Leyden Community High School Dist. 212 board members unanimously agreed to apply for an Illinois State Board of Education grant to help address the post-pandemic uptick in students missing classes.
Chronic absenteeism isn’t unique to Dist. 212 or even to Illinois, as an October 2023 analysis by the Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University found that as many as two thirds of all nation schools saw their rate of chronic absenteeism more than double during the 2021-2022 school year. An early look at 2022-2023 school year figures found similar patterns.
As Leyden officials noted during the April 18 school board meeting, that percentage includes the times students miss school for perfectly legitimate reasons, such as an illness.
The ISBE Stronger Connections grant uses federal funds to help schools create a safe and supportive learning environment. The grant can be anywhere between $100,000 and $4,958,020, with the exact number depending on the number of students the district had in the fall of 2023. If successful, the district plans to use the grant to hire a staff member who would work with students to figure out what causes their chronic absences and try to figure out how to address those causes.
Supt. Nick Polyak told the board that the issue with chronic absenteeism is that it undermines the ability to improve student achievement.
“After the pandemic, we came back with a very different reality in terms of student attendance, and chronic absenteeism has really spiked,” he said. “It’s hard. If you want to move the academic metrics and take care of students, if they’re not here, we can’t do that.”
In her presentation to the board, Faith Cole, the district’s assistant superintendent of student services, explained that Leyden’s chronic truancy rate was 19.9 % in 2018 and 23.9% in 2019. During the pandemic, the chronic absenteeism rate went down to 15.5% in 2020, before increasing to 23.5% in 2021. In 2022, the rate jumped to 28.6% in 2022 and dropped to 32.6% in 2023.
Cole said that students who miss two to four days in September were five times more likely to be chronically absent for the rest of the year.
She said that chronic absences are usually symptoms of other issues students are dealing with. The best use of state funding, she said, is to try to get to the bottom of those issues. The staff person will work with each student’s teachers, counselors and family members to figure out the best way to address it.
“Different kids need different things, so that [staff] person would get to the root of what’s causing this truancy and provide necessary support,” Cole said.
The presentation indicates that, in the longer run, the district will develop “truancy intervention strategies” into broader school culture and practices, so that, if they won’t be able to pay for the extra staff person when the grant funding runs out, they will still be able to help the students.
Polyak said that while the current staff is already trying to assist students, they are too overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the issue to help everyone.
As part of the grant application, Dist. 212 had to include what they expected to accomplish. Cole said that the goal is to bring down the chronic absenteeism rate to 29%. Polyak said that, while ideally they would like to see that rate go down to zero, the 3% drop seemed like a realistic goal.
He said that, if the district doesn’t get the grant, he will still try to find funding to hire someone, or find some other way to accomplish the goal anyway.
The board generally agreed that addressing the increase in chronic absenteeism was worthwhile, acknowledging that there was no magic bullet.
“[We will] keep trying until we find the right chemistry,” said board President Greg Ignoffo.
The post Dist. 212 Applies For Grant To Address Chronic Absenteeism first appeared on Journal & Topics Media Group.
Six officers memorialized at annual ceremony
By COLE LONGCOR
Capitol News Illinois
clongcor@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – Six fallen police officers were honored at an annual memorial service outside the State Capitol Thursday, May 2. The Illinois Police Officers Memorial occurs annually on the first Thursday of May to honor officers who died in the line of duty and to support their families.
“No one looks forward to this day. We all wish we didn’t have to have a day like this,” Treasurer Micheal Frerichs said. “Every year we come back, and we’ll keep coming back for those people in law enforcement who gave their lives but also for their families.”
There were two 2024 honorees: Officer Andres Mauricio Vasquez Lasso and Officer Aréanah Makayla Preston, both of the Chicago Police Department. Vasquez Lasso was shot and killed while responding to a domestic disturbance on March 1, 2023, and Preston was shot and killed during an attempted robbery immediately following her shift on May 6, 2023.
