Priority Briefings

On December 6, 2019, the Governor signed into law Public Act 101-0598 (SB 460) which modifies the new requirement in Public Act 101-0515 that schools provide all written materials that will be discussed by the IEP team at Eligibility and IEP meetings to parents three school days before the meeting.  This provision delays the three…

Reacting to concerns about the ability to maintain student safety without the ability to use prone restraint, the Illinois State Board of Education has issued an amendment to the emergency regulations to provide for the emergency use of prone restraint. According to the Emergency Amendment, prone restraint may be used if all of the following…

Effective November 20, 2019, the Illinois State Board of Education issued emergency regulations, 23 IAC 1.285, regarding requirements for the use of time out and physical restraint. ISBE also issued a Physical Restraint and Time Out Form to be completed after each instance of time out or physical restraint and submitted to the parent and…

            On August 23, 2019, Governor Pritzker signed Public Act 101-0531 which takes effect immediately.  As further described in this briefing, the Public Act changes several areas of the School Code.  Most notably, the Public Act significantly changes the procedure for investigating sexual abuse allegations made against a school district’s staff members, vendors, or volunteers. …

On August 23, 2019, the Governor signed into law HB 3586, which requires districts to provide additional disclosure and notification to parents of students who are or may be eligible for special education services into law. The Public Act is effective immediately. The Act requires that the school district provide certain documents to parents before…

Effective this year, school boards will no longer have to adopt Prevailing Wage Act resolutions in June. Recent amendments to the Act made this change and others but did not modify the Act’s central provision that public bodies must require their contractors for public works to pay the locally prevailing wages. Public Act 100-1177, passed…

Pursuant to law, every school board must hold its organizational meeting no later than 28 days after the consolidated election. Further, new board members cannot be seated until after the official canvass of the results by the county election authority. The deadline for the canvass is not until 21 days after the election. Therefore, the…

TRS has just issued Employer Bulletin 19-12 dated February 2019, which is available on the TRS website at: https://www.trsil.org/employers/employer-bulletins/FY19-12.  This bulletin requires that all TRS employers submit all grandfathered individual employment contracts and collective bargaining agreements (“CBAs”) to the TRS CBA/Contract Collection Portal by March 29, 2019.  Grandfathered contracts and CBAs are those entered into…

On Friday, November 16, 2018, the U.S. Department of Education issued proposed Regulations that would alter what constitutes sexual harassment, what triggers a duty to respond, due process afforded to individuals and procedural responses to complaints, among other things.  The Regulations are available for public comment for 60 days. During President Obama’s administration in 2011,…

Since the change in the law providing for school board candidate filings to be handled by the County Clerk rather than at the local school districts, the Cook County Clerk has been able to handle the volume of filings by using multiple sites in the suburbs, as well as the Clerk’s central office in Chicago. …