Below is an email we sent with our sister org, Raise Your Hand, on January 30, 2019.

RYH and more recently, our sister-org, RYH Action have been leading the fight for TIF reform in Chicago for 9 years. One of our first campaigns in 2010 was delivering 5,000 letters and emails to Mayor Daley demanding he declare a TIF surplus to help plug the budget hole at CPS. This led to over $90M being returned to the schools.

On Tuesday, January 29, 2019, we joined our friends at Chicagoans United for Equity (CUE), Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights (CLCCR), and Blocks Together for an event, Everything You Need to Know About TIFs.

Below is our presentation (with photos and many links) given by our part time parent organizer, Huu Nguyen. You can find video of the entire event here. 

Over the last nine years Raise Your Hand has grown into a mighty force of empowered parents fighting to protect and strengthen public education!

People who believe in public education as a public good must remain ever ready, present, and active to defend and promote policies that protect classrooms across our city and state. Thank you for being part of building power around a variety of public education issues in 2018.

"Every person and organization involved in public education in Illinois benefits from RYH, from its unswerving dedication to its mission, from its sophisticated and effective efforts at the state Capitol in Springfield, from the continuous information flow in support of public schools. It's not an old group, but it is an influential one." --Jim Broadway

Who are we? What do we do? What do we believe? What can you do to support us?

We are a 501(c)4 organization. Please donate to support our work here.

Thanks to all of you who came out to the student-data privacy hearing on Tuesday, August 7, in the IL House Cybersecurity Committee! There were quite a few parents in attendance and several who testified. Raise Your Hand Action pushed for this hearing because we have been trying to get a simple data privacy bill passed and have come up against serious opposition from the ed tech lobby and school management groups. 

Big week in Springfield coming up: Friday is the deadline for bills to get out of committee in the House and Senate. On Tuesday the 10th there are two education committee hearings in the House and one in the Senate. There’s a lot of education legislation on the docket, and this is a crucial time to register your opposition and support by filing witness slips.