Four historic honorees were also recognized: officer John Francis Kane of the Cicero Police Department, who died on November 12, 1910; Sheriff Ray Boston of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, who died on July 23, 1947; Deputy Sheriff Andrew H. Sloan of the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office, who died on January 2, 1951; and Detective Todd C. Gillerlain of the Chicago Police Department, who died on May 7, 2020.
“Each year it pains me more and more to see even more families join the club that no one ever willingly signs up for, the Gold Star Families,” Comptroller Susanna Mendoza said. Mendoza, whose brother is a Chicago police sergeant who became permanently disabled after contracting COVID-19 in 2020, spoke out against the hate and violence towards police. “I’m disgusted by the vilification of our police force,” she said. “This vilification of the very people who are serving and protecting us is putting each and every one of you in danger.”
The ceremony included reading The Survivors Prayer, a gun salute, and the playing of Amazing Grace and Taps. At the end of the ceremony, the victims’ families were presented with plaques and casings.
Many of the speakers’ remarks focused on themes of memory and legacy, including retired Chicago police officer Mike Ostrowski’s speech. “Their names are etched in a wall behind me,” he said. “But their spirit is etched in our souls.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
Amendment was introduced and passed within hours
By JERRY NOWICKI
HANNAH MEISEL
& PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois
news@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – Supermajority Democrats in the Illinois House moved quickly Wednesday, May 1, to push through a change to state election laws that partially limits ballot access and adds three non-binding referendums to the 2024 general election ballot.
It’s a move that caused minority party Republicans to vote “present,” then walk off the House floor without even debating the measure, while four Democrats voted against the bill that would amend ballot laws for the election cycle that is already underway. Republicans were particularly critical of a provision that prohibits political parties from appointing a candidate to a general election ballot if no member of that party filed nominating petitions for the primary.
The minority party also criticized Democrats’ hasty movement of the proposed changes from introduction to floor passage. Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, filed the amendment to an unrelated bill, Senate Bill 2412, Wednesday morning before it was quickly moved to committee for passage, then to the floor within hours. It now awaits action in the Senate.
House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, noted at an impromptu news conference on a Capitol stairwell that the GOP has grown accustomed to legislation moving with little public notice, but it usually happens closer to the General Assembly’s end of May adjournment. “But we don’t understand the sense of urgency right now, unless the goal, the end goal, is to stifle the democratic process through the changes on slating candidates,” she said.
At the same time the amendment was moving through the House, senators were being briefed separately on the proposed changes. In the Senate Executive Committee, which meets one floor below the House chamber, Republican Leader John Curran, of Downers Grove, argued that changing the rules in the middle of an election cycle would be unfair to potential candidates who are operating under existing rules. He also said such a move could add to what he called the public’s growing mistrust of the election system generally.
Senate Republican Leader John Curran debates proposed election law changes in the Senate Executive Committee on Wednesday. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock
“There’s a lot of talk around the country about stealing elections,” Curran said. “And the faith in the democratic process has been shaken a bit around the country. I believe Illinois would be adding to that, really, national problem, if it took that step here and changed the rules midstream rather than just waiting to the next election cycle.”
However, Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, noted there are other ways to get on the ballot after the primary has passed. “A candidate who would want to run for General Assembly seat after the primary will have to run, as they can today, as an independent or a third-party candidate,” Harmon said. “They would no longer be able to appeal to the local party bosses to have them installed as the candidate of a major political party.”
Privately, GOP lawmakers said they believe the proposed change is designed to influence the outcome of one particular race this year, the 112th House District in the Metro East area, where incumbent Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, is running for re-election.
No Republican filed to run in that race in time for the March 19 primary, but party officials say one is currently being lined up. Republicans believe that district is winnable for them. Stuart won re-election to that seat in 2022 by a 54-46 margin over Republican Jennifer Korte.
Rep. Lindsey LaPointe, D-Chicago, was one of the four Democrats to vote “no” on the bill Wednesday afternoon, though others skipped the vote. She said she’s not opposed to eliminating the slating process beginning in the 2026 election cycle but said doing it now is “moving the goal posts” in the “final minutes of a ballgame.” “That’s problematic for me because as an elected official in Illinois, I’m constantly trying to rebuild trust in Illinois government and politics that many of the people I represent…don’t have,” she told Capitol News Illinois after the vote.
