On Jan 2nd, Raise Your Hand Action sent a letter to Tony Smith, State Superintendent of Schools, and James Meeks, Chair of the Illinois State Board of Education, and to chairs of both the Senate and House education committees regarding ISBE rule changes on teacher licensure. 

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

Now is the time to call your alderman and tell them not to sign off on the two mega TIFs—Cortland Chicago River and Roosevelt/Clark. This isn’t just a North Side issue—taxes are raised on all of us from Rogers Park to Roseland pay for this development.

On Friday January 11, 2019, CPS and other taxing bodies will sign off on the creation of two new mega-TIF districts at the Joint Review Board Meeting. City agencies such as CPS, the County, Chicago Park District, the Water Reclamation District and City Colleges will agree to the diversion of hundreds of millions of dollars to their orgs for TIF districts that will benefit private developers, at the cost of $2.4B total to taxpayers. This isn’t sound policy and should be vetted before a new city council and new Mayor---and with a more robust public dialogue.

Searching for a meaningful holiday gift for a special teacher, administrator, or public ed supporter? Give a donation to RYH Action!

In May 2018, a bill was introduced in the IL Senate that would have had the IL State Board of Education administer a survey of all high school juniors in conjunction with the administration of the state test and share the survey data with all public institutions of higher education in Illinois. After opposition from RYH Action, the bill was amended instead to set up a taskforce to study this type of data sharing (PA 100-1007).

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

You all helped make a valiant attempt to move the charter commission bill for a veto override, but unfortunately the fix seemed to be in to keep it from getting through.

Dispatch from Springfield or Why A Grassroots Public Ed Advocacy Group Needs to Be in Springfield on the Regular:

First, thank you to everyone who shared our posts today, who signed up to be a recurring donor (woot!), and who on top of that made phone calls to Speaker Madigan and your own state rep about the bill to weaken the state charter commission, HB5175.