We expect a vote in the House today on the amended version of HB 363, and it looks good for passage, in part because it has been somewhat watered down. It no longer calls for a moratorium or a reversal of the school closing decisions made last month, and it does not include the mediation and arbitration provisions of the original bill.

What is does call for, though, is important and deserves our support. There will be an independent panel made up of legislators and representatives of community groups which have a track record in  school facilities issues. This panel will design a fair, effective process for making facilities decisions which will then be enacted into law. 

Interestingly, the amendment also calls for an annual report such as the one described in CPS's current school closing policy, the one they seem to be unable to locate to comply with our FOIA request. 

While we are not getting everything we asked for in HB 363, it is a major accomplishment to get this much when CPS and the mayor must have opposed it with every fiber of their we-hate-open-public-processes-and-fair-decision-making beings.

Please make one more call to your state rep. today to make sure they vote yes on HB 363. Barbara Flynn Currie has already signed on to it, so you no longer need to call her. Find your state rep's phone number here.

A lot of the credit for this victory goes to Valencia Rias and Don Moore of Designs for Change who have carried the ball on this bill.  

More good news is that a lot of excellent groundwork has already been laid for the committee. The late-great Neighborhood Capital Budget Group worked for years to pull together the best ideas of experts and regular folk in their Master Facilities Plan proposal which is still available on their web site, www.ncbg.org.