Good news—we accomplished most of our goals in Springfield this week!

In January, RYH Action wrote a student data transparency bill with guidance from Rachael Stickland of the national group Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. As computer usage and data collection increases in public ed, parents have the right to know who is collecting, storing and sharing what data on their children, and this bill would do just that.

LSC Elections take place this week! Below are some important things you need to know.

Good news! Two of the bills we are working on passed out of committee in the IL House on Tuesday, April 10th. Here's what you can do next!

Big week in Springfield coming up: Friday is the deadline for bills to get out of committee in the House and Senate. On Tuesday the 10th there are two education committee hearings in the House and one in the Senate. There’s a lot of education legislation on the docket, and this is a crucial time to register your opposition and support by filing witness slips.

ACTION ALERT: 2 Witness Slips Needed!

April 3, 2018

There’s a hearing in the IL Senate Education Committee tomorrow afternoon (Tues. March 13th) at 1:30pm covering several bills important for public ed advocates like you to weigh in on!

SB3099 is a bill written to benefit the College Board and ACT, Inc, allowing them to sell or rent sensitive student data that they access through questionnaires administered along with tests like the SAT. RYH Action urges parents and privacy advocates to submit a witness slip to oppose this bill in hearing tomorrow (3/12/2018)

Governor Rauner vetoed HB768, a bill to weaken the state charter commission, last week. HB768 would stop the IL State Charter Commission from overruling local board decisions on opening and closing charter schools, funded with local tax dollars. The IL House will vote on overriding this veto shortly.

Chicago Classical Academy Charter was rejected by CPS in December but is appealing to the unelected IL state charter commission for approval. The "targeted communities" for Chicago Classical are Bridgeport, Bronzeville, Chinatown, McKinley Park, Pilsen, and South Loop.

There was a hearing conducted by the commission on this appeal Tuesday night in Chinatown. We were live tweeting. The thread of tweets starts here.