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Justin Agrelo

5 Things to Know If You Need an IEP from Chicago Public Schools

October’s Public Newsroom showcased how disabled students and their families can advocate for the services they need.

By Mike Tish

In October, City Bureau’s Public Newsroom addressed how students with disabilities and their parents can advocate for an essential education service from Chicago Public Schools: Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). IEPs are legally binding documents that outline how educators will ensure students with disabilities make progress in school. 

Since the pandemic, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has been unable to fulfill thousands of IEP evaluations. As a result, thousands of Black and Latine students have been without access to services they’re owed.

To help us gain some actionable insight into this issue, we were joined by:

  • Chris Yun, former education policy analyst at Access Living, where she led policy advocacy efforts to ensure inclusive education for students with disabilities.

  • Barb Cohen, a policy analyst and legal advocate focusing on special education at the Legal Council for Health Justice, which works statewide to help folks overcome and dismantle barriers to the care and services they need to stay healthy, fed and housed.

  • Rachel Shapiro, a supervising attorney at Equip for Equality, which provides advice and legal representation to students with disabilities who aren’t receiving appropriate special education services.


Our moderator was Sammie Smylie, a state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago and former City Bureau fellow, who also covered education on the city’s Southeast Side for the Hyde Park Herald.
Here’s what we learned:

During the 2019–2020 school year, CPS failed to complete thousands of IEP evaluations

“Once a year, students and their parents are supposed to have an IEP meeting,” Smylie said. These meetings should identify a student’s disability, as well as what kind of instruction or related services (think: speech pathology or physical therapy) they’ll need. State law requires that schools conduct student evaluations before they’re provided with an IEP (students with an existing IEP must be re-evaluated every three years). After filing a FOIA request, Smylie found that during the 2019–2020 school year, CPS failed to complete more than 10,000 evaluations and annual reviews. (Chicago has a little over 330,000 students; about 14 percent have IEPs.)  No evaluation? No updated IEP for students.

Students across Chicago’s South, West and far east sides were most likely to have IEP delays

Smylie said the data they obtained as part of their FOIA request showed CPS students in Networks 11 and 13 were unlikely to receive re-evaluations during the school year. These networks include Englewood, parts of the Southwest Side, as well as neighborhoods on the city’s far south and far east sides. Shapiro said she heard from CPS parents all over the city who felt that CPS lacked a sense of urgency when it came to addressing its IEP backlog.

Shapiro said one of the students she represented went without services for five to six months because CPS didn’t conduct their re-evaluation on time. “The reality is no matter how many services we give [them] now, that can’t make up for the fact that, for those five or six months delay, they didn’t get the support they needed,” she said. This lack of support threatened and likely slowed the student’s progress in school.

Parents should prioritize frequent communication with their kid’s teachers

CPS’s struggles to provide IEPs for students with disabilities predates the pandemic. As Yun put it: “Denial of special education services is a product of CPS culture.” As far back as 2015, CPS was found to be in violation of federal standards that require schools to provide IEPs to their students. Cohen, a parent of a former CPS student with disabilities, said it’s hugely important for parents to communicate with their children’s teachers as much as possible. 

“Teachers have always appreciated the communication and the troubleshooting we can do together,” Cohen said. “I think [that relationship] leads to better IEPs.”

Get everything in writing, and request documents you can use to show which services you’re owed

“Whatever you do, get it in writing,” Cohen said. “If you just [verbally] say to a teacher or case manager that I think I’d like to have my child evaluated...officially, it never took place.” Emails are best because they have the date on them. 

Hazel Adams-Shango, an attendee at the Public Newsroom who advocates for students with disabilities in New York City, said that right now is the time to request a copy of attendance and service logs, which you’ll need whenever you request makeup services from CPS.

