SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Experienced educators will no longer be underpaid for mentoring newer colleagues under new legislation passed by state Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, and signed into law on June 30.
“For many Illinois educators, teaching consists not only of many hours inside the classroom, but also many hours outside the classroom,” Stuart said. “But even though mentoring by more experienced colleagues is an important part of newer teachers learning their indispensable trade, we were seeing that those who provided this mentoring were too often doing so without adequate pay in proportion to their time. And that wasn’t right.”
During the legislative session, advocates showed how teachers who’d been mentored by veteran colleagues were markedly more effective in achieving positive learning outcomes for students, including an average of over 6 months of additional learning achievement per mentored teacher and higher average scores on standardized tests.
Under existing law, veteran teachers who were part of the National Board of Certified Teachers (NBCT) “Teaching Excellence Program” could mentor their junior colleagues for up to 30 hours a year and receive up to $1,500. However, many mentors were exceeding that limit out of necessity and ultimately ended up working for free.
Stuart passed House Bill 1291 which will increase the limit to 45 hours a year with a maximum pay incentive of up to $2,250—levels which advocates told lawmakers are more in line with reality. The bill was signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday.
“Teachers are already grossly underpaid in many cases and on top of that they have one of the most challenging and, too often, thankless jobs in our economy. Asking those who are recognized as experienced veterans to do even more for even less is simply unfair,” Stuart said. “They should be paid for every hour they work and, with this law, we’ve taken a significant step toward meeting that standard.”
OTTAWA, Ill. — State Rep. Lance Yednock, D-Ottawa, released the following statement:
“I am very disappointed that an elected official in LaSalle County would post such a divisive and hurtful message. It is imperative that all elected officials complete their legal duties to the fullest extent of the law regardless of their personal opinions, but this conduct forces many to question her ability to fairly serve everyone in our community.
“My office will be contacting the Attorney General’s office and the Human Rights Commission to determine if any laws were broken. I hope the county will investigate as well.”
Rep. Lance Yednock
(D-Ottawa) 76th District
Springfield Office: 292-S Stratton Office Building Springfield, IL 62706 (217) 782-0140
District Office: 628 Columbus St. Suite 204 Ottawa, IL 61350 (815) 324-5055
Stuart law aims to help students experiencing homelessness
The Intelligencer
Stuart
SPRINGFIELD – Educators will be better prepared to meet the needs of students experiencing homelessness under a new law passed by state Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville.
“Kids facing unstable housing need resources and understanding from those who are responsible for them at school, and it’s important to make sure that school personnel have the training both to know what to look for and what to do,” Stuart said. “That’s why this training is the right thing to do. No child should experience homelessness but, sadly, many do. So, our schools have to be equipped to help them.”
Stuart passed House Bill 3116 which provides for training of all school personnel at least once every two years on the definition of homelessness as set forth in federal law, the signs of homelessness and housing insecurity, the rights of students experiencing homelessness under state and federal law, what steps to take when a homeless or housing insecure student is identified and how to refer that student to the proper school or school district liaison.
Schools may choose to develop their own training, or partner with an outside organization that provides training meeting the specified standards.
The law will be in effect for the 2024-2025 school year.
“Education is one of the surest ways to achieve stability in life as well as upward mobility,” Stuart said. “It follows that kids experiencing homelessness need to have the support and assistance to be able to make the most of their education. Of course, all kids should have that, but some kids need more help than others, and a just society should give it to them.”
ROCKFORD, Ill. — State Representative Maurice West held a 67th District legislative update for community members on Wednesday.
The town hall, hosted by West Gateway Coalition discussed West’s victories from the 2023 spring legislative session.
Some of those victories talked about was writing 50 bills and getting eight of those to Governor Pritzker’s desk.
