New & Noteworthy

The W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation awarded approximately $2.1 million in grants in the Spring of 2024. Please visit our Grants Awarded section for detailed descriptions.

As Chicago Public Schools prepares to eliminate resource officer positions districtwide, a new study found removing police from city schools has not led to increased disciplinary issues, nor did it make students and staff feel less safe. The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research on Wednesday published a new report examining the impacts of removing resource officers from Chicago public high schools. “We found teachers’ and students’ reports of their sense of safety did not change significantly after the removal of SROs, based on their responses on 5Essentials Surveys,” Amy Arneson, lead author of the report and a senior research analyst at the Consortium on School Research, said in a statement.

Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation Tuesday creating a new cabinet-level state agency dedicated to early childhood education and development. The new Department of Early Childhood, which will become operational in July 2026, will take over programs currently housed across three state agencies, including funding for preschool programs, child care centers and the licensing of day care centers.

A new report from the nonprofit Council for a Strong America has community leaders advocating for the importance of early childhood education in Peoria. The report, titled “Social Emotional Skills: An Early Childhood Fundamental,” makes the case that strong social-emotional development early in children’s lives lowers the chances of negative short- and long-term outcomes like mental health challenges. It also argues a positive impact on the state’s economy, safety and long-term national security.

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.