Yesterday Governor Pritzker said that he would sign an extension to the Invest in Kids act in “whatever form” the Illinois General Assembly sent it to him. The Governor’s statement and his support of continuing the program are not aligned with the policies and values he has said he supports. You can read our full statement below and share it from here.

Numerous national extremist organizations supporting anti-public school, anti-equality policies and activity have been organizing in Illinois leading up to the April 4, 2023 local elections, including for school boards and libraries. 

National organizations include:

• Moms for Liberty
• Leadership Institute 
• Americans for Prosperity 
• Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America
• Turning Point USA 
• Moms for America
• FAIR
• Restoration PAC 
• American Federation for Children
• Parents Defending Education
• 1776 PAC

These national organizations are partnering with state and local organizations to support candidates and slates, including: 

• Awake IL
• Breakthrough Ideas 
• Wirepoints
• Illinois Policy Institute

School districts where these organizations have been involved include Barrington D220, Oswego D308, Niles Township High School D219 (and feeder elementary school districts, including Fairview D72, and library board in Lincolnwood), Wheaton-Warrenvile CUSD200, Lyons Township High School D204, Downers Grove High School D99, New Trier Township High School D203, Westmont D201, Evanston D65 and others. (Awake IL alone has endorsed in 45 school districts.)

This isn't a comprehensive resource of what's happening, but we hope it's a place to start for voters and community members researching the candidates on their ballots.

Moms for Liberty

Moms for Liberty is a Florida-based organization which lists four chapters in Illinois on their website. 

The Moms for Liberty Lake County chair, Marsha McClary, is actively involved in promoting a slate in Barrington D220 and has contributed to their PAC. 

The Moms for Liberty Cook County chair, Helen Levinson, who also leads a local organization Niles Township Accountability Council (NTAC) that was renamed Awake IL Niles Township in the summer of 2022, is supporting at least two candidates in Niles Township HSD219 and actively involved in the elementary school district Fairview D72 race. NTAC won seats on the D72 board in 2021. Levinson is also vice president for Awake IL.

The Moms for Liberty DuPage County chair, Shannon Adcock, is the founder and leader of Awake IL, and a failed school board candidate in Indian Prairie D204 in the 2021 election cycle.

Leadership Institute 

The Leadership Institute is the primary institution training conservatives to run for public office in the US (and beyond); many prominent US ultra-conservative political figures were trained by LI, including Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell. They have held two trainings in Illinois this election cycle, one in September 2022 in Des Plaines and another in January 2023 in Itasca, partnering with the local Moms for Liberty chapters and Awake Illinois on both. School board candidates from Westmont D201, Huntley D158, Lyons Township HSD 204, Oregon D220, Oswego D308, Wheaton-Warrenville CUSD 200 attended Leadership Institute trainings.

The Leadership Institute has close ties to and funding from the national Republican Party, the Koch brothers, the Heritage Institute and the State Policy Network.

Americans for Prosperity

A Koch-brothers-funded national lobbying and political organization, which, according to Influence Watch, “is among the top 25 largest political spenders in the United States and is often the largest spending organization that is not a political action committee.“ Americans for Prosperity has also received funding from the DeVos family. Americans for Prosperity has an Illinois chapter, and their grassroots organizer has been scheduling events in Oswego in recent weeks (Village Grind, Cristina’s) and canvassing for candidates in Oswego D308.

Heritage Action/Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation is a five-decade old, right-wing think tank, and Heritage Action for America is its organizing and political arm. Heritage has funding and ties to the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, the Bradley Foundation, and the Walton family.

Heritage Action was involved in training community members in Lincolnwood in the fall of 2022 to attempt to ban books at the Lincolnwood Public Library. That training was led by regional director for Heritage Action in the Chicago-area Matt Crouch, who has been meeting regularly with community members in Niles Township since last fall.

Breakthrough Ideas (see below) is featuring Matt Crouch as a speaker at an event in Glen Ellyn on March 14, 2022 about how to take control of school boards to advance an extremist agenda, the McCLean County GOP is featuring Matt Crouch at an event with another speaker from the Heritage Foundation in Normal on March 18, 2022 to discuss "the racial prejudice that comes from the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools."

Awake IL president and Moms for Liberty DuPage Co chair Shannon Adcock attended and spoke at an anti-transgender-rights Heritage Foundation conference in January 2023.

