The latest wave of a backlash against Big Tech’s takeover of the K-12 education system has been building around the country in recent months.After the jump we’re covering a few of the symptoms of this takeover first and then take a look at what solutions might be brewing here in Illinois:

We've got lots of important updates below, including good news on protecting student privacy in CPS and recent wins on the voucher front, bad news on the millionaires tax, and our plans for May Day.

If you are on social media, you can get many of these updates as they break via our feeds: Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram, Threads.

Things are tough, but taking collective action is the way forward. Read on and look for four actions highlighted below that you take right now...

Mental health is a prerequisite for learning, and all kids deserve access to mental healthcare. As ICE terrorizes larger and larger swathes of our city, the already urgent need for mental health services for students is only increasing.

Unfortunately, one of the resources Chicago Public Schools is directing families and students to is a for-profit mental health tech company, Hazel Health, that’s just merged with another startup with deep connections to one of ICE’s Big Tech partners, Palantir.

Yesterday five advocacy organizations sent a letter to the Chicago Board of Education and Chicago Public Schools Superintendent-CEO Macqueline King calling on them to cancel CPS’ contract with Hazel Health, a for-profit tech company providing mental health services to CPS high school students or remedy the lack of protections for sensitive student data before the contract renews automatically on December 31, 2025. Full press release below.

Illinois Families for Public Schools sent a letter to the Chicago Board of Education today with a list of concerns about privacy and other issues with a new telehealth program where mental health services are provided by for-profit company Hazel Health. IL-FPS urges the Board to answer the questions posed in the letter and revise the consent forms that parents agree to when they sign their student up for services.

The deadline for passing bills out of the Illinois House and over to the Senate is this Friday 4/19. Here are two bills that IL-FPS has been following closely, and we encourage you to call your state rep about both of them.

IL Families for Public Schools' director Cassie Creswell spoke at the August meeting of the Chicago Board of Education about CPS' continued lack of compliance with the Student Online Personal Protection Act. 

In a late Friday news dump, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announced a massive breach of the personal data of almost half a million students and more than 56,000 teachers. Parents and guardians were sent individual notices if their child’s data was included in the breach. The data, which spanned four schools years, 2015-16 through 2018-19, was part of a ransomware attack on a non-profit ed tech vendor Battelle for Kids, which has had a contract with CPS since 2012.

Illinois Families for Public Schools, along with the Computer Science Teachers Association - Chicago Chapter, CS4IL, Chicago Teachers Union, and the editorial boards of two student newspapers, the Lane Tech Champion and the Jones Blueprint, sent the Chicago Board of Education and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez a letter today calling on Chicago Public Schools to revise their policy for the Student Online Personal Protection Act and join a statewide consortium in order to make educational software in use around the state available to CPS students. The letter states: "Providing access to technology and protecting student data are not inherently in opposition, and we firmly believe that school districts can do both well." Full letter text below.