Hey. Illinois friends, Will Estrada, Senior Counsel here at Home School Legal Defense Assocation. I’ve got some good news and some updates about HB 2827 that I want to share with you. First off, the Illinois legislature has recessed early, so this week there will be no votes. Next week they are back on a recess in their districts.
So the earliest HB 2827 could come up for a vote would be on Monday, April 7th. That’s some really good news. It gives us more time to continue to get our message out and tell our legislators, to tell our friends, to tell the community why HB 2827 should be rejected.
The second thing I want to let you know is that Amy Elik, who was the ranking member on the House Education Policy Committee, many of you heard her excellent questions that she asked at that hearing on Wednesday, March 19th.
She put three notes onto the bill. What a note means is when a legislator asks for information about what sort of mandates this bill will put on the public school system, what sort of extra fiscal impact this bill will put on the Illinois government. And they have to get a response back. So that’s going to be additional delays of the bill moving in and the bill coming up for a vote before the entire Illinois House.
Now, of course, the bill could go back to the Illinois House Education Policy Committee for an amendment. Then we do the whole process over again of witness testimony, witness slips, coming out to the Capitol and making our voice heard. But right now, we have no information about when or if that is going to happen.
So what do we do now? We encourage you to do two things. First off, call your Illinois House member. Call your Illinois Senate member, if you have not yet done that already, and ask them to reject HB 2827.
Please don’t contact the legislators if they are not your own legislator. It’s kind of a waste of time. It can make them upset at us. And really, your voice there doesn’t matter because you are not their constituents. So just keep your focus on your own representative and your own senator.
But then and the big thing, the important thing is contact your state representative and state senator and ask them if you can come in for a meeting at the district office. It’s on recess next week.
Bring a couple friends, bring some cookies, bring some goodies, bring some handwritten notes, and maybe some colored pictures. Your kids did as well. And go and just spend a few minutes with them talking about why this bill is unnecessary, why it will harm vulnerable communities with the criminal penalties, about why it will disrupt home school programs with the educational portfolio review, and why it will put an additional burden on our public schools and truant officers and DCFs as well.
So that’s the message right now. We’ll give you more updates as we have them, but wanted to share that good news with you.