Word choice matters; consult free legal services before you file any complaints

You don’t need a lawyer to file a state complaint, but it helps to have someone who knows special education law look over your complaint before you send it in. That’s because slight wording changes can make a big impact. “The law doesn’t require a school to do what’s best for your child,” Shapiro said. If you tell officials that a one-on-one aide for your child is what’s best for them, they have no legal obligation to make it happen. Instead, Shapiro says, tell educators and officials that your child “needs” a one-on-one aide or other service.

Equip for Equality provides free services for folks at (866) 543-7046.  

If you’re interested in advocating for yourself, your student, or want to help make a difference in your local CPS network, here are a few places to start:

Screenshot of the Zoom meeting where our Public Newsroom took place. A grid of smiling faces, including our panelists, moderator, organizer and interpreter, Barb Williams.

This event is part of the Public Newsroom, City Bureau’s free monthly workshop series. Learn more or support City Bureau’s workshops and events by becoming a recurring donor today.

To get biweekly emails about Chicago news and events, sign up for City Bureau’s Chicago newsletter.

What to Know When Hosting a People’s Budget Event in Your Own Neighborhood

Our September Public Newsroom highlighted the ways Chicagoans can push for a city budget that serves their needs

By Ebony Ellis

This September, our Public Newsroom focused on how community members can start a People’s Budget event in their own neighborhoods. The People’s Budget Chicago (PBC) is a series created by Chicago United for Equity (CUE) in order to change the fact that the budget-setting process is not very accessible to people outside of government. 

We were joined by folks who work with the People’s Budget: 

  • Paola Aguirre, founder of Borderless — a Chicago-based city design and research practice focused on cultivating collaborative design agency through interdisciplinary projects; she was also a 2019 CUE Fellow

  • Vanessa Dominguez, a PBC coordinator

  • Kiara Hardin, a PBC facilitator

  • Troy Gaston, a PBC facilitator

Here’s what we learned:

Understand Your Community

One cannot always assume that people who live in the same neighborhood have the exact same ideas on how the neighborhood can be improved. “What do our communities need to be safe and thriving?” is the question that is PBC’s main focus. At the beginning of each of the pop up events (whether in-person or virtual), this question is asked before the main activity. This question is important because it encourages participants to start thinking about the changes they would like to see in their communities.

“I’d say—I’m still trying to find my community. Chicago has been a really big part of how I see the world,” a participant said.

The Importance of Consensus

The truth is we all may have different ideas about how we think resources should be allocated around the city. But we all have to live and work together. In the breakout groups, participants were given a particular amount of money and had to decide how each of them would allocate their funds. This involves a lot of thought and conversation between participants. There is a set amount of time for this activity, but ultimately it seems like there is never enough time. In one of the groups, members were deciding on placing some of the funds either in housing or infrastructure. Out of $100, the group decided that $24 would go towards housing and $19 would go towards infrastructure.

We Need Resources, Not Just Cops

This may sound self explanatory. Or maybe not. For one of the breakout groups, as a result of the activity, groups allocated funds to every section of the budget—except for the carceral system, which involves the police. The city of Chicago spends the most amount of money on policing. When the question was asked, a participant responded with her experiences of contacting the 311 non-emergency service for individuals seeking mental health assistance.

“One of the things that stood out to me was the amount of times I called 311 trying to get someone who is not a police officer to help someone who is in need of mental health services and how I get laughed at,” the participant said. “I think that’s absolutely ridiculous and we can do so much better.”

Want to learn more or get involved?

Check out some of the take-aways for this month’s workshop.

Next steps

  • Attend the People’s Policy School: Who decides how Chicago spends our tax dollars? Join CUE in launching our new public program, The People's Policy School! This event will be online on September 23rd, 6-8pm.  

  • Take action: more you can do to help us create an equitable budget

Further reading

Support City Bureau’s workshops and events by becoming a recurring donor today.

To get biweekly emails about Chicago news and events, sign up for City Bureau’s Chicago newsletter.

How Should We Tell Queer Stories in Chicago?

