There are several bills under consideration in the IL General Assembly right now that would protect children's data in and out of school, including the much needed student data protection bill RYH Action has been working on, HB3606/SB2089. 

Last fall we put out an alert about the IL State Board of Ed proposing changing rules and setting requirements that would go beyond what federal law says Illinois must do with respect to testing and opt out and asking for people to submit public comments about these changes to oppose further entrenching the overuse of standardized testing in Illinois.

Last spring the General Assembly passed PA 100-1007 which created a task force to study "methods by which the college or career interest data of a high school student in this State may be collected and shared amongst public institutions of higher education." The College and Career Interest Task Force met November 2018 through January 2019 and sent a report to the GA. 

An open letter calling for a hold on any votes on the creation of two new megaTIF districts signed by 35 orgs was delivered to Chicago City Council and Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday February 19, 2019. We are still adding signatories; if your organization would like to be added, contact [email protected]

Schools have changed greatly over the past decade with the use of technology in and out of the classroom, and massive amounts of data are being collected on our children that parents have no control over at the present time. Students are being tracked, traced, monitored, and scored now more than ever before.

We've put together a questionnaire covering important issues for public schools in Chicago. We sent it out to all the candidates for mayor, and the responses we got back from six candidates are included below.

Now is the time to tell your alderman to oppose the creation of two new megaTIFs—Cortland Chicago River and Roosevelt/Clark! This isn’t just an issue for Lincoln Park or the South Loop—taxes are raised on all of us from Rogers Park to Roseland to subsidize wealthy developers with dollars from our schools. Use the form below to email, call and tweet your alderman. 

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. 

As we all expected, the Plan Commission rubber-stamped the Lincoln Yards Plan on Thursday. Thanks, to parent Andrea Tolzmann for sitting through the four-hour meeting and testifying for RYHA and to the other parents who attended.  You can read her statement below.