Illinois Families for Public Schools' Cassie Creswell and Jen Jones spoke at the August meeting of the Chicago Board of Education about the Pledge to Protect Human-Centered Education, which 12 of 21 sitting board members have now committed to as well as issues with CPS compliance with the transparency requirements of the Student Online Personal Protection Act.

You can watch the video of their statements here, and full statements as prepared are below.

Statement - Jen Jones

Hello, I’m Jennifer Jones, a board member of Illinois Families for Public Schools and parent of two CPS graduates.

Tech use in and out of classrooms has escalated over the past fifteen years, and District policies and practices have not kept pace to protect students' educational experience and personal data.

Last month, our org asked all Board of Ed candidates to commit to a "Pledge to Protect Human-Centered Education." 

23 candidates did so, which is encouraging, but the urgency of taking those Pledge actions means you need not wait for new members to be seated. We ask that you move forward on the following:

First, enact a three-year moratorium on generative AI use in order to study impacts and gather public input. We agree with a Brookings Institute report earlier this year warning that, “At this point in its trajectory, the risks of utilizing generative AI in children’s education overshadow its benefits.”

Next, appoint a Chief Privacy Officer who families and staff can rely on to address concerns and rigorously enforce policy. Currently, the responsibility for protecting student data is diffused across many roles and departments. We need one chief, not too many chefs, as shown last week with the messy, confusing reversal on the Google Gemini rollout for HS students. 

Third, establish districtwide limits on screentime, appropriate to each grade level, including a ban on 1:1 devices before third grade. Los Angeles just approved such a policy, two months after a board resolution calling for it.

Lastly, ban the collection of students’ biometric information, the most highly sensitive and irreplaceable type of data. As breach after breach shows, it is clear that schools simply should not be in the business of collecting this data aside from tightly controlled exceptions for students with disabilities.Please take these value-aligned steps to enable a human-centered education for CPS students NOW. Clear and protective policies on the role of tech in our DIstrict can’t wait. 

Statement - Cassie Creswell

Hi, as you’ve heard from my colleague, IL-FPS is asking school board candidates to commit to a pledge around tech use policies, including asking for a chief privacy officer. 

A CPO is the only element of pledge that requires a new budget line, but, like preventive health care it would pay for itself. The average cost of a data breach in the education sector this year is estimated at more than $4 million. 

Exhibit A of why we need a CPO: Illinois started requiring districts to enter into and publicly post written agreements with any vendor getting student data more than 5 years ago. 

But in the CPS ed tech database about 2 out of 3 products still do not have any agreement listed.

Just one example, Schoolinks, an app that replaced an earlier product Naviance. You might remember Naviance because the Board just settled a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit over accusations of wiretapping and 4th Amendment violations due to interception of students’ highly sensitive personal data when they were using it. Schoolinks is also touting their use of embedded genAI agents; but it has no mention in the district AI guidebook.

Data sharing agreements that are posted are frequently missing crucial information. For example:

• Minga: an app that stores data on students’ attendance, tardiness, and even their trips to the bathroom. The agreement with CPS has no information about that very personal data.

• Lexia English and Amira, these are apps that process some of CPS’ youngest students’ speech as they learn to read. The FTC considers voice recordings to be biometric information, but the agreements for these products have no details on this.

Some applications and sites are not even listed in the database:

Aspen, the district’s student information system, missing. Khan Academy, missing. College Board and ACT -- testing companies that are notorious for selling data, missing.

These issues with transparency are just the tip of the iceberg here. We needed a chief privacy officer…yesterday. Please take this preventative, money saving measure to protect our kids and their personal data. It is 2026, the harm of exposing and exploiting our children’s data is not theoretical.