Stop wage theft. Bill protecting undocumented workers passes Illinois House.

-By State Representative Will Guzzardi

We just passed HB3554 out of the House today. As terrible and frustrating as things can be in Springfield sometimes, there are times when I genuinely love my job, and this was one of them.

It’s a bill about wage theft. So: you work 40 hours, your employer only pays you for 20. You take them to court, judge says “they owe you 20 hours of wages.” Employer pays that money to the Illinois Department of Labor, who then pays it to you.

If DoL can’t find you, they deposit the money with the Comptroller. If you then show up and want to claim your money, the Comptroller can issue a voucher to get you paid. But — and here’s the problem! — they can only issue vouchers if you have a Social Security number.

So if you’re a victim of wage theft and undocumented (as many are), you can’t get your wages from the state — wages you earned, wages a judge ruled you are owed. The state is essentially complicit in stealing your wages.

HB3554 is a technical solution to this problem. It’s a complicated problem, it’s not easy to explain, it was hard to solve. There’s no powerful special interests on either side of it. It took a lot of tedious negotiation and discussion.

But the lives of some very vulnerable people who have been cruelly taken advantage of, a few of those lives anyway, are going to get a little bit better.

I’m a big fan of big ideas. Transformative ideas. The enormous problems this Governor has caused will call for enormous solutions. But there’s a time and a place for that, and a time and a place for some old-fashioned elbow grease.

Big props to Luis Klein, Tom Hoffmann, Jorge Mújica Murias, Raise the Floor Alliance, and the many others who helped make this happen.

SB 231. An exchange with Will Guzzardi.

Will,

I oppose any school funding plan that eliminates the $9,000 for each special education teacher which is vital to assuring that students with disabilities have the specially trained teachers they so need.

SB 231 would cut special ed funding by almost 1/3, and eliminate the $9,000 for each special ed teacher and other professionals.

Beginning in 2018, the 20/20 evidence-based plan would fund ONE (1) special education teacher for every 150 students (but only provide the funding if Illinois appropriates enough money in the future). 

It would NOT require that any special ed teacher actually be hired. 

– Fred Klonsky

………………

Hi Fred,

Sorry I haven’t gotten around to writing a statement for you sooner. Between opt-out, my testing transparency bill, and the budget stuff, I had a full plate this week.

Anyway, re: SB231:

We absolutely need to rebuild the school funding formula. SB231 is a good step toward fixing a badly broken system. But it’s still got several unresolved problems, not least of which are the special education issues you describe. I’m glad the legislature is taking this problem seriously, and I remain hopeful that we can amend this in the House to resolve the special ed funding problems and pass a bill that supports CPS and brings equity to low-income districts around the state without hurting any of our most vulnerable students.

Feel free to post / share.

……………

Thanks Will,

This bill should not have your vote if it includes the current special education funding component.

Perhaps as a short term measure, a change to the funding formula without significant increases in state education funding is the best that can be hoped for.  But equity without adequate funding is not real equity at all. Redividing the crumbs that the state now provides is not good enough. Special education students should not have to foot the bill.

-Fred

edTPA, the Illinois House hearing, Will Guzzardi and the IFT.

State Representative Will Guzzardi has concerns about edTPA. He sits on the House education committee.

Our efforts over the past 24 hours in getting folks to submit witness slips (you still can this morning) to the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee opposing edTPA has been a great success. It has resulted in over 230 opposition slips with less than 20 in support at 8AM this morning.

Thank you.

Illinois 39th State Representative Will Guzzardi is a member of the House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education that has called the hearing on edTPA at 10:30 AM.

I asked him for a statement on edTPA.

He wrote me:

“I look forward to a rigorous hearing on Ed TPA today in Springfield. I worry that it presents many of the same challenges as other standardized testing regime’s: excessively high stakes placed on a single days performance; evaluation by a faraway entity with no context about the student or classroom; bias against people of color; and a high financial cost with no proof that it actually solves a problem.”

As usual, he gets it.

Meanwhile John Cusick, a legislative director of the IFT wrote me to complain about my characterization of the IFT on this issue.

Fred – In terms of your IFT comments. This committee hearing is scheduled today because IFT worked quietly for many months with former Rep. Golar, Other reps, house staff, and the Higher Ed coalition challenging EdTPA, to bring EdTPA concerns to the fore. So your point is not on the mark. Please check with the leads of the Higher Ed Coalition opposing EdTPA. Thank you, John

What did I write that is “off the mark”?

Neither the IEA nor the IFT have educated or mobilized members over this shift toward’s privatizing teacher licensure even though it impacts every future union member.

Sorry, John. My characterization is right on the money. Quiet behind the scenes efforts are fine. But educating and mobilizing union members are the union’s jobs one and two.

I will give John and the IFT credit: They have done more than the IEA on this issue.

But ask a member of the IFT what edTPA is and what their union is doing about it. Most have no idea about either.

This is not just a higher ed issue.

This is an issue for our profession. There would be thousands of slips in opposition if the unions had been doing their job.

What’s up with Illinois’ opt-out bill.

State Representatives Will Guzzardi (left) and Laura Fine (right).

We invited State Representatives Will Guzzardi and Laura Fine to our Skokie Organization of Retired Educators luncheon at Zhivago’s restaurant last Wednesday.

Laura represents a north suburban district where many of our retirees live.

Will represents me and those who live in Logan Square and the north west side of Chicago.

State reps run every two years and so Will is collecting signatures to run again.

Nobody has announced that they will run against him. But those opposed to the progressive electoral movement in the city have spent thousands of dollars on glossy mailers in the last few weeks targeting Will

When Will beat the Democratic Machine two years ago it gave a major shot in the arm to the progressive electoral movement in the City. 35th Ward Alderman Carlos Rosa built on the electoral base that supported Will to beat the pro-Rahm incumbent, even as the Mayor himself defeated progressive Chuy Garcia.

