Be an informed voter! Chicago’s Municipal Election is Tuesday, February 26.

Happy, Happy 2019! You are all an important part of RYH and we look forward to working with you to strengthen public education during this new year & beyond! Thank you so much for your participation AND a special shout out to all the donors who helped us raise more than $10,000 in our #RaiseOurVoices end of the year fundraising campaign! We far exceeded our goal and raised over $13,000!!! We’re also proud that we now have 43 monthly donors- we added 10 during this campaign. Wow!!! THANK YOU.

Please join us tonight: Parent Training: Know Your Rights on 504 Plans vs. IEP Plans! Details and RSVP here.

After a temporary CPS employee was fired, she downloaded a database containing names, employee ID numbers, phone numbers, addresses, birth dates, criminal histories and any records associating individuals with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Parents who were in the process of the CPS background check and school volunteer approval process and many CPS employees are saying they received an email last night from CPS indicating their data was downloaded by the former employee.

CBS 2: Fired CPS Employee Steals Personal Data Of 70,000 People, Charged With Multiple Felonies

#cpsuccess! We are still retweeting away at @CPSuccessChi. Please tag us in your #cpsuccess tweets and use that hashtag! (Note the clever spelling.) Some recent & amazing #cpsuccess stories chosen randomly from our Twitter feed:

Raise Your Hand's annual fundraiser, Raise a Glass for RYH, is this Tuesday!  Join us at Lagunitas Brewing Company on Tuesday, October 2, from 5:30 - 8:30pm.  Please buy your ticket in advance so we can plan ahead!

The unelected CPS Board of Education held their monthly meeting on August 22, 2018. Here are our written statements and links to video of our testimony. 

Thanks to all of you who came out to the student-data privacy hearing this past Tuesday in the IL House Cybersecurity Committee! There were quite a few parents in attendance and several who testified. RYH Action pushed for this hearing because they have been trying to get a simple data privacy bill passed and have come up against serious opposition from the ed tech lobby and school management groups. We believe parents have a right to know what data is being collected on our children, how it’s being used, and the ability to correct it if it’s wrong, and we don’t think tech companies should be able to profit by selling our kids’ data to entities for marketing purposes. We also think stronger protections are needed to secure our students’ data. These are just some of the data privacy issues that we’re trying to bring to light.

In a big win for IL students that comes as a result of many parents speaking to their legislators about student data privacy concerns and as a result of Raise Your Hand Action being present in Springfield and meeting with several IL legislators on this issue, the IL House Cybersecurity, Data Analytics and IT Committee will hold a subject-matter hearing on student data privacy on Tues August 7th, 10am, at the Bilandic Building (160 N LaSalle), C-600, 6th floor. 

CPS announced it would open a new 20-person, $3M department to respond to sexual abuse allegations right before the BOE meeting Wednesday. Unfortunately, this came as a surprise to the Inspector General who is supposed to be working in partnership with CPS on this issue. It’s also concerning that the legal department is in charge of launching this department, given the recent revelations that their department was routinely interrogating student victims of sexual abuse without a parent present.