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.

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.

Our executive director Cassie Creswell spoke at the IL State Board of Education's monthly board meeting on March 13, 2024 about the College Board's sale of Illinois student data, and the need for the Board to ensure that for any new assessment contracts going forward, whether with College Board or ACT, Inc., these illegal data sales are stopped. Full remarks below.

On February 26, 2024, nine state and national advocacy organizations, including privacy, consumer and government watchdogs, sent a letter to the Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul calling on him to follow the lead of New York Attorney General Letitia James and end the College Board’s illegal practice of selling Illinois students’ personal data. Full press release below.

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. 

On February 4th, the US House approved a version of the America COMPETES Act that includes the College Transparency Act (CTA), a bill that would allow the US Department of Education to create a federal database to track every student who enrolls in a US institution of post-secondary ed from enrollment to end of life.

The Senate version of America Competes didn’t include the CTA, and now the two chambers are working out via conference committee whether it will be in the final version. As the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin can influence what will happen with this bill.

Two major changes in the IL School Code went into effect this summer: the Right to Play recess law and a major amendment to the Student Online Personal Protection Act. IL Families for Public Schools was instrumental in drafting and passing these two pieces of legislation.

What do these two new laws mean for students, families and public schools? You can watch the IL Families for Public Schools webinar we held on October 20th to learn what you need to know.

IL School Librarians Burdened by FOIA Request re “1619 Project”

As we’ve been sharing with you, school boards and school districts have been under serious attack by right-wing groups recently. So much so that the National Association of School Boards have asked the Biden Administration for help from federal law enforcement. School boards here in Illinois have faced confrontations over mask requirements, vaccines and how to teach about race. 

The letter from the NASB to Biden mentions that in September in Mendon, IL a man was arrested for aggravated battery and disorderly conduct, which according to the Associated Press was for allegedly striking a school official at a school board meeting.

The changes to IL's Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA) that passed in spring 2019 went into effect on July 1, 2021. We've been in conversation with CPS since fall of 2020 about how CPS would comply with the amendments via policy and guidelines.

The Chicago Public Schools are preparing for compliance with the changes to IL's Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA), passed in spring 2019 and going into effect on July 1, 2021. Their new policy on SOPPA was passed at the January board meeting, and we were encouraged to see that some of the input we had provided was incorporated into an improved final version. Now CPS is developing more detailed guidelines on how the policy will be implemented.