About GROW YOUR OWN ILLINOIS
In 2003, the organizations which made up the Chicago Learning Campaign, a collaborative funded by the Ford and Hazen foundations, started working on a legislative campaign to secure state funding for an effort to identify and train school employees and other parents and community members active in education in their low- and moderate-income communities as fully certified teachers - based on the experiences of CLC member the Logan Square Neighborhood Association.
The first fruit of this work was the Illinois Grow Your Own Task Force, composed of representatives of school districts, universities, community colleges, state agencies, school employee unions, education improvement groups, and interested legislators and citizens. This group drafted the Grow Your Own Teachers Act and secured its passage in 2004. In 2005, the legislature passed the first Grow Your Own appropriation, aimed at supporting the planning phase of the first set of new projects under the authorizing legislation.
The Illinois State Board of Education was identified as the agency to manage the Illinois Grow Your Own Initiative, and in July 2005, ISBE issued an RFSP to find a contractor that could support the development of the program, through technical assistance, data analysis, outreach, and coordination. In the belief that we had the best pool of expertise, the current members of CLC, led by Anne Hallett, who had recently retired as the director of CLC member Cross City Campaign, collectively bid on this contract, a bid which was successful. The services provided under this contract can be reviewed here.
In January 2007, GYO Illinois became a separate not-for-profit corporation; in the Fall, the organization received federal 501(c)(3) status. In addition to our work in fostering the success of the GYO initiative in Illinois, we are following up on contacts with other states and localities which have expressed interest in learning from the Illinois experience.
In May of 2007, GYO Illinois became one of the core projects of the Chicago hub of Communities for Public Education Reform, a funder collaborative exploring various models for the effective work of community organizations in public school systems.
For further information, follow the links on the upper left of this page, or use the email link below. For regular updates, signup for the email list to the left.