The measure would also pose three non-binding advisory referendum questions to voters on the November ballot, including asking whether health insurance plans that cover pregnancy benefits should be required to cover in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments. That mirrors legislation passed in the state Senate last month that would require IVF and other fertility coverage for insurance plans with pregnancy benefits that are sponsored by companies with 25 or more employees.
The other questions would ask voters whether they’d favor civil penalties for any candidate who “interferes or attempts to interfere with an election worker’s official duties” and whether the state should adopt an additional three percent tax on income over $1 million. The extra revenue would be collected “for the purpose of dedicating funds raised to property tax relief” – a perennial concern in a state with the second-highest property taxes in the U.S., just behind New Jersey, according to a 2023 report from The Tax Foundation.
State Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, speaks at a news conference on a first floor Capitol stairwell to criticize Democrats’ proposed changes to state election laws. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)
Illinoisans were already asked a similar non-binding referendum a decade ago, when nearly 60 percent of voters said “yes” to a question about a three percent tax on income over $1 million for the purposes of education, which is largely funded by local property taxes. Then-House Speaker Michael Madigan’s push for the so-called millionaire’s tax was seen as a poke at then-gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner, a self-funded Republican who ultimately won the governor’s race and spent his four-year term fighting with the powerful Democratic speaker.
McCombie said Republicans had offered bills aimed at property tax relief on several occasions in recent years. She and state Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, argued the referendums were a distraction. “What you saw today was a phony attempt to solicit feedback from voters that was covering up the real intention to the Democrats’ bill upstairs, which is to eliminate competition in our elections,” Spain said.
As state law limits the number of questions on a statewide ballot to three, SB 2412 would also crowd out the possibility of any other citizen-initiated questions from making it to the ballot.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
State-level Community Reinvestment Act finally was mired in rule making process
By PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois
phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – In 1977, then-President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act, a federal law that sought to wipe away the last vestiges of racial discrimination and redlining in America’s home mortgage industry. The idea was simple. By requiring lenders, primarily banks, to make credit available in all parts of the communities they served, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, the government could redirect the flow of private capital back into areas that had suffered from decades of systemic disinvestment.
Nearly half a century later, many people in Illinois argue the federal CRA has failed to live up to its promise. Whether that’s because the law was too narrow in scope, or because the lending business itself has changed dramatically over the decades, urban metropolitan areas like Chicago are still plagued with crumbling neighborhoods where few lenders are willing to invest.
“My area is the southeast side of Chicago, so if you want to talk about Woodlawn, Hyde Park, South Chicago, I mean, these are places where you have a significant amount of folks who are not white and upper-middle class. So yeah, there’s been a problem,” Rep. Curtis Tarver, D-Chicago, said during a recent interview.
Tarver was among the sponsors of a 2021 bill that enacted a new state-level Community Reinvestment Act. Passed during a special lame duck session in January that year, it was part of the Legislative Black Caucus’ “four pillars” of social and economic reform measures that grew out of unrest that began sweeping across minority communities throughout the United States the previous summer. “There were a few things that happened in 2020,” recalled Jane Doyle of the Chicago-based Woodstock Institute, one of the main backers of the bill. “Of course, the pandemic, the ways that the pandemic exposed racial disparities in our economy and our health care system, pretty much all parts of society. There was the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that ensued after that.”
However, more specific to Chicago and the lending industry, Doyle said, was an investigative news story entitled “Where Banks Don’t Lend,” by public radio station WBEZ and the nonprofit news organization City Bureau. It was released June 3, 2020, less than two weeks after Floyd’s death.
“The sort of big summary data point that came out of that is that there was more mortgage capital invested in one majority-white community in Chicago than all majority-Black communities combined,” Doyle said. It was against that backdrop that the Legislative Black Caucus pushed through the Illinois Community Reinvestment Act, a part of its “Economic Access, Equity, and Opportunity” pillar.
