Illinois Families for Public Schools

10/09/2026

Governor Pritzker, OPT OUT of the federal school voucher program!

Today, more than three dozen state and local civil rights, good government, family, labor, community and faith-based organizations in Illinois issued a joint statement, urging Governor Pritzker to keep Illinois out of the new federal program, in response to the US Department of Treasury’s October 1st release of temporary and proposed regulations to implement the program.

The regulations make clear that participating in this program will hurt educational equity in Illinois and will not benefit public schools. The state will have little ability to regulate the program to prohibit discrimination or prevent fraud, waste and abuse. Federal voucher dollars will primarily subsidize families who already pay for private school. Dollars that do go to public school students in underresourced districts will not offset losses to their school districts due to enrollment decreases.

Full statement: www.ilfps.org/statement_on_federal_voucher_regulation_release

Do you agree? Take a minute and send a letter to Gov. Pritzker: bit.ly/no_vouchers_letters

10/09/2026

NEW STUDY! Governor Pritzker must make a decision before January about whether Illinois should participate in new federal school voucher program. The program will mostly pay for private school and homeschooling students with federal tax dollars-but public school students will be eligible for vouchers too, so we teamed up with Institute for the Public Good and compared three public school districts in Illinois to see whether the program might help or hurt their budgets.

Spoiler alert: to the extent it helps public schools at all, the federal voucher dollars will mostly end up in wealthy communities who don't need more resources! We say Gov. Pritzker should keep Illinois out of this program.

Get the details: https://www.publicgoodpolicy.org/briefs/federal-voucher-program

Institute for the Public Good and Illinois Families for Public Schools examines what is likely to happen in Illinois if the new federal voucher program were to be implemented in Illinois.

10/07/2026

Chicago! On November 3rd, we’ll fully elect our school board for the first time ever! Be a well-informed voter for this historic opportunity to elect members who are invested in strengthening our public school district, working for fairly-funded and well-resourced schools, and developing meaningful relationships with the communities they serve.

To learn more about what’s at stake and how to decide on which candidates should get your vote, join our friends at DePaul College of Education for a virtual forum on Tuesday, October 20, 5:30 p.m.

The virtual event is open to all and free to attend, but registration is required. REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-election-for-a-chicago-school-board-what-you-need-to-know-tickets-1999730657227 - link on Illinois Families for Public Schools bio Linktree

Their excellent panel of education and election experts will discuss the nuts and bolts of how to find the candidates in your district and learn about their backgrounds and positions on issues that you consider important for your schools. They’ll also look at some of the broader issues surrounding elections and democracy: the role of funding in politics, issues of equity and access, and how to develop broad community knowledge and participation.

You don’t want to miss this!

10/07/2026

Full steam ahead for the bots? Not on our watch!

Families are right to be wary of genAI use in schools. There is growing evidence that genAI use harms student learning. It also poses major risks to the environment, to the mental health of children and adults and to the security of computer systems.

And genAI companies profit unethically and possibly illegally from the input datasets that their products’ trained on, the bulk of which is made up of the work of creative artists of all kinds.

Other genAI training data sources include information generated by product users, and in the case of ed tech, that means data from children and young people in schools.

In early September, the two largest public school districts in the US, New York City and Los Angeles, took proactive, protective measures against the harms of genAI in schools.

But here in Chicago, we’re still waiting for our school leaders to step up!

So, what can parents and caregivers do in the meantime?

First, contact your school board member and ask them for a moratorium like NYC and LA! Find them here: www.cps.edu/about/chicago-board-of-education/member-map

Next, you can refuse genAI products for your child. Note that CPS’ own AI Guidebook supports this so that “your child’s educational experience aligns with your family’s values and preferences.“

See our new How To Refuse GenAI guide on our website: It has sample language you can use to notify your child’s school about your refusal: https://www.ilfps.org/refuse_genai

Questions? Reach out [email protected] or 773-916-7794

10/06/2026

Time for noisy advocacy to keep vouchers out of Illinois! Governor Pritzker has said he was waiting for the regulations to make a decision about rejecting the federal school voucher program, and now that they are out we need him to say NO to vouchers for Illinois.

