End of 2024 Newsletter
As we approach the end of 2024, we at PEER Illinois want to take a moment to reflect on the strides we’ve made together and look forward to the opportunities that lie ahead in 2025. Your dedication to fully funding Illinois public schools is always the driving force behind our progress. Thank you so much for your continued support, we are so excited to continue building with you all next year.
📜 Year in Review 📜
Our PEER Illinois team in Springfield!
Policy Efforts: As always, we continued to advocate for full investment into Evidence-Based Funding (EBF) last legislative session. The current annual increase of $350 million a year is helpful but insufficient – Illinois families can’t wait another generation for fully funded schools. We also continued to champion HB 3446, a bill we introduced in 2023 that sought to increase EBF spending transparency. However, an amendment in the Senate Education Committee removed the requirement for districts to report expenditures, weakening the bill’s core purpose. The bill passed and will go into effect on Jan 1, 2025. While expenditures will not be included in district reports, the legislation will still improve data accessibility regarding school funding.
Securing dedicated staff: We were excited to welcome Maddy Wheelock as our Coalition Coordinator and Erykah Nava as our Lead Parent Organizer this year. They have both been hard at work affirming coalition infrastructure and crafting a strategic vision in partnership with the Coordinating Committee. In this process PEER Illinois has revamped our Organizing, Advocacy, and Communications subcommittees. If you have expertise or interest in these fields, we warmly welcome your attendance at our monthly subcommittee meetings! Please feel free to email us for more information.
Community connection: We engaged with many of you at back-to-school events, Chicago Elected Representative School Board forums, EBF Trainings, and our September virtual Listening Session. We were also pleased to invite parent organizers to advocacy days in Springfield, to our national convening in Tulsa, and to our Legislative Advocacy training series. If you met with any of us at PEER Illinois this year, thank you. We love meeting parents where they are, and it was so valuable to hear your stories and collaborate in our activism!
Our PEER Illinois team in Tulsa, OK!
Annual national convening: In November the PEER Illinois team traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma for an annual convening with over 20 states and territories in the PEER national network. We were so grateful to learn from experienced organizers and advocates from around the country about their education resource equity work. We also had a chance to ground ourselves in Tulsa and learn from descendants of survivors about the Tulsa Race Massacre and about the current political climate in Oklahoma. We encourage you to support The Historic Greenwood Black Wall Street Coalition’s petition to designate a Historic Greenwood/Black Wall Street National Monument, as well as the Terence Crutcher Foundation’s petition to reform the police department and move toward a just future for Tulsa.
🎊 New Year's Resolutions 🎊
Our Goals for 2025
Growing our coalition: Our number one priority in 2025 is to continue growing our movement by exponentially expanding PEER Illinois. This means securing new partnerships with organizations as well as developing our individual membership system. There’s strength in numbers, and we believe that true change is possible only when we work together. If you’re interested in joining our coalition, please let us know!
Co-Convener Beatriz Diaz-Pollack facilitating a panel on legislative advocacy in Tulsa.
Strengthening engagement & education: As we grow our coalition, we want to ensure that we are connecting with you all as often as possible. We plan to introduce monthly open General Coalition meetings (stay tuned for an invitation!), host more school funding training sessions with communities across Illinois, and advocate alongside all of you in Springfield and in your district legislator offices. We also plan to release multimedia resources on complicated school funding topics for folks who prefer to connect with our coalition asynchronously.
Policy priorities: In 2025 we will make our presence known in Springfield by continuing to advocate for the annual investment necessary to achieve 100% funding as promised in the EBF bill. This year, the necessary new investment to reach full funding by 2027 is $2.5 billion. New revenue policies could be a great way to drive this reinvestment into education, so we will explore those options with legislators. We will also continue to uplift education justice issues as they arise, especially as we prepare for regressive federal legislation. Finally, we want to encourage legislators to question why Illinois State Board of Education has messaged a target of funding all districts to 90% of adequacy, leaving 10% of the funding gap completely unaccounted for. Stay tuned for more information on this topic in our upcoming multimedia resources!
How to Get Involved
Send an email to your legislators: Unless we demand action, public schools across Illinois will remain underfunded. There’s a simple step you can take today: use our online form to email to your legislators about funding EBF to 100% adequacy as defined by the law. Our form will populate your legislators based on your address! You can choose to submit this letter in English or Spanish.
Fill out our story collection form: We love to share statistics with decision makers, but stories are ultimately more likely to change the minds of naysayers. We want to hear about your experiences with underfunding. Submit your stories to us in English or Spanish and we will follow up with you about how to make your voice heard!
Our team at a back-to-school event last fall.
Host an event: Are you connected to a community of parents, educators, or community members who want to learn more about Evidence-Based Funding? Do you have frustrations about funding that you’d like to discuss at length? Reach out to us and we can co-host an EBF Training or Listening Session on Zoom or in your neighborhood!
Request a 1-1: Do you have a personal experience that you’d like to talk about with a fellow parent? Would you like to work through a specific issue together? Request a 1-1 with our Lead Parent Organizer Erykah by emailing peer@ilraiseyourhand.org.
The best part of coalition work is the community we create with all of you. Together we are making a difference for students, families, and educators across Illinois. Let’s continue to build on our momentum in 2024 to ensure that our students get the education they deserve. Please stay in touch!
Wishing you a joyous holiday season and new year,
The PEER Illinois Team