Unlike the federal law, which applies primarily to nationally chartered banks, the state law applies to state-chartered banks and savings banks, credit unions and non-bank mortgage lenders. It provides that every institution covered by the law has a “continuing and affirmative obligation to meet the financial services needs of the communities in which its offices, branches, and other facilities are maintained.” It also empowers the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to conduct examinations to measure each institution’s compliance with the law.
Much like the federal law, the state law does not impose specific mandates or establish any type of lending quotas on financial institutions. It does, however, require them to report on a periodic basis such things as the number and amount of mortgage loans and small business loans they make, the extent of their marketing activities to make community members aware of their services, and their participation in community development and redevelopment programs.
It also gives IDFPR authority to review those reports and assign rating scores to each institution, classifying their compliance record as either “outstanding,” “satisfactory,” “needs to improve,” or “substantial noncompliance.”
Gov. JB Pritzker signed the bill into law March 23, 2021, and the law was supposed to be in full effect by January 1, 2022. That, however, proved to be more difficult than originally thought. The process of writing administrative rules to implement the law dragged on for nearly three years while regulators and industry officials negotiated the details of what information would have to be reported and how that information would be handled by the agency.
Those negotiations finally came to an end in April when the legislative Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR, gave its blessing to the final rules, which now await publication in the Illinois Register before they are considered official.
“I knew it was hotly discussed and debated,” Sen. Chris Belt, D-Swansea, the bill’s chief Senate sponsor, said in an interview. “I’m not on JCAR so I don’t know why it took so long. I know it was a lot of issues and nuances that they were discussing. I’m just glad that is over now.”
Belt is also the lead sponsor of a follow-up bill this year, Senate Bill 3235. It calls on the state’s Commission on Equity and Inclusion to conduct studies that will provide baseline information to identify geographies in Illinois where significant disparities exist in access to financial products and services, along with a listing of existing policies and practices that may have disparate impacts or discriminatory effects. That bill passed out of the Senate April 18 and now awaits action in the House.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
Complaint brought by Democratic official likely to be decided this summer
By ANDREW ADAMS
& HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
news@capitolnewsillinois.com
CHICAGO – A year and a half after Republican Darren Bailey lost his campaign to challenge Gov. JB Pritzker, state election officials are weighing whether he illegally colluded with conservative radio show host and political operative Dan Proft in the 2022 campaign.
The State Board of Elections on Monday, April 29, convened a hearing on the matter, launched in a complaint by a top official with the state’s Democratic Party in the waning days of the 2022 campaign cycle. The complaint alleges Proft’s independent expenditure committee, the “People Who Play By The Rules PAC”, coordinated with Bailey, violating both state and federal law. If the board finds that the two organizations did illegally coordinate, Proft’s organization and Bailey’s campaign could be on the hook for millions of dollars in fines.
During Monday’s hearing, David Fox, an attorney for Democratic Party of Illinois Executive Director Ben Hardin, who lodged the complaint, painted a picture of illegal campaign coordination via a secret meeting, use of campaign footage in advertisements, and Bailey’s appearances on Proft’s AM radio show. “Mr. Bailey directly told Mr. Proft what message he wanted to get out, and Mr. Proft’s PAC then released multiple ads on that message,” Fox said. “A straightforward request and response. It happened in public but that makes no difference.”
Conservative political operative Dan Proft testifies in a hearing Monday focused on allegations that he illegally coordinated campaign expenses with Darren Bailey’s 2022 run for governor. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
Proft, who still co-hosts his “Chicago’s Morning Answer” morning drive-time radio show despite his relocation to Naples, Florida, made the trip back to Chicago for the hearing. During Monday morning’s show, Proft confirmed to co-host Amy Jacobson that the hearing happened to fall on his birthday, and that he’d be celebrating “in Illinois State Board of Elections prison.”
“I don’t care. You know, you just have to deal with this specious lawfare from fraudsters like Marc Elias representing fraudsters like Jelly Belly Pritzker,” Proft said, referring to Democratic attorney Marc Elias, whose firm employs the DPI attorneys handling the case, and using a derogatory nickname for Pritzker.