The bills awaiting to be signed:
HB1197 Charitable Organization Audit Threshold
HB1633 Native American History
HB2471 Healthy School Meals For All
HB2898 For Profit Map Grant
SB90 Racism-Free Schools
SB1446 Dress Code Policy
SB2034 Zachary’s Parent Protection Act
SB2390 Combat Teacher Shortage
Among the bills, Rep. West said he brought in nearly $30 Million for the 67th District. Of that money, $4 million is going into a workforce equity grant, $8.4 million for capital improvements and $7.5 million for home modification grant program.
After the presentation, Rep. West took questions from community members on what he is doing for the 67th district.
Rep. West says 2 more town halls will be taking place in Cherry Valley and Loves Park in the coming months. The events are free to come to and encouraged to attend.
The statehouse was already a familiar space for Gregg Johnson from advocacy work when he returned to Springfield in January.
Back in the day, Johnson said, he would spend days under the dome advocating for health care, higher minimum wage or issues related to the organization he represented at the time. This time around, he was walking into the statehouse as the Democratic Representative for the 72nd House District.
Illinois State 72nd House Rep. Gregg Johnson, D-East Moline, sits in his district office in East Moline, Tuesday, June 20.
“I had a pretty good understanding of what I was walking into,” Johnson said.
The 72nd House District encompasses all or portions of Hampton, East Moline, Silvis, Moline, Rock Island, Milan and Taylor Ridge. Spring session runs from January to May.
Coming in as a new lawmaker, Johnson said it could be a bit overwhelming, especially that first month or so, because of the amount of new information and the hundreds of pieces legislation to sift through.
“It took me until the break in April to really kind of get my feet underneath me and really feel like I was going to make an impact,” he said.
His first bill, House Bill 2448, changes state statute so that incoming conservation police officers must be at least 20 years old, rather than 21, and must have completed an associates degree or 60 hours of college credit.
“It’s going to help, hopefully, address the shortage that we have of conservation officers across the state,” he said.
Governor J.B. Pritzker, left, talks about the FY 2024 budget as Rock Island Mayor Mike Thoms, Black Hawk College President Tim Wynes, Rep. Gregg Johnson D-East Moline and Illinois State Senator Mike Halpin listen in during a visit to Blackhawk College on June 6, 2023, to talk about the FY 2024 budget.
GARY L. KRAMBECK
Education funding
One of the big priorities he has heard from constituents is investing in education.
Illinois’ $50.6 billion budget for fiscal year 2024 makes a larger investment toward education. For higher education, the budget includes a $279 million increase from last year, bringing total state higher education spending to $2.5 billion. The Monetary Award Program (MAP) received a $100 million increase; public universities and community colleges received a 7% direct funding increase, coming in at $80.5 million and $19.4 million; and a $15 million increase for AIM High Grants.
The MAP grants are needs-based grants open to eligible Illinois residents who attend approved colleges or universities in the state. When tuition becomes cheaper, Johnson said, people will stay in Illinois rather than go elsewhere.
“When kids go to school, college, here in Illinois, they stay here at very high numbers when they graduate college and they build their lives here in Illinois,” Johnson said.
Evidence-based funding formula for K-12 received a $350 million increase, bringing the total state funding to $8.3 billion. The State Board of Education uses the tiered formula to distribute state funding based on the level of local funding. The budget also includes $45 million for the first year of a three-year pilot to fill teacher vacancies and additional investment in scholarships for future teachers.
With a daughter about to enter seventh grade and two grandkids, Johnson said he wants the best quality of education for them just like any other parent does for their kids. He wants them to be able to fulfill her potential and achieve anything they set their minds to.
“I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve been surrounded by a lot of strong women in my entire life,” he said. “I want her to realize that as long as she works hard, and she plays by the rules, that she can achieve anything and I want all of her peers to feel the same way and that there is no limits.”
Smart Start Illinois, a new program in the budget, invests $250 million aimed to eliminate preschool deserts, stabilize the child care workforce and expand the early intervention and home visiting programs. The funding creates 5,000 new preschool spots in the first year with the goal of creating 20,000 spots over the next four years.