Turning Point USA 

Turning Point USA is a far-right youth group that organizes on college campuses and also establishes high school chapters. They sponsored an event on Feb 25, 2022 in McHenry County partnering with another national organization Moms for America (see below).

Lyons Township High School District 204 has a chapter of Turning Point USA that the district does not officially recognize.

Moms for America

Moms for America is connected to Mike Flynn and organized rallies for the insurrectionist January 6th attack on the US Capitol, and runs the National School Boards Leadership Council, which opposes services for English-language learners and promotes exclusion of students with disabilities. The Moms for America candidate questionnaire asks about comprehensive sex education; diversity, equity and inclusion programs; social-emotional learning; Title IX protections and support for transgender students. A Donald Trump-connected organization America First Works has funded Moms for America in recent years.

Moms for America Action has endorsed 13 candidates in Illinois for school board along with numerous others for library and village boards. Many of the endorsed candidates are also endorsed by a local organization We the Parents of Illinois based in Lockport, Homer Glen and Crest Hill.

FAIR

FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) is a national group which opposes all types of anti-racism initiatives in education and other policy areas and have been especially active in "anti-CRT" demagoguery. They are also explicitly transphobic. Founding directors include Megyn Kelly (formerly of Fox News) and Christopher Rufo. (Rufo is not currently on the board.) FAIR says they oppose book banning, but, in fact, their website says: "We believe that parents/guardians have the right to advocate for or against particular books being included in school and classroom libraries and curricula," in other words they support efforts to ban books in schools and libraries. 

FAIR's Illinois chapter coordinator Carrie Mendoza is the wife of Myles Mendoza, former president of Empower Illinois, the group that led the effort to create Illinois' voucher program (and currently benefits from administering the program as a voucher middleman org that skims millions off the top of the voucher funds they distribute). The former Illinois lobbyist for Betsy DeVos' American Federation for Children (see below) Nate Hoffman is a member of FAIR's board of advisors.

They have attacked Evanston D65 on issues of race and gender as well as New Trier D203. They attended Evanston High School D202 events in the fall of 2021 to disrupt affinity group activities for parents.

A current Evanston D65 candidate is described on the FAIR website as a chapter leader in July 2022 appearing at an event with the DeVos lobbyist Hoffman. She is also featured in a FAIR video linked to their website. Her position was also reported in the Pioneer Press in October 2022, but she said recently she is no longer involved with the group.

According to FAIR’s website, they were hiring consultants in the fall of 2021 at $250/hour. They are not, however, a registered non-profit, but a project of a donor advised fund, United Charitable, and there is no public information about how they are structured or funded beyond that.

Restoration PAC 

Restoration PAC is part of a group of political and policy organizations funded by billionaire Dick Uihlein, one of the largest funders of Republican candidates and associated causes in the US currently. The PAC funded numerous Republican candidates and far-right organizations in the 2022 election cycle, including a $13,000 contribution to Awake IL to campaign against the Worker Rights Amendment on the ballot in Illinois. 

American Federation for Children

American Federation for Children (AFC), founded and funded by Betsy DeVos to promote anti-public school legislation and policies, created an Illinois-based PAC in March 2022, Illinois Federation for Children, which spent more than $700K on Illinois elections in 2022. That PAC is primarily funded by the American Federation for Children Action Fund, which is primarily funded by Betsy DeVos and her husband, and also by Jim Walton.

The chair of the PAC, Nate Hoffman, served as a lobbyist for AFC in Springfield from February 2022 through January 2023, to lobby for the extension and expansion of Illinois’ K-12 school voucher program. He previously lobbied for Empower Illinois (See the entry on FAIR above for more about Empower.) Currently, he is registered as a lobbyist for Jeb Bush's ExcelinEd.

In summer 2022, Awake IL held a fundraising event featuring Corey DeAngelis the most prominent AFC spokesperson as a keynote speaker, also speaking on the panel was Paul Vallas, current Chicago mayoral candidate; and a leader from the rightwing, anti-LGBTQ+ national parent group Parents Defending Education, Nicole Neily (see below).

On March 23, 2023, Illinois Federation for Children PAC spent $59,000 to support Paul Vallas for Mayor of Chicago. IFC PAC chair Nate Hoffman is a frequent attendee of Vallas campaign events. You can read more details on the DeVos-Vallas connection here.

