Below is an email we sent with our sister org, Raise Your Hand Action, on January 30, 2019.

RYH and more recently, our sister-org, RYH Action have been leading the fight for TIF reform in Chicago for 9 years. One of our first campaigns in 2010 was delivering 5,000 letters and emails to Mayor Daley demanding he declare a TIF surplus to help plug the budget hole at CPS. This led to over $90M being returned to the schools.

On Wednesday, we delivered a report entitled, “High School Application and Placement for Chicago Public Schools Students with Disabilities” to the unelected CPS BOE. This 18 page report shows major barriers to CPS HS access for the most vulnerable students. For example, 31% of high schools have a minimum NWEA score requirement to apply.

See the Key Findings & Recommendations and find a link to the full report here.

Read our statements to the BOE when delivering this report here.

At the January 2019 monthly meeting of the unelected CPS Board of Education, Raise Your Hand presented a report entitled, "High School Application and Placement for Chicago Public School Students with Disabilities." You can find a summary of the report here as well as a link to the full 18 page report.

Below are the three prepared RYH testimonies given to the BOE to present the report and to explain its findings, including recommendations for the CPS district, CPS Elementary and High Schools, and CPS Parents of Students with Disabilities. 

An education consultant, Lara Pruitt, whose children recently graduated from CPS, noticed the tremendous amount of concern, frustration and anger expressed by CPS parents about the lack of information and support provided to parents of students with disabilities on the critical transition to high school. She reached out to RYH in September 2018 to ask if we might form a volunteer group to research the issue and unearth current problems as well as potential solutions.  

RYH assembled a task force including a number of CPS parents with children who have disabilities and education researcher Dr. Federico Waitoller, associate professor of special education at UIC.

This report was delivered to CPS at the January 2019 monthly meeting of the CPS Board of Education. 

Over the last nine years Raise Your Hand has grown into a mighty force of empowered parents fighting to protect and strengthen public education!

People who believe in public education as a public good must remain ever ready, present, and active to defend and promote policies that protect classrooms across our city and state. Thank you for being part of building power around a variety of public education issues in 2018

On Wednesday, November 28, 2018, City Council's Committee on Education and Child Development finally had a hearing "to address issue of sexual abuse and safety of children in Chicago Public Schools." 

UPDATE: Now translated into Spanish: En Español (jpg 1, jpg 2); En Español(pdf).

On Friday, November 9, the IL State Board of Ed (ISBE) finally released a letter to CPS parents and staff regarding the ISBE investigation into CPS special education practices and policies. Many schools still haven't shared the ISBE letter, and it is not that parent friendly.

RYH volunteer, Terri Smith, wrote a great fact sheet explaining why the ISBE Inquiry happened and containing many relevant links. It is an improved version of the CPS letter that went out so that parents can actually understand what happened.