New & Noteworthy

For years, enrollment in Illinois’ public schools has been on the decline, but the number of English learners is on the rise. English learners are students in pre-K to 12th grade who require additional programming to develop academic English so they can fully participate in school. From 2010-2011 to the 2020-2021 school year, the English learner population in Illinois grew from 156,888 to 245,592 students. The number rose to more than 271,000 for the 2023-2024 school year. A recent increase includes the growing number of new migrant students in Chicago and surrounding suburbs. These students require qualified bilingual educators to succeed. Without such teachers, vital lessons in math, science and reading fall by the wayside.

During Femi Skanes’ 10 years as a Chicago principal, her boss was primarily a district official known as a network chief, she said. Alan Mather, who was also a principal for a decade, says he answered to then-Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan. Many principals in Chicago also feel their Local School Council, or LSC, is a boss, while others view the council as more of a partner. Principals are the leaders of their schools and staff. But in Chicago, multiple entities have power over principals. Later this year, Chicagoans will begin electing school board members, marking another shift in control over the city’s school system, which has been run by the mayor and a hand-picked CEO since 1995 and by a decentralized system of elected LSCs since 1988.

Things are looking up for young children, parents, and child care providers in California thanks to transformational legislative wins over the summer of 2023. These policy achievements did not happen by chance, but were the result of a coordinated effort that was fueled by the grassroots organizing of parents, providers, and thousands of organizations speaking with one voice. The resulting policy wins consist of many different parts, but revolve around two key issues ripe for reform: 1) family fees, meaning the dollar amount paid by families to access subsidized child care, and, 2) the rates paid by the state to providers of subsidized child care.

Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed a 2024-25 budget Tuesday that increases basic education funding by $1.1 billion, which would be the largest single-year increase ever. Most of that money, $900 million, would be funneled through a so-called adequacy formula that calculates what every district actually requires to educate all their children to high standards, based on students’ needs.

Stone grantee partner Rebecca Vonderlack Navarro of Latino Policy Forum and Linda Perales an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union makes the case for more bilingual teachers in this WTTW interview.

A New Haven early childcare center is expanding a program providing free homes for teachers and their families. Friends Center for Children began the Teacher Housing Initiative in 2021. With the planned completion of a newly constructed home set for the fall, the center will provide housing for six of its teachers. The program is specifically designed to ease the financial burden some educators face, Friends Center Executive Director Allyx Schiavone said. Ninety-seven percent of educators teaching children under the age of five are women and mostly people of color.

When discussing the educator workforce shortages in Illinois, it is evident that the challenges our education system faces are complex. Reporter Shanzeh Ahmad’s recent article in the Tribune highlights the persistent, critical shortage of educators in special education and bilingual classes and sheds light on the disparate impact these shortages have on particular student populations. We must address this issue with urgency.

Our organizations, The Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing and The Hyams Foundation, are movement funders that share a common set of assumptions about the nature of power and the role that progressive philanthropy must play in defending democracy. As women of color and leaders of movement foundations, we are preoccupied with the question: What role should progressive philanthropy play in responding to the rise of repressive, authoritarian policies that threaten the lives and well-being of the communities we are accountable to?

Stone provided funding for the Early Years Climate Action Task Force. Dora Ramos is a family child care provider in Stamford, Connecticut, where the temperature climbed above 90 degrees for a few days in July. She takes care of children in her home, which has a large backyard, and was able to adapt, still getting the children outside, even on the hottest days. “Our parents bring the children at 7:10 a.m., so we bring them outside very early — first thing,” she said. “We have sprinklers; they use the hose to fill up pots with water and ‘cook.’” But in Dallas, where the high hit 110 degrees on August 18, it wasn’t safe or possible to play outside for weeks-long stretches this summer, said Cori Berg, the director of Hope Day School, a preschool there. “It was cranky weather for sure,” she said. “What most people don’t really think about is what it’s like for a child in a center. They’re cooped up in one room for hours and hours and hours.”