Can you make a phone call before 11am TODAY, Monday, August 28?

Raise Your Hand Action is deeply disturbed to learn that school vouchers will likely be part of a bill that’s supposed to address decades old funding inequities in IL schools. We ask that legislators who actually value public education and believe in the separation of church and state vote against any compromise bill that includes school vouchers. School vouchers have no place in a bill that’s supposed to correct funding inequity, as they will further drain dollars from the public good to private interests.

This Wednesday was to be a big day in Springfield as the House was expected to vote to override Governor Rauner's veto of SB1. But now Wednesday's session has been cancelled because "progress" has been made in talks between the legislative leaders. A compromise bill could include establishment of a voucher program in Illinois. What can you do?

After Gov. Rauner's amendatory veto on Aug 1st, Raise Your Hand Action is in the governor's hometown of Winnetka canvassing to let people know that SB1 is not a CPS bailout.

Governor Rauner says that SB1, the new school funding formula bill, gives too much money to CPS because it would pay for part of CPS pensions.  But now CPS is the only district in the state which pays for its pensions itself. The state directly pays the employer pension cost for every other district in Illinois.

The General Assembly’s spring session is scheduled to end next Wednesday, so it's crunch time for many bills in Springfield. Here’s what you need to know right now about the bills on the elected school board, student privacy, and the State charter commission.

The Student Online Privacy Protection Act, SB1796, does the opposite of what it is intended to: instead of protecting student data, it will write into law tech companies' existing misuse of students' personally identifiable information. For every small benefit children get with this bill, website and app operators get a huge gift. Call your state rep and tell them to vote NO.

Ever more digital data is collected about and from students in public school, and the security and privacy of this data is a major concern for parents. We would love to see robust legislation passed in Illinois that builds on the protections of our existing student privacy law in this new era of big data and ed tech. But SB1796, the Student Online Privacy Protection Act, is not that legislation.

Update: It's still not too late on HB768!

The bill was pulled from the hearing today 5/17 due to pressure from charter industry and has now been moved to the Executive Committee for a 2pm hearing tomorrow 5/18. You must fill out a new witness slip as a PROPONENT here.

Prompted by a group of 21 community and advocacy organizations, 34 legislators have signed a letter to Governor Bruce Rauner to urge him to keep school voucher programs out of Illinois and to keep public dollars within the public education system not to be diverted to private and religious schools.