People of Hispanic descent have overtaken blacks as Chicago’s second-largest racial or ethnic group, according to U.S. Census data released last week.

The city’s Hispanic population jumped from about 786,000 in 2015 to more than 803,000 in 2016, accounting for 29.7 percent of the city’s 2.7 million residents, the data shows. The black population shrunk by more than 42,000 residents down to about 792,000 last year, and now make up 29.3 percent of the city’s population. Whites make up the city’s largest racial group at nearly 882,000, or 32.6 percent of city residents.

Alden Loury, director of research and evaluation at the Metropolitan Planning Council, cautioned that census data includes “a healthy margin of error.” Experts had expected the Hispanic population to overtake the black population in Chicago, but not this soon, he said.

Coach of 1st black Little League champs dies

Edward Thompson, the coach of the first black team to win the Chicago Park District’s Little League championship, has died.

Thompson died of pneumonia Aug. 12 while in hospice care at Holy Cross Hospital. He was 93.

In 1959, even as he worked two jobs, Thompson coached a group of 10- to 12-year-old boys on the Tuley Park Comets who won the park district championship with a 32-0 record. His teams achieved victory at a time when the police sometimes were called to ring the parks they played in to protect them from rancorous white crowds who pelted them with racial slurs and, one time, hot dogs.

Currie won’t run for Illinois House again

Barbara Flynn Currie, the first woman to serve as majority leader in the Illinois House of Representatives and a top lieutenant to House Speaker Mike Madigan, said Thursday that she is not seeking re-election.

Currie, 77, is also the state’s longest serving woman in the Illinois General Assembly. The Hyde Park Democrat was elected in 1979 and served the South Side’s 25th District.

“I’m looking for new challenges, new opportunities,” Currie said. “For example, working with advocacy groups to try to make sure the public agenda that they are about has a voice.”

Protesters banned from carrying weapons

Chicago protesters and other participants in public assemblies would be prohibited from carrying firearms or other weapons, under a crackdown proposed in response to the deadly confrontation involving white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Two of the city council’s most powerful aldermen — Finance Chairman Edward Burke and Public Safety Committee Chairman Ariel Reboyras — want Chicago to follow Boston’s lead to prevent the increasing number of Chicago protests and street demonstrations from potentially turning deadly.

Police on pace to spend $200 million on overtime

The Chicago Police Department is on pace to spend nearly $200 million on overtime in 2017 — 40 percent more than last year’s record — despite a two-year hiring surge intended to allow for attrition and bolster the force by 970 officers.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported in July that officers racked up $30.9 million in overtime during January, February and March alone — cold-weather months when crime typically is lower.

That was 26.6 percent more than the $24.4 million spent on overtime during the same period last year, when City Hall set a record by spending $143 million on police overtime.

Records released Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act Request show the pace of overtime spending has quickened considerably.

Former Lincoln-Way school chief indicted

A former Southwest suburban school superintendent blew his district’s money on an obedience school for dogs, padded his pockets and cooked the books all while falsely complaining the state of Illinois was $5 million behind on its payments, a grand jury has alleged.

Lawrence Wyllie, 79, of Naperville, faces five counts of wire fraud and one count of embezzlement alleging he left Lincoln-Way Community High School District 210 on the hook for $7 million in unnecessary debt and stole $80,000.

Wyllie retired as superintendent in June 2013.

Two of his attorneys, Dan Webb and Bob Trevarthen, said in a prepared statement Wyllie is “not guilty” and was “a model educator in Illinois for 55 years.”

• This report was assembled in collaboration with the Chicago Sun-Times.