It’s just a start. We parents know that the reality on the ground, in our schools, ultimately doesn’t reflect the promises made by a mayor- we heard too many promises made at press conferences by Rahm.

CPS failed thousands of students in 2016 - 2018!

This new, Lightfoot appointed CPS Board of Education is implementing all sorts of changes to bring greater transparency! We attended and spoke at the July 24, 2019 meeting. You can see our prepared statements below. Our thread of live tweets is here. You can find press coverage of the meeting far below.

Blocks Together and RYH hosted Schools As Anchors: Communities Planning for Their Schools last weekend. We learned 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. You can find all of the resources from the event- and more!- here.

Check out Chalkbeat Chicago’s coverage: Are there alternatives to closing schools? Chicago parents consider options.

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!

We attended and spoke at the June 26, 2019 monthly meeting of the CPS Board of Education- the first one of the Mayor Lori Lightfoot appointed BOE. Find the new appointed BOE members plus their bios here. 

Our prepared statements are below. You can watch video of our speakers here. You can find our live tweets from the meeting here. Follow #cpsboard as well. 

Here is the document we submitted about the CPS School Quality Rating Policy(SQRP) written by Cassie Creswell of Raise Your Hand Action.

Make sure you follow us on social media this summer! Find out how here.

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.