IL-FPS has been in the news a lot lately! Check out some of what we’ve been up to below. This coverage is from this past week alone!
Our director Cassie Creswell was quoted in these stories about how CPS has botched the rollout of the amended Student Online Personal Protection Act, the student data privacy law we helped initiate that recently went into effect.
Unfortunately, CPS has misinterpreted the law, banned schools from using certain software that SOPPA shouldn't apply to, and declined to join a statewide data privacy consortium that was created to assist with the implementation of SOPPA that 800 other districts in IL chose to join. We will keep you updated as to whether they make some of the necessary changes to fix these self-created problems!
Chicago Sun-Times CPS teachers ‘blindsided’ after access to popular classroom software yanked due to new student privacy law
Axios Chicago CPS policy blocks access to computer software
WBBM Radio CPS blocks access to software to protect student privacy
(Want to know more about what SOPPA should mean for schools and families this year? Watch a recording of our recent webinar explaining the ins and outs of SOPPA and the new Right to Play recess law.)
And thanks to Diane Ravitch for sharing two of our posts this week! Her blog is a hub for public school news around the country:
Illinois: The Right to Play “Now, it seems, it requires a state law to restore what should never have been taken away from children: the right to play. Does your school have recess? In Illinois, parents activists pressed for a law guaranteeing The Right to Play. They won.”
Illinois: Parent Groups Sue to Remove COVID Safety Measures “Please sign and share this petition with other parents and community members who actually want this pandemic to end. Over 6.2 million children have tested positive for covid since the pandemic started and 1.1 million just in the first six-weeks of this school year. As much as we’d like this pandemic to be over, it’s simply not, and no amount of covid-denying magical thinking will change that."