This program will not help our underresourced public schools in Illinois, i.e. most of our public schools. We'll be sharing more info as it comes out, but in the meantime, please TAKE ACTION and keep spreading the word about why we don't want school vouchers coming back to Illinois:

WRITE to the governor and our state legislators - bit.ly/no_vouchers_letters

SHARE the statement from 16 civil rights organizations urging governors to reject this program, including the NAACP/ Legal Defense Fund, Advancing Justice - AAJC, Glisten, League of United Latin American Citizens, NCLD and Unidos USA - bit.ly/civil_rights_statement

SHARE the recording of our forum "What Everyone Should Know about the Federal Voucher Program” - bit.ly/fed_voucher_forum

10/03/2026

As horrifying as ProPublica’s story about how to open a private school in WV, AR or NC is, know that in Illinois you don't have to bother scrawling something on notebook paper and taking it to Illinois State Board of Education because there are NO constraints on setting up a private school here!

Check out this eye opening reporting 👇

Our reporting has shown how easily people -- some with questionable backgrounds -- have founded their own private schools in barns, strip malls and other places. That led us to an experiment: If the hurdles to open a school are so low, could we do it?

10/02/2026

Come learn about what we can do as a community to get to fully-funded public schools for all kids in our city and state. We’ll be sending postcards to Governor Pritzker (that you'll personalize with what your school community still needs!) in order to ask him to take action to get us there.

2538 W Division, Chicago, 60622 -- Drop in any time between 1-2:30pm. We’ll have pizza, postcards and popular education on how we can organize to ensure public dollars support our public schools in Illinois!

RSVPs are appreciated to help us plan: https://actionnetwork.org/events/postcards-to-pritzker-protect-our-public-schools --link in Illinois Families for Public Schools bio Linktree

(Can’t make it on Saturday? You can print your own postcards to personalize and send here! bit.ly/postcard_to_pritzker)

10/01/2026

We’re glad the need for clear and protective policies on the role of tech in Chicago Public Schools, including the urgency for the Board to appoint a Chief Privacy Officer, was discussed at this week's NW Side Chicago School Board President candidate forum, Thanks to 30th Ward Dems Chicago, 38th Ward Democrats, 39th Ward Dems ,and Dems 45 for hosting.

"Both Biggs and Dominguez have signed an Illinois Families for Public Schools pledge calling for a 3-year moratorium on generative AI in an effort to ‘protect human-centered education.’ It also calls for a screen time limits for all grades and for a ban on the collection of biometric data.

Henderson, who did not sign the pledge, said that three years seemed arbitrary."

To learn more about which Chicago School Board candidates have signed the Pledge, the policy actions candidates promise to uphold, and find the candidates who will be on your November 3rd ballot: https://www.ilfps.org/pledge_protect_human_centered_ed

by BRIAN NADIG Whether the next Chicago school board president can serve independently of the special interests that support them was asked

10/01/2026

“The lesson from Florida and other universal voucher states is clear: When public funds flow to unaccountable private interests, children and taxpayers both lose. Scholarship funding organizations cannot say where thousands of children are on any given day, let alone prove those children are learning more than their public school peers. The federal tax credit voucher scheme will only deepen these problems at an even greater cost to taxpayers.

Governors and lawmakers across the country should heed Florida’s cautionary tale and reject this unregulated federal scheme and demand real accountability for every taxpayer dollar spent on private education.”

Before you accept a single federal voucher dollar, look at what’s happened in my state.

09/28/2026

See you there!

Far Northwest Side Democratic Committeepersons Ruth Cruz (30th), Rob Martwick (38th), Ram Villivalam (39th), and Michael Rabbitt (45th), together with their ward organizations, are co-sponsoring on Tuesday a public forum of candidates for Chicago School Board President.

All candidates are confirmed to participate: Jessica Biggs, Hilario Dominguez, Victor Henderson, and Sendhil Revuluri.

This one-hour forum is scheduled for Tuesday, September 29th, at Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence Ave, Chicago, IL 60630. The event opens at 6:30 pm with meet and greet time with the candidates and co-sponsors. The forum begins at 7:00 pm.

To submit a question for the candidates to be asked by the forum moderators, email it to [email protected].