During the hearing, Hardin’s lawyers described a meeting between Proft and Bailey that took place the day after Bailey won the Illinois Republican primary in June 2022. On that day, Bailey traveled to a Chicago-area country club where he, his campaign manager Jose Durbin, and Proft met in a backroom to discuss the campaign. At that meeting, Proft told Bailey that Republican mega-donor Richard Uihlein had agreed to provide $20 million to Bailey’s campaign, and allegedly slid an envelope over to Bailey containing a check to that effect, if Proft was given control over it.
Questioned about the meeting on Monday, Bailey confirmed that it became heated as Proft made clear his disagreements with Durbin’s managing of Bailey’s campaign up to that point. “Mr. Proft, in your own words, called Mr. Durbin an ‘effing moron’, is that right?” DPI attorney Marilyn Robb asked Bailey, who confirmed with a “yes.”
Proft said Monday he disagreed with the “general messaging and message discipline with respect to the primary campaign.” If Proft wasn’t given control, Uihlein would instead direct those millions to Proft’s PAC, according to testimony in Monday’s hearing. According to state campaign finance records, Uihlein gave $42 million to the PAC, which in turn spent nearly $36 million during the second half of 2022.
Jose Durbin, the campaign manager for Darren Bailey’s 2022 run for governor, offers testimony in a hearing over allegations that the Bailey campaign coordinated campaign expenditures with GOP operative Dan Proft. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
Former state senator and one-time gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey sits in a hearing over allegations that his 2022 campaign for governor illegally coordinated campaign expenditures with conservative political operative Dan Proft. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
In addition to that meeting, Hardin’s lawyers argued that Bailey’s appearances on Proft’s talk show were a way to coordinate messaging. “We’re denying people the truth. This is why your streets aren’t safe…” Bailey said in a June 29, 2022 interview on Proft’s show, hours before that backroom meeting. “We’ve got the message, it’s true. We’ve just got to get it out.”
Proft denied the radio appearance counted as coordination, pointing to the fact that crime was a hot topic throughout the 2022 election cycle and that he had other candidates for office and public officials on his show.
Democrats’ passage of the SAFE-T Act, which included certain police reforms and made Illinois the first state to fully abandon its cash bail system, became a unifying theme for Republicans to knock Democrats after its passage in early 2021 and through its full implementation last year.
Proft’s PAC also used footage taken from the Bailey campaign’s YouTube channel, something that Hardin’s lawyers also argued was only done to coordinate giving material to friendly PACs. “That is explainable for no purpose other than a desire to help independent groups make ads,” Fox said.
Under Illinois election law, “independent expenditure committees” like Proft’s PAC are barred from making expenditures “in connection, consultation, or concert with or at the request or suggestion of” public officials or candidates for office. However, Bailey’s lawyer said that the actual meaning of this prohibition is not clear. “This would have been far more appropriate for the board to take up as a rule-making process and make a pronouncement so that PACs and candidates can govern their affairs more clearly based on a clearly delineated set of rules going forward rather than adjudicating somebody for violating rules before we determine what they are,” Jeffrey Meyer said Monday.
In January, a previous hearing officer from the state board of elections noted that it was “rather difficult to determine” what constitutes coordination under the law, given that neither state law nor administrative rules provide further guidance on the subject.
There is also a lack of case law, according to Illinois State Board of Elections spokesperson Matt Dietrich, who said that this is the first complaint in Illinois to allege coordination between an independent expenditure committee and a candidate.
Lawyers for Hardin as well as Proft and Bailey are expected to file additional legal briefs in the coming weeks. The Illinois State Board of Elections will decide the case this summer. Proft has also faced criticisms and a 2016 Federal Election Commission complaint over his publishing and use of a network of free “newspapers” and corresponding websites to support conservative political candidates.
In 2018, Proft sued the Board of Elections and then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan in federal court in an unsuccessful attempt to ease restrictions on what activities could be coordinated between political groups and candidates. In 2020, Proft shuttered his first independent expenditure PAC, called Liberty Principles PAC, with $39,000 unaccounted for, according to state finance records. Uihlein had also donated heavily to that PAC, which Proft founded in 2012, to support conservative candidates.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of print and broadcast outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
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