Two RYH Action initiatives pass both chambers!

After many rounds of negotiations, trips to Springfield, hundreds of calls and witness slips filed and a subject matter hearing in the House last summer, our student data privacy bill HB3606 passed in both chambers! Parents will now have a right to know what data is being collected in school, how it’s being used, the ability to inspect, correct and delete it, and there will be mandatory policies about data breaches. (More on what this bill does here.) Thanks to our chief sponsors Rep Rob Martwick and Sen Omar Aquino, and all of you who put in the work to achieve this!

Please put in calls to your state senator about two Raise Your Hand Actions initiatives, HB3606, the student data privacy bill, and the HB254, the class size goals and transparency bill. Both bills are scheduled for a hearing tomorrow---Tuesday, May 14th.

Progress in Springfield - Pat yourself on the back! Thanks to all your phone calls, witness slips and support, the following bills passed this week and will now move to the other chamber!

An elected representative school board bill will be heard in the House Executive Committee tomorrow morning, Wed. March 27, 8:30am. Fill out a witness slip as a PROPONENT here. Update on the amendments below.

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.