Parents Defending Education

Parents Defending Education is a Virginia-based national organization pushing anti-civil rights efforts in school districts around the country. Their president, Nicole Neily, also spoke at the June 2022 Awake event. Neily has worked closely with the Leadership Institute. Parents Defending Education is funded by the Koch family and dark money connected to rightwing legal activist Leonard Leo.

1776 Project PAC

The 1776 Project PAC is a New York-based PAC that is also primarily funded by Dick Uihlein via his Restoration PAC. Criteria for endorsement include whether a candidates opposes Critical Race Theory; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; social-emotional learning and Critical Gender Theory.

The 1776 Project PAC has endorsed 18 school board candidates in Illinois including slates in Oswego D308 and Barrington D220. (See list here; original here.)

Awake IL

Awake IL, formed in June 2021, is based in Naperville but works with parents and community members in other suburban Chicago communities. Their initial focus on anti-covid mitigation strategies broadened to opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, age-appropriate sex ed, and supporting book bans and school privatization, but their focus is anti-LGBTQ+ equality, promoting transphobic and homophobic activity online and off.

Awake says they are supporting 75+ school board candidates in Illinois, and, as of March 31, 2023, posted a list of 124 (Spreadsheet here.) Awake Oswego and Awake Niles Township have endorsements listed on their websites. The Awake Illinois PAC, chaired by Shannon Adcock, had $100 cash on hand as of March 11, 2023.

Breakthrough Ideas

Breakthrough Ideas is an Illinois-based organization run by former state representative Jeanne Ives. Ives has endorsed a slate of candidates running in Wheaton-Warrenville D200, due to their pro-book-ban and anti-transgender student positions. The slate’s PAC has received more than $24,000 in donations including from Ives’ supporters. The majority of money comes from donors tied to Christian private schools, several of which are major recipients of money from the Illinois K-12 school voucher program.

Wirepoints

Wirepoints is run by Ted Dabrowski, the former vice-president of Illinois Policy Institute. Dabrowski also serves on the board of New Trier Neighbors, a community organization promoting book banning, and opposing diversity, equity and inclusion programming and support for gender non-conforming students in both New Trier Township HSD 203 and in nearby Evanston. Dabrowski spoke at the Awake-Leadership Institute school board candidate training in January 2023 and appeared in a video being interviewed by Shannon Adcock in October 2022.

New Trier Neighbors was formed as Parents of New Trier and instigated one of the earliest attacks on DEI education in Illinois, in 2017, a campaign which involved Parents of New Trier, Dabrowksi’s Wirepoints, the Illinois Policy Institute and Dan Proft, and played a role in the 2017 school board elections in D203. The film by a New Trier parent New Trier: Tip of the Spear documents these events in detail.

Illinois Policy Institute

The Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) is an Illinois-based think tank funded by Koch, Bradley and Uihlein money. IPI is the affiliate of the national State Policy Network, and is known for its role in the anti-union Janus decision. IPI is a major supporter of Illinois’ voucher program. IPI featured Awake IL board member Steve Lucie on their website until summer 2021 when they were tagged in a discussion of Lucie’s violent rhetoric.  

Illinois Policy PAC reported spending $48,000 to oppose Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson in March 2023. Most of the PACs funding is from a major donor to Paul Vallas, Arthur Margulis, and John Tillman, who runs IPI and a network of associated shell non-profits.

Voucher programs around the country—whether in the form of traditional vouchers, education savings accounts (ESAs),or tax credit scholarships—are supported by well funded and organized groups. These include: Americans for Prosperity (the Koch brothers’ 501c4), the American Legislative Education Council (ALEC), the American Federation for Children (Betsy DeVos’ 501c4), Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation, among others.  

What do these organizations have in common? They work openly to discredit public schools and push a privatization agenda, using the slogans of school choice, education freedom and parent rights. Many of them were on the ground working on the April 2023 school board elections in Illinois.

Are these groups in Illinois?

Yes, DeVos’ American Federation for Children hired a full time lobbyist in Springfield in February 2022, Nate Hoffman. In addition, AFC also created a PAC, the Illinois Federation for Children, formed in March 2022, chaired by Hoffman, which spent more than $700K on Illinois elections in 2022. 