Funding in education, Johnson said, must start at the bottom to ensure kids in Illinois are receiving the best education.
The budget also includes $1.6 million to launch a partnership with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, an initiative that sends free books to children under age 5.
Recently, Illinois became the first state to ban book bans. The law takes effect next year and prohibits book bans in public schools and libraries.
When the legislation was proposed, Johnson said he was excited to vote for it and that books are vital to learning about the diversity, history and ways other people live. Multiple languages, he said, are spoken here and that gives people multiple opportunities to listen and learn.
State Rep. Gregg Johnson, D-East Moline, speaks on the House floor during a debate on legislation barring crisis pregnancy centers from using deceptive practices that are intended to prevent a person from obtaining an abortion on May 10, 2023, in Springfield.
JERRY NOWICKI, CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS
Other bills
A few bills he was proud to vote for were ones that helped address food deserts, lowering drug prices, and structural building and residential codes.
In light of what happened across the river with 324 Main St. collapsing, displacing residents of the building and those surrounding, Johnson said the bill relating to building codes is even more vital to prevent something like that happening in Illinois.
Senate Bill 2368 establishes the Capital Development Board’s ability, in consultation with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, to put forth minimum requirements for the construction of commercial and residential buildings. Johnson was the chief house sponsor of the legislation.
The reason the legislation came into play, he said, was due to what happening in Southern Illinois in Edwardsville when the roof of an Amazon building collapsed during a tornado in December 2021, killing six workers who were trying to take cover inside and injury others. As inspection records came to light, inspectors found safety concerns as they checked construction at the facility.
“We should not want our people put in buildings that are unsafe simply because these companies want to make a buck off our constituents,” he said.
Earlier this week, a downtown Rock Island building was evacuated due to bricks falling off the building. Three residents have been displaced and a business that was on the ground floor is closed until the issue is fixed by the owner.
Tracy Jones, Gregg Johnson and Kathy Yungen at the Quad Cities Women’s March at Schwiebert Riverfront Park in September, 2021. Their mother, Shirley Hunter Johnson, died at the age of 33 in 1972 from pregnancy complications caused by preeclampsia after she was denied access to an abortion. The siblings were ages 1, 8 and 11 at the time of their mother’s death.
CONTRIBUTED
Family impact
Johnson’s proudest moment was on May 11. He was on House Floor, debate was moving along on a series of bills seeking to further protect access to abortion. In an interview with a Lee Enterprises statehouse reporter, Johnson said he wanted it to be over and felt like retreating into a shell. But as hard as it was, he had a story to tell about his mom.
Shirley Hunter was a single mother of three from Rock Island who was pregnant with her fourth child in 1972. She suffered from severe preeclampsia during her first three pregnancies and was told she would likely not survive a fourth. She sought an abortion.
It was a year before the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade was decided, so Hunter saved money to travel to New York, which was one of the few states where abortion was legal at the time. But she was too far along in her pregnancy and nothing could be done. She returned to Rock Island and died July 13, 1972, at 33, leaving behind an 11-year-old daughter, 8-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.
“Shirley Hunter was my mother and these girls are my sisters,” Johnson said, speaking from his desk in the Illinois House chamber. “And our lives were thrown into chaos because our mother had no option other than to die and leave us.”
Getting teary-eyed and a bit choked up reflecting on it on Tuesday, Johnson said every time he tells it, it takes a piece of him. But he knows he is making a difference because he wants to make sure no other family goes through what his sisters and he have gone through. Telling his story and letting people know that Illinois is a place where people can come in which their rights to make their own decisions was important to him.
“I want to make sure that no family goes through that,” he said.
With spring session wrapped up and veto session not expected until late fall, Johnson is happy to be back home with his family and get some boots-on-the-ground work done. He’s a homebody, he said, and there’s nothing quite like sleeping in his own bed.
