A report from research group WestEd on the Invest in Kids voucher program was made public this week and further bolsters the wisdom of the decision of the Illinois General Assembly last fall to let the Invest in Kids program sunset.

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. 

Today, the Illinois House adjourned until January 16, 2024 without passing an extension to the Invest in Kids Act. The provisions of the Act begin expiring on January 1, 2024.

This is a huge win for public schools in Illinois. It is also a win for the principle of the separation of church and state and for ensuring public dollars are not used to violate civil rights and are spent with the oversight, transparency and accountability that public spending should require. Public funds must be for public schools that serve all kids.

The Illinois Senate's Special Committee on the Chicago Elected Representative School Board met yesterday and on October 3rd for subject matter hearings on the upcoming elected board. Illinois Families for Public Schools submitted written testimony urging the General Assembly to make the elected board members a compensated position. Read our full testimony below.

Last week, voucher supporters, including Empower IL—the largest of the middlemen orgs that process vouchers and skim millions of taxpayer dollars off the top as they do so—launched a public relations campaign to “save” the Invest in Kids voucher program from sunsetting. Unfortunately, their PR push is rife with misinformation. 

Here’s some facts you need to know about the program that voucher cheerleaders aren’t sharing:

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.

Quick update on what's happening in Springfield...

The Governor, Senate President and Speaker of the House announced a budget agreement yesterday that did not include an extension of the Invest in Kids voucher program.

May 19th has come…and gone, but the General Assembly has not adjourned to end the spring session There’s no budget for FY 2024 yet, and we don’t yet know whether the Invest in Kids voucher program will be extended past the current sunset date.

Legislators will be back in Springfield next Wednesday. The real hard deadline to pass bills is May 31st, after which bills need a ⅗ majority to pass.

The Illinois General Assembly’s spring session is scheduled to end May 19th, and there is a deadline of July 1, 2023 to have a map dividing the city into districts to elect members to the Chicago Board of Education starting next year.

The first elections of ten members of a 21-member in total board are to be held in November 2024; the remaining members would initially be appointed, and then those seats too would be elected in November 2026. From what we understand, the two chambers are each drawing up maps and then resolving their differences and disagreements to create a single map that will need to pass both bodies.

The Senate created a special committee and held five hearings earlier this month. The hearings in the House will be subject-matter hearings of the House Executive Committee.

In November 2024, Chicago’s first (ever) election for the Board of Education will be held. Ten of twenty-one seats will be elected; the remaining eleven appointed by the Mayor. The board will be fully elected starting in November 2026.

As you know, a large coalition, including IL-FPS, worked for over a decade to bring an elected representative school board to the city of Chicago. In the spring of 2021, the General Assembly finally passed a bill granting Chicagoans an elected school board, albeit with a four-year delayed start, followed by two years of a hybrid board still under mayoral control.

The General Assembly initially set a deadline of February 2022 to draw the district map, but only began the work of laying out this map very recently to meet a revised deadline of July 1, 2023 . As part of the process, the Illinois Senate has established a special committee about the elected board and is holding a series of subject-matter hearings on districting.