Our latest Public Newsroom offered ways local media can tell better stories about queer Chicago.

By Justin Agrelo

Aside from Pride month, queer stories rarely take precedent in Chicago’s local news coverage. When queer stories are told, they typically center white, cisgender, affluent gay men on the North Side, failing to capture the diversity of the city’s many queer communities. So what would a local media landscape that serves queer people year-round look like?

Last week, City Bureau brought together journalist Adam Rhodes and interdisciplinary artist Ireashia Bennett to explore how local media can tell better queer stories. The panelists and attendees discussed present-day shortcomings in the local coverage of Chicago’s queer communities as well as practical ways newsrooms can better serve queer Chicagoans.

Here’s what we learned:

Move beyond the national story 

Chicago media has a tendency to cover queer issues that are also playing out at the national level. Consider the amount of coverage the fight for marriage equality received from national and local outlets. This tendency to focus on national stories leaves many queer Chicago stories untold and information needs unmet.

Rhodes believes this tendency also leads to superficial coverage of Chicago’s queer communities.

“Reporting that serves queer Chicago well is nuanced and more revelatory than a localized national story,” Rhodes says. 

Both Bennett and Rhodes suggest reporters allow queer people the agency to decide what issues are important to them and what stories get told about their communities. This move starts by simply listening to queer folks so that local coverage can move beyond what’s playing out on the national stage.

The need to de-center Northalsted 

To better serve queer Chicago, local media outlets need to break out of the habit of centering the Northalsted community—a community that is largely white and affluent. Treating the Northalsted community as a stand-in for all queer Chicagoans has created an overrepresentation of white, cisgender, gay men’s perspectives in media about queer Chicago. This further marginalizes queer folks of color who are consistently underrepresented in news media and who have different information needs.

The consistent centering of Northalsted also creates barriers for queer folks on the South and West sides to access information that is relevant to their lives and their interests. To tell better stories about queer Chicago, reporters need to engage communities outside of Northalsted, and be intentional about centering a diverse set of experiences and perspectives. Queer folks are not a monolith, and their stories should not be either. 

Queer people are telling their own stories in their own ways

Whether on Instagram or through public art installation, Bennett highlights the many ways queer folks of color on the South and West sides are telling their own stories outside of traditional media. Bennett was recently inspired by the use of virtual reality by artists to reimagine history and time in relation to queerness, Blackness, and disability. Bennett says they aspire to that level of storytelling and wants to move beyond traditional mediums to tell queer stories.

“How can queer folks be at the forefront of shaping our own narratives?” Bennett asks. “How are we already documenting and archiving our personal histories?” 

In many ways, queer people using alternative mediums to tell queer stories is a direct result of traditional newsrooms failing to cover queer Chicagoans in a way that’s meaningful and nuanced. Rhodes says many queer folks who have been left out of editorial decision-making are now creating spaces where their perspectives and experiences can be shared in a media landscape that consistently fails to meet our needs.

“If these traditional outlets are going to continue to either not report on issues that matter to us or poorly report them,” Rhodes says, “then we’re going to tell our stories on our own.”

Want to learn more?

Check out some of the take-aways for this month’s workshop.

Adam’s recs

Ireashia’s picks

More

  • TransIt Productions, a trans-led production company 

  • OTV, is a non-profit platform for intersectional series, pilots and video art, supporting chicago artists in producing and exhibiting indie media, film and tv

  • Brave Space Alliance

  • Molasses, a Black trans-led artist collective

  • Black Drag Council, a Black, LGBTQ+ led organization that intends to connect and support not only drag performers, but all parts of the community

  • An Interrogation, short audio piece on race, queerness and desire by Erisa Apantaku

  • Somebody I Love is Nonbinary, an 101-level workshop on how to support nonbinary people around you.

Support City Bureau’s workshops and events by becoming a recurring donor today.

To get biweekly emails about Chicago news and events, sign up for City Bureau’s Chicago newsletter.