As for his first six months as a lawmaker, the experience was all about learning.
He was able to see how session unfolds, how the drafting a bill and it going through the process works, how the budget process works and how nothing ever seems to start on time in Springfield.
“Now, I get to go to the next part of my education, which is veto session,” he said.
PEORIA (25News Now) – Spring Valley in Bureau County is about to become the next small community to lose its hospital.
St. Margaret Health’s Board of Directors decided to close its Spring Valley facility next Friday, June 16 at 11:59 p.m., according to a memo sent to hospital employees and obtained by 25News on Friday.
The memo said St. Margaret’s “no longer has sufficient resources to continue operations.”
“This is not the outcome any of us wanted and it is due to many circumstances beyond our control,” said Tim Muntz, St. Margaret’s president and CEO.
St. Margaret Health’s hospital in Peru closed Jan. 28.
Last month, Peoria-based OSF HealthCare said it filed an intent to purchase health facilities within St. Margaret’s network, but it’s not known what St. Margaret facilities would operate under OSF management.
“While I write this with great sadness and regret, I want to thank all of you and our community for supporting the Mission of the Sisters of Mary of the Presentation for the last 120-years,” Muntz said in the memo.
CHICAGO, Ill. – A Peoria lawmaker had more of a hand in the coming fiscal year’s state budget than just wanting some things funded.
State Representative Jehan Gordon-Booth was the lead “budgeteer” — as they’re called — in the Illinois House for the Democrat side of the aisle.
She was on hand when Governor JB Pritzker signed the spending plan into law Wednesday in Chicago.
“As a mom, you learn to balance the checkbook every single day,” said Gordon-Booth (D-Peoria). “As a mom that’s balancing the checkbook, one of the things that you clearly understand is that you have to do the most that you have, with what you have. And that doesn’t mean that everybody gets everything, but everybody gets what they need.”
Gordon-Booth cited, for example, state funding for youth to have summer jobs, among other initiatives.
“We were able to provide resources to some of the most important areas of the State of Illinois, in terms of moving the state forward,” said Gordon-Booth. “We’ve been able to invest transformational dollars in terms of economic development, as well as community development.”
Gordon-Booth was the first African-American female in the state’s history to be a lead budget negotiator for House Democrats.
Republicans representing the Tri-County area, however, are still registering their displeasure.
State Senator Win Stoller, claims the Governor balanced the budget through what he calls “fiscal gimmicks and tricks that Illinoisans are sick and tired of in order to make his claims,” said Stoller (R-Germantown Hills, in a prepared statement. “This budget doesn’t account for this year’s upcoming contract negotiations with AFSCME, which will likely add hundreds of millions to our state’s spending. Additionally, this budget somehow ignores over half of a billion dollars that was projected to be spent on the state’s ill-conceived undocumented immigrant healthcare program.
“Without question, this budget will be anything from balanced by the end of our fiscal year, and the Governor claiming otherwise is dishonest.”
State Senator Tom Bennett (R-Gibson City) says the budget “did not match the priorities that would best serve the people of Illinois.”
“There are some good things in there, but we have forgotten about some significant people in Illinois,” said Bennett “We need proper funding for services for the state’s developmentally disabled community, rebates for downstate families facing high utility costs, continuing a scholarship program which helps children in failing school districts to attend better performing schools, encouraging business and job growth by eliminating the much-criticized franchise tax, and helping to protect family farms for future generations.
“Instead, taxpayers will be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to cover free top-tier healthcare for undocumented immigrants and hundreds of millions more in pork projects for Democratic districts.”
Whether the just-completed Illinois legislative session was a success depends on which party is asked.
Metro East Republicans, like Sens. Jason Plummer of Edwardsville and Erica Harriss of Glen Carbon, say the Illinois statehouse’s spring session missed some key issues and ended in a mess with last-minute budget negotiations.
