Comments on CPS Draft Guidelines for School Actions 2016-17 and CPS Draft 10 Year Master Facilities Plan Update
Remarks as prepared for the October 21, 2016 Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force (CEFTF) general meeting and school actions committee meeting, presented by Jennie Biggs on behalf of Raise Your Hand.
Comments on CPS Draft Guidelines for School Actions 2016-17
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Steep enrollment drops at receiving schools since 2013 mass school closings
In 2013, the Chicago Board of Education voted to close 49 elementary schools and reassign their students to receiving schools. Despite reported capital investment in receiving schools, enrollment dropped at a much steeper rate at these schools than other elementary schools.
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RYH Comments on Draft Illinois ESSA Plan
Chris Ball, CPS Parent and Raise Your Hand board member, and Cassie Creswell, Raise Your Hand Action Co-Director and board member, collaborated and submitted these comments on the Draft Illinois ESSA Plan. We are very grateful for their work.
The comments are below. To view the statement with references, please go here.
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Nearly 13,000 Empty Seats in Chicago Charter Schools – Increase of more than 1,000 Since 2014
Raise Your Hand Calls on CPS to Stop Irresponsible School Expansions During Fiscal Crisis and Lowest Enrollment in Decades
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Map of charters opened last year and impact on budgets at nearby schools
View an interactive map of where charter schools opened last year in Chicago, and the negative impact it had on neighborhood high schools.
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Special Education Cuts
In analyzing the special education "All Means All" pilot program, RYH found that all means less for many students at these schools. 84% of All Means All schools ended up cutting special ed positions.
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Raise Your Hand for CPS Budget Solutions
Parents are learning of potential disastrous budget cuts coming for the 2016-17 school year. Below are links to resources that we've developed over the past year to help you understand how we got into this situation and to give you advocacy tools and ideas.
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January 2016 Statements to the Unelected BOE
There were many great speakers at the January unelected BOE meeting. We are posting three statements below.
Raise Your Hand Board Member and CPS Parent Jennie Biggs handed in the attached document which includes comments made by people who signed our Cancel $60M "Obama Prep" Selective Enrollment High School petition. Since the Aramark food service contract was up for renewal, she also handed in a packet which included CPS high school students questioning the quality of the food they are served.
Read the Comments here.
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Elected School Board Press Conference- Oct. 13, 2015
On Wednesday, October 13, 2015, right before former CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett's arraignment, community organizations and elected officials came together for a press conference demanding an elected representative school board in Chicago.
Cassie Creswell, Raise Your Hand Board Member, spoke about the many questionable contracts that our current unelected BOE has approved. Her press conference statement is below. Attached above is a list of some of these contracts.
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RYH presents analysis of class size data for 2014 to the Chicago Board of Education: Finds that 34.5% of K-2 students are in homerooms at or above 29 students
With the 2013-14 school year officially over, the issue of CPS budget cuts and unfunded mandates continues to loom, as schools struggle to work with insufficient budgets for 2014-15.
26,624 K-2 students in homerooms at or above 29 students impacting 34.5% of all students
48,129 or more than 20% of students in K-8 were in homerooms over 28 (K-2) and 31 (3-8)
Research shows that class size matters.
Share the attached infographic with your elected officials and circle of people who care about strong public education for all children.
The underlying data is available here.