Rosa is now collecting signatures to run for Democratic Ward Committeeman.

Guzzardi impressed many when among his first acts in Springfield was to introduce and sponsor HB 306, a bill that strengthened the rights of parents to have their children opt out of PARCC and other state standardized tests.

The Bill passed the House but is now stalled in the Senate. Pretty much everything has stalled in Springfield since the governor has made union busting a requirement for anything to get his signature.

We asked Will about HB306 at the luncheon. He said that there were discussions with the new state superintendent of doing by ISBE action what parents would have received as a result of his legislation. Guzzardi said he actually would prefer that.

One of the obstacles to getting the bill passed was the financial threat to school districts.

The IEA used this alleged threat to block support for the bill when we brought it up at the state convention.

When I and a group of Chicago parents were lobbying for HB306 in Springfield I gave the IEA Director of Government Relations a call to see if he would meet with the parents. Jim Reed joined us in the Capitol Rotunda. There we experienced the oddity of having to lobby the union’s chief lobbyist to lobby for a bill supporting parental rights.

By the way. The financial threat was and is a bogus issue.

In spite of hundreds of thousands of parents opting out across the country, no district has been penalized by the feds.

Catalyst is reporting the same thing.

The IEA is simply on the wrong side of this issue.

And we will be working to return Will Guzzardi to the Illinois House.

edTPA flies below the radar in Illinois. The privatization of teacher certification.

State Representative Will Guzzardi, Leslie Combs from Congresswomen Jan Schakowsky’s office and State Representative Laura Fine at our S.O.R.E. luncheon yesterday.

Sandy Deines is a member of our Skokie Organization of Retired Educators, a chapter of the Illinois Education Association Retired.

Yet Sandy has been most active in the Illinois Coalition for edTPA Rule Change.

It was Sandy who educated me on this subject.

Not just me.

She has been educating members of the Illinois legislature as well.

When Illinois State Representatives Will Guzzardi and Laura Fine spoke at S.O.R.E.’s September luncheon yesterday I asked both of them about it.

Representative Guzzardi admitted that had it not been for Sandy Deines contacting him he wouldn’t know much about it.

Representative Fine agreed.

“With all that is going on in Springfield right now, I don’t think many legislators are aware of this,” Fine admitted.

“This” is the out-sourcing of teacher certification in Illinois to the education monopoly, Pearson.

What role does the legislature have in issues like teacher certification?

“Normally, not much,” Guzzardi told me. “It is a function of the Illinois State Board of Education. But since hearing from Sandy Deines, we have a new head of the ISBE. He has expressed an interest in looking into edTPA.”

Out-sourcing teacher certification is but one part of the corporate education agenda. But it is one that has flown pretty much under the radar.

Let’s shine a light on it.

39th State Representative Will Guzzardi: If this this anti-union, right to work nonsense comes to our chamber, it will be met with the sword – by me and by Democrats and Republicans from all over the state.

– By Will Guzzardi. Will is the the State Representative from my 39th District.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Gov. Rauner’s first move is not to tackle our state’s structural deficit, but to take a petty potshot at the unions who supported his opponent during the campaign.

Here’s the thing: Illinoisans understand that the labor movement is the best weapon working families have to fight the corporate greed of the Bruce Rauners of the world and carve out a path to the middle class. We are a strong, proud, pro-labor state.

I think I speak for a whole lot of Democrats in Springfield when I say that we are willing to work with the Governor. I was excited to hear him talk about criminal justice reform, abuse of standardized testing, and access to capital for entrepreneurs of color. If he brings those agenda items to the legislature, he will find many of us ready to join arms in bipartisan cooperation. But if this this anti-union, right to work nonsense comes to our chamber, it will be met with the sword – by me and by Democrats and Republicans from all over the state.

Illinois State Representative Guzzardi: First bill strengthens parent opt-out rights.

Illinois’s progressive State Representative Will Guzzardi has introduced his first bill.

House Bill 0306.

Guzzardi explained his bill in a Facebook post:

First bill filed. Gives parents the right to opt their students out of standardized testing, a right which students themselves currently have but their legal guardians don’t.

This will make the law internally consistent, and also be a huge boon to the thousands of parents whose kids suffer from severe test anxiety and hate school because of the crazy amount of testing they’re forced to undergo [http://ilraiseyourhand.org/content/full-calendar-testing-cps].

And hopefully it’ll add to the dialogue about the perils of over- and mis-using standardized tests, both of which CPS does in spades.

Cassandre Creswell and More Than a Score, Wendy Katten and RAISE YOUR HAND – CPS Parents for Fair Funding, and the Chicago Teachers Union have all been tremendous advocates on this issue, and I’m excited to take the fight to Springfield with them.

I should note that both Wendy Katten of Raise Your Hand and Cassie Creswell of More than a Score met with members of our Skokie Organization of Retired Educators meeting this past week. S.O.R.E. turned over most of our meeting time to Wendy and Cassie to address S.O.R.E. members and over a dozen north suburban parents.

Calls should be made to other Illinois state representatives to co-sponsor and support the bill.

Can I assume that the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Education Association will support it as well?

Will Guzzardi was elected to his State Rep seat this past November after crushing the Democratic Machine’s incumbent State Rep Toni Berrios in the primary, following two unsuccessful grass roots efforts to unseat the incumbent.

The first go at her was by a Green Party campaign that garnered over 30% of the vote.

A previous campaign two years ago by Will Guzzardi challenged her and lost by around 125 votes.