On Tuesday, employees at the US Department of Education were told not to come into work the next day, and shortly thereafter layoffs that will bring the total employees to half of what there were in January were announced.

Chalkbeat - U.S. Department of Education to lay off one-third of staff

Although shutting down the Department altogether would require a vote from Congress, slashing the staff will achieve a similar result. Already last month, hundreds of millions in research grants funded by USED were cut and thousands of hearings on discrimination in the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) were cancelled as well.

The legality of all of these moves is under dispute, but the negative impact is not.

It’s been a long first week of presidential executive orders targeting the public good and our neighbors, our families, ourselves. Monday’s late night illegal federal spending freeze​ was halted by a court challenge on Tuesday. For now the memo instigating that freeze has been rescinded​ (although not the orders it was meant to implement) due to widespread public outrage and pushback.

The General Assembly’s Spring Session wrapped up last week in a flurry of votes on budget legislation. Here’s where some of the bills and issues on our legislative agenda ended up.

The General Assembly's Spring Session scheduled end date is May 24th. While that deadline may get extended as the budget gets hammered out, there are a lot of non-budget bills that are poised to keep moving in each chamber. Here are status updates on a few that we've been telling you about this session and actions for you to take.

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.

This week Feb 26-March 1st is being marked as Public Schools Week by pro-public ed organizations around the country, including Illinois Families for Public Schools. In celebration, the Willis Tower in downtown Chicago will be lit up Red for Public Ed on both Monday and Tuesday nights. Please help us spread the word on social media!

The Illinois General Assembly left Springfield at the end of Veto Session without taking a vote to extend the program beyond its current sunset date, and the program will begin to sunset on Dec. 31, 2023. This was a huge organizing win for public schools in Illinois and a major victory in the national fight to rollback privatization of the public school system. 

The Illinois Legislature has (finally!) passed a budget for the 2024 fiscal year, the Senate late on Thursday, and the House very early this morning.

Thankfully, there was NO language to extend the Invest in Kids voucher program or remove its sunset clause in any budget bills.

Gov. Pritzker gave his budget address on Wednesday, and it was heartening to hear him call out attacks on school boards and libraries, including book bans and 'Don't Say Gay' laws, and say unequivocally that here in Illinois we want our children to learn the truth about our history as a country, “warts and all.”

The IL State Board of Ed held a series of budget hearings this month to get feedback from the public on requests for the state's FY2024 budget for public education. IL Families for Public Schools' Samay Gheewala spoke at the Oct 4th hearing, along with representatives of several other members of the PEER (Partnership for Equity and Education Rights) Illinois funding coalition. Read his remarks after the jump.