On Monday, Mayor Lightfoot officially appointed the new CPS Board of Education: Miguel del Valle (president), Sendhil Revuluri (vice president), Luisiana Melendez, Amy Rome, Lucino Sotelo, Elizabeth Todd-Breland, and Dwayne Truss.

We are pleased by the appointment of Dwayne Truss, former vice president of the RYH board. He played an instrumental role in shaping our organization and is a phenomenal human and advocate for public schools. Read this from Austin Talks to learn more about Dwayne: Austin Resident Dwayne Truss appointed to the Chicago Board of Education.

Mayor Lightfoot announced her CPS Board of Ed appointments today.

Donate now to help RYH work for transformation in CPS.

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.

We’ll be at the unelected Board of Education meeting today, as we are every month. It's also the first day of our Grow With Us fundraising campaign! Support our work and help us grow, by making a donation today to help us raise $15,000 in the next 2 weeks!

As you know, Jennie Biggs, our Communications and Outreach Director, participated in the three meetings of Mayor-elect Lightfoot’s Education Transition Committee. There were about 50 people in the Committee. We shared information about this Transition Committee and a link to the RYH Memo to the Mayor here. We were skeptical and wary of the process and we still are. We are dedicated to our parent powered and informed advocacy in Chicago and Illinois and we will continue to hold elected officials and decision makers accountable.  

Grassroots Collaborative and Raise Your Hand File Lawsuit Against City of Chicago over Cortland Chicago River TIF for Lincoln Yards Development

On Wednesday, April 17, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the national Lawyers Committee on behalf of Grassroots Collaborative and Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education filed a lawsuit to halt the creation of the Cortland and Chicago River TIF district and the capture of up to $1.3 billion dollars of taxpayer money. In addition, the suit argues that the City’s racially and ethnically discriminatory administration of the TIF system has disproportionately benefited areas in majority-White census tracts to the detriment of areas in majority-African American and majority-Hispanic census tracts.

We attended and spoke at the April 24, 2019 monthly meeting of the unelected CPS Board of Education meeting- the last one under Rahm. Our prepared statements are below with links to videos of our speakers. You can find our live tweets from the meeting here.

RYH Communications and Outreach Director, Jennie Biggs, is serving on mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot’s Education Transition Committee. She attended the first meeting on Thursday, April 11. There are two more scheduled meetings of this Transition Committee: Wednesday, April 24, and Friday, May 3. 

RYH submitted a "Memo to the Mayor" as part of the Education Transition Committee process. You can find our Memo here. The writing of this Memo was a collaborative effort by several parents and RYHers who have been active over the years. Our intent was to reflect what RYH has been advocating for since 2010. We also tried to incorporate the many things we've learned over the years, especially while working with so many community based organizations in various coalitions. Feel free to share your thoughts or feedback with us: info@ilraiseyourhand.org

UPDATED May 9, 2019: You can find a public, shared Google Drive folder which will serve as a record of the Education Transition Committee's work here. In the folder, you can find meeting materials, survey results, feedback from committee members, education memos, and other documents referenced and used through the transition process. After the Education Transition Report is released, there will be a copy in this folder as well. All Transition Reports will be presented to Mayor-elect Lightfoot on Friday, May 17. 

UPDATED May 23, 2019: You can find the full Transition Report in English here and in Spanish here. It was published on May 17. There is an opportunity to provide feedback on the Transition Report. If you would like to do that, please contact Jennie via email (jennie@ilraiseyourhand.org.) Note: All final feedback will be included on the public, shared Google Drive folder. All feedback is due by May 31, 2019. 

It’s almost CPS Spring Break! We have a bunch of stuff to share with you before CPS students are out of school for a week. Happy reading...