By law, CPS must announce any school actions for the following school year by December 1. On November 27, CPS announced the 2020 school actions. One district run school, Hope HS, will close at the end of this school year. Hope HS is one of the high schools in Englewood that CPS is phasing out (Robeson HS closed in June 2018; TEAM Englewood closed in June 2019; Harper HS is phasing out with a scheduled closure date of June 2021.) CPS opened one new high school, Englewood STEM HS, in September 2019. 

RYH Executive Director, Jianan Shi, shares his reflection below on this news in context of the public education landscape in Chicago. You can find a list of further reading at the very bottom of this post.

Teachers voted to ratify the contract last week which officially ended the strike. The CPS Board of Ed approved the strike make up days and the CTU and SEIU contracts yesterday at their monthly meeting. 

Some more press coverage on the strike & contracts below: 

WBEZ: Teachers Strike Remakes 25 Years Of Bargaining in Chicago

Chalkbeat Chicago: Budgets, school ratings, charter schools: Side agreements to Chicago teachers contract reach for big changes

Revised CPS calendar is here. 

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.

The window for the IL Assessment of Readiness (IAR) opens Monday, March 11. Use this weekend to review our 2019 Toolkit for Standardized Testing and Opt Out to learn more about this “new” assessment and how you can #ChooseToRefuse #ZombiePARCC! 🧟 The three main resources are now translated into Spanish: Q & A, Notification Letter of Refusal (scroll to p. 2), and Refusal Cards- all three can be found in the Toolkit.

At the February 27, 2019, unelected CPS Board of Education meeting, RYH delivered a parent research report entitled Improving Nursing Care in Chicago Public Schools: Creative and Meaningful Solutions Left on the Table. You can find the report here.

Below are the prepared statements from three RYH parents who delivered the report and explained the need for a complete overhaul of the CPS nursing design system. The fourth prepared statement below includes several questions from RYH on various CPS issues such as the ARA meetings, an overhaul of SQRP which hasn't involved parents, and implementation of a new IL CPS facilities law. 

You can find 3 videos of our speakers, plus a video of the CPS BOE and Central Office discussion after our 3 speakers here.

❄️ Happy Winter Break! ❄️

After a temporary CPS employee was fired, she downloaded a database containing names, employee ID numbers, phone numbers, addresses, birth dates, criminal histories and any records associating individuals with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Parents who were in the process of the CPS background check and school volunteer approval process and many CPS employees are saying they received an email last night from CPS indicating their data was downloaded by the former employee.

CBS 2: Fired CPS Employee Steals Personal Data Of 70,000 People, Charged With Multiple Felonies

This week’s RYH email newsletter brought to you by the letters S, Q, R, and P!

Below is the prepared statement of Joy Clendenning, CPS Parent, LSC Member, and RYH Managing Director. You can watch video of her statement here.

You can watch a video here of Laurel Henson, a CPS mom working with RYH to bring attention to the widespread nursing issues within CPS. 

Important news for people concerned about the impact of high-stakes standardized testing on Illinois schools. There's not only a new state test this coming spring to replace PARCC, the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR), but there's also a new state rating system for IL being rolled out later this month, and opt out rate may play a big role in your school’s rating.