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.

Welcome to the Summer! Even as the school year wound down, there was so much CPS and public education news. We will try to keep our comments brief below and we have included many press links for you to read more. Thanks for reading & being engaged!

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 occured 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.

We hope you enjoy this long holiday weekend and that you spend some quality time with your family outdoors! So you can get on with your weekend, here are 5 quickish things you need to know about this week in education...

Two Raise Your Hand board members spoke at the May 2018 unelected CPS Board of Education meeting. Their statements are below.

We live tweet every monthly CPS BOE meeting and use the hashtag #cpsboard. A tweet worth noting is this one: Watch the powerful performance of Lindblom HS's Varsity Singers. After the performance, their Choir Director delivered this joint letter to the unelected BOE on behalf of several CPS choir directors expressing concerns about the impact of expanded graduation requirements upon Choir programs and classes. It is worth a read.

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