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Illinois Senate Republicans
State Sen. Jason Plummer, R-Edwardsville, serves the Senate’s 55th District, which spans from Edwardsville and Troy nearly all the way to the Indiana border.
“First and foremost, it highlighted the poor priorities that we have in Illinois,” Plummer said of the budget after a town hall-style meeting with constituents outside Edwardsville this week.
Metro East Democrats, however, praised the accomplishments of the 2023 session.
“I think it was highly successful,” said Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville. “I’m proud of the fiscally responsible but also compassionate budget that we passed.”
Republican criticism
Plummer, who is in his second termrepresenting the Senate’s 55th District, took umbrage withsome legislative and budgetary issues.
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Illinois Senate Republicans
State Sen. Erica Harriss, R-Glen Carbon, serves the 56th District, which stretches from Alton to Granite City and Fairview Heights.
On the budget, Plummer described the state’s continued funding of Medicaid-like health care for undocumented immigrants as “gold plated.” He told the crowd, “It’s better health care than anyone in this room currently gets.”
Senate Republicans also criticized House Democrats for not re-upping a $75 million tax program that gives tax credit for scholarship donations to private and religious schools. That program is set to sunset.
Plummer said he thought Senate Democrats were willing to negotiate on the program, but the item did not make the final budget.
Harriss, a first-term senator, said she was taken aback by how quickly the final budget was presented and voted on during the same day.
“I didn’t feel like there was great government transparency behind it,” said Harriss, whose 56th District stretches from Alton to Granite City and Fairview Heights. “I did not feel like it was a responsible or a balanced budget.”
Both Harriss and Plummer said Republicans grew concerned with increased spending in the budget after April tax receipts showed state revenues lower than initially predicted.
Democratic praise
Stuart, a former math teacher, said she appreciated the budget items dedicated to higher education. One of the most prominent: a $100 million increase to the state’s Monetary Award Program, which covers tuition for lower-income students.
The representative from the 112th District, which covers Edwardsville south to Fairview Heights, also touted the cash set aside for state pensions and how the state’s rainy day fund continued to grow in this budget.
“While they [Republicans] may categorize that as spending, I’d argue that is saving — that is saving us future dollars,” Stuart said.
Stuart sponsored a bill, which drew some controversy, that set standards if a business created an all-gender, multi-occupancy restroom. Both chambers passed that bill.
Brian Munoz
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St. Louis Public Radio
State Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, represents the 112th District, which covers Edwardsville south to Fairview Heights.
Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, echoed Stuart’s sentiments regarding the budget, saying it provided needed services.
Hoffman, who represents the 113th District that runs from Madison to Belleville, said this budget also reflects Illinois’ improved financial status compared toa couple of years ago.
“I believe that this budget will put us in line for additional credit upgrades throughout this fiscal year,” Hoffman said.
He pointed to a budget item that gives $15 million to school or tax districts that saw diminished property tax revenues. In 2015, state lawmakers gave exemptions to disabled veterans. Some Illinoisans in places with many veterans, like the area surrounding Scott Air Force Base, were left paying more.
“It’s incumbent upon us to help ensure that when we give preferences to individuals who were disabled — and are disabled veterans — that we make sure the taxing districts are made whole,” he said.
Brian Munoz
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St. Louis Public Radio
State Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, represents the 113th District that runs from Madison down to Belleville.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker will next sign or veto legislation the statehouse passed. Legislators will return at some point this fall for a veto session.
Stuart and Hoffman said they’ll wait to see if there are any vetoes and work on legislation that would push the state toward renewable energy.
Harriss said she’ll continue to back legislation that would allow mental health counselors with licenses in other states to practice in Illinois.
“Mental health is a huge issue right now, and counselors are very hard to come by when families are in crisis,” she said.
Plummer said he hopes both chambers can circle back to the tax credit for private or religious school donations and possibly lower the state’s estate tax.
Working for Illinois Caucus 