Hoffman previously worked for Empower Illinois, the largest Invest in Kids scholarship granting organization (SGO), i.e. an organizational middleman for voucher distribution; and now works for ExcelinEd, Jeb Bush’s ed privatization think tank. He is a board member of Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), an national organization founded by Megyn Kelly that has been active locally in Evanston IL to oppose diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The Illinois affiliate connected to the State Policy Network, a sister organization to ALEC, is the Illinois Policy Institute, known for its role in the anti-union Janus decision, is a major supporter of Invest in Kids. You can watch a recent video where AFC’s Hoffman is interviewed by IPI’s Hilary Gowins, senior vice president of the Illinois Policy Institute here.  

Americans For Prosperity has long supported Invest in Kids, and in summer 2023 began a new push to "save" the program from sunsetting. Read all about that here.

Moms for Liberty lists four chapters in Illinois, and two of their chapter leaders are also leaders of Awake IL (DuPage County, Cook County.) Both of these  groups have actively worked against covid mitigation measures in schools, comprehensive sex education, social-emotional learning, as well as teaching about race and honest history. They have promoted book bans at schools and libraries, for material on topics like LGBTQ+ individuals,and race.

Awake IL’s parental bill of rights calls for allowing parents to “take their children’s taxpayer-funded education dollars to the education providers of their choosing whether public or private,” and the document links that phrase to the Education Freedom Pledge of the American Federation of Children, a pledge signed by a single Illinois lawmaker thus far. They extol their support for “education freedom” on social media, and one of their board members runs a chain of private schools that Awake promotes on their website, along with other new private schools.

Betsy DeVos headlined the Moms for Liberty conference in July 2022, which featured a session on “education freedom,” aka an even broader set of ways to funnel public dollars to private education schemes.

What other organizations support Invest in Kids in Illinois?

The main beneficiaries of Invest in Kids include the Archdiocese of Chicago and other organizations that run or support religious schools.  95% of Invest in Kids’ $75M in vouchers went to religious schools in 2021-2022—at least 40% ($30M) of that to 349 Catholic schools, and at least 28% ($20M) to 19 Jewish schools.

There are two scholarship granting organizations (SGO) connected to the Archdiocese, the Big Shoulders Fund and Empower Illinois. Empower IL, the state's largest SGO, was formed in 2012, originally called Freedom to Learn IL and then One Chance IL. Empower was key in drafting and passing the Invest in Kids Act in 2017. Dan Proft was an original board member of Freedom to Learn. Juan Rangel, known for his role in multiple scandals connected to the UNO Charter chain in Chicago, is on the staff of Empower.  

Scholarship granting organizations can use up to 5% of their contributions for operating costs, including lobbying, which would be ~$2.4M for Empower and $1.2M for Big Shoulders in 2021-2022.

Another active group lobbying for Invest in Kids is Agudath Israel of Illinois, sending busloads of voucher supporters to Springfield at a time. Vouchers are a national policy priority for Agudath Israel. Agudath of IL’s primary SGO partner on Invest in Kids is Empower IL; one of their executive committee members, is on the Empower board of directors and the board of several schools accepting vouchers. Agudath went as far as setting up a warehouse in 2018 with hundreds of computers and fiber optic lines to get students’ applications to Invest in Kids completed.

What does all this mean for citizens concerned about public funds supporting private schools?

Here’s a question to ask your state representative and state senator:

Why would a legislator who considers themselves pro-public education support a program that sends public tax dollars to private religious schools, and thereby align themselves with  groups affiliated with Betsy DeVos, the Koch Brothers and other conservative organizations who support policies to dismantle public education that they reject?

Public dollars should be used to support public schools which open their doors to all kids without discriminating on the basis of religion, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity. Public education and public schools are a public good that benefits everyone.

✶ ✶ ✶

More information about the Invest in Kids voucher program, why it needs to end, and what you can do to make that happen at: ilfps.org/sunsetinvestILvouchers

Download and print this page here.

We’ve shared a lot over the past year about how individuals with Awake IL and Moms for Liberty have been organizing to ban books about LGBTQ+ students, ditch the teaching of Black history, and much more. When those groups made it public they were having some school board trainings around Illinois, a curious parent decided to sign up and shared their notes with us afterwards.

On Saturday, we had the pleasure of partnering with Equality Illinois and fourteen other state and local organizations for a press conference to get the word out on how the astroturf groups Awake Illinois and Moms for Liberty are spreading a very dangerous anti-equality, anti-family, anti-equity agenda to communities around Illinois under the guise of “concerned parents” who just want a say in their child’s education.