Two RYH Action initiatives pass both chambers!

After many rounds of negotiations, trips to Springfield, hundreds of calls and witness slips filed and a subject matter hearing in the House last summer, our student data privacy bill HB3606 passed in both chambers! Parents will now have a right to know what data is being collected in school, how it’s being used, the ability to inspect, correct and delete it, and there will be mandatory policies about data breaches. (More on what this bill does here.) Thanks to our chief sponsors Rep Rob Martwick and Sen Omar Aquino, and all of you who put in the work to achieve this!

There are several bills under consideration in the IL General Assembly right now that would protect children's data in and out of school, including the much needed student data protection bill RYH Action has been working on, HB3606/SB2089. 

Last spring the General Assembly passed PA 100-1007 which created a task force to study "methods by which the college or career interest data of a high school student in this State may be collected and shared amongst public institutions of higher education." The College and Career Interest Task Force met November 2018 through January 2019 and sent a report to the GA. 

Schools have changed greatly over the past decade with the use of technology in and out of the classroom, and massive amounts of data are being collected on our children that parents have no control over at the present time. Students are being tracked, traced, monitored, and scored now more than ever before.

In May 2018, a bill was introduced in the IL Senate that would have had the IL State Board of Education administer a survey of all high school juniors in conjunction with the administration of the state test and share the survey data with all public institutions of higher education in Illinois. After opposition from RYH Action, the bill was amended instead to set up a taskforce to study this type of data sharing (PA 100-1007).

Our co-directors, Cassie and Wendy, are in Springfield this week to work on a number of issues! They will be meeting with Representatives Andrade, Martwick, and Williams to work on a data privacy bill. They will also be meeting with legislators to discuss the possibility of an override vote on the class-size goals bill Governor Rauner vetoed.

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RYHA has been busy this fall hosting Mayoral candidate meet and greets with We Will, registering people to vote, and connecting parents by legislative district so they can advocate together.  

Thanks to all of you who came out to the student-data privacy hearing on Tuesday, August 7, in the IL House Cybersecurity Committee! There were quite a few parents in attendance and several who testified. Raise Your Hand Action pushed for this hearing because we have been trying to get a simple data privacy bill passed and have come up against serious opposition from the ed tech lobby and school management groups. 

There’s a hearing in the IL Senate Education Committee tomorrow afternoon (Tues. March 13th) at 1:30pm covering several bills important for public ed advocates like you to weigh in on!