Blocks Together and RYH hosted a 1 1/2 day event on Friday, July 12, and Saturday, July 13. We learned more about best practices in planning for school facilities and programming from local experts and from national expert Mary Filardo, Executive Director of the 21st Century School Fund. Below are the resources shared during the event and many more. 

We are grateful to Crossroads Fund who supported this event! We also want to thank Alexios Rosario-Moore for all his work organizing the agenda, materials, and workshops!

It was a huge relief to hear CPS Board of Education president Frank Clark announce at Wednesday’s meeting that it was his and the entire Rahm appointed board’s last meeting. There will be a whole new unelected CPS BOE seated at the June meeting!

Chalkbeat Chicago: ‘It’s our last meeting’: New mayor Lori Lightfoot moves to disband Chicago’s school board, setting up major shift

Sun-Times: All 7 members of the Chicago Board of Education step down

And, in case you are wondering about the CEO position...

Chalkbeat Chicago: Lori Lightfoot makes it official: She’s keeping Janice Jackson as Chicago schools chief

We were surprised that back in February no media picked up this op-ed from former CPS parent Lori Barrett. Awash in Rahm legacy articles we provide this parent perspective on our former mayor.

Congratulations to the NTA community on their historic victory; NTA will remain open as an elementary school! For details see #1 in our "public ed news this week" list below.

On Wednesday, 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." You can find our thread of live tweets from the 3 hour hearing here. We spoke at the hearing and you can find our prepared statement here.

Raise Your Hand had a second meeting with a group of parents, the head of Special Ed and the Chief Operating Officer to discuss major nursing compliance issues at the district. Many students are put in unsafe situations due to lack of coverage, untrained nurses from temp agencies, and lack of continuity of care.

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...