We hope that you & your family are well. A few things we want to highlight at the top of our weekly newsletter:

NEW! Unemployment Assistance

The State of Illinois has expanded its eligibility criteria for its Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) Program to include parents and guardians who have been unable to work due to child care needs. More information can be found here.

You have all likely seen the horrific reports out of the Chicago Tribune by now, documenting hundreds of cases of sexual assault and abuse that have been reported to CPS over a decade but have never been made public before. The Trib said they had to threaten to sue CPS to get them to reveal the data they possessed, and it turns out CPS lawyers have investigated over 430 cases of sexual assault or abuse by CPS employees since 2011. These are just incidents that have occurred in CPS school buildings that have been reported. CPS acknowledged in the Tribune that they had no formal policies or procedures in place to deal with this, or to give schools firm direction on what they needed to do in the event that a student made a report.

Two RYH staff members spoke at the April 2018 unelected CPS Board of Education meeting. Their statements are below. We've also included other statements of interest. One statement is about the recent LSC election, the next is about the privatized nursing contract and its impact on CPS students who require a high level of care by a nurse, and the last is about the ISBE investigation into CPS special education and the need for certain remedies that the Advocates group is demanding.

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YouTube... http://bit.ly/RYHYouTube

Stay up to date on the latest education news. Sign up to receive This Week in Ed delivered to your email inbox every week!

Other ways to stay in touch with us: 

Twitter... @CPSuccessCHI, @ILRaiseYourHand, @RYHAction, @MTAS_Chicago

Facebook... IL Raise Your Hand, Raise Your Hand Action, More Than A Score Chicago

YouTube... http://bit.ly/RYHYouTube

Stay up to date on the latest education news. Sign up to receive This Week in Ed delivered to your email inbox every week!

Other ways to stay in touch with us: 

Twitter... @CPSuccessCHI, @ILRaiseYourHand, @RYHAction

Facebook... IL Raise Your Hand, Raise Your Hand Action

RYH spoke against the $535 million in contracts to privatize building engineers at CPS. Unfortunately, the Board voted to hand over the management of building engineers to for-profit companies Aramark and Sodexo-Magic.

CPS provided no cost-benefit analysis for this, as they are the only district in IL not mandated to do so, and said that the move would be cost-neutral and “more efficient.” Like nursing and other services that have been privatized at CPS, we know the overall negative effect outsourcing has on school culture and the ability to provide cohesive services. When the principal is taken out of the mix, communication becomes more difficult and relationships in the building often suffer.

It was passed, 5-0 by our unelected BOE. Rivera abstained from voting. Hines was absent. Yes votes: Clark, Guzman, Furlong, Garanzini, Ward.

Jennie Biggs, RYH board member and CPS parent, delivered the following statement on behalf of RYH at the unelected BOE meeting on Wednesday, January 25, 2017. 

On September 16, Raise Your Hand sent out a survey on custodians and school cleanliness after hearing so many complaints from CPS parents. 162 people at 60 schools took the survey.

Jennie Biggs testified as a parent from Mark Sheridan Elementary and also provided survey results from Raise Your Hand on a survey that we put out just last week.