at the Normal Theater.

Unit 5 families have two draft options to submit feedback related to the districtwide enrollment survey. Families can review the two proposals and complete a survey until March 1. Survey responses will be used by the team at Cropper GIS, the consulting firm working with Unit 5, to help shape final recommendations presented to the Unit 5 school board next month. Cropper presented the draft options Thursday at Parkside Junior High School.

U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen heard concerns from Bloomington-Normal’s veterans during a recent stop on his Hearts for Heroes tour. The Democrat from Moline has been delivering valentines throughout his Central Illinois district.

Last year, many Bloomington-Normal residents saw their electric bills jump 40% in some cases, even after the two municipalities teamed together with other Illinois governments to negotiate a bulk rate for power. In a nod to the price shock, the electric aggregation contract negotiated with Constellation NewEnergy was for a single year. The previous contract was a three-year deal.