Meet the NT School Board Candidates on 3/21!
Hear their answers to your questions and ours!


Excitement is building for New Trier Neighbor’s School Board Candidate Zoom Town Hall on March 21st at 7pm. All six candidates have been invited to participate. Our Board Member Jonathan Towers will be hosting the event and fielding audience questions. 

New Trier Neighbors has filed as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and thus does not endorse specific candidates. Our mission is to help educate and inform our community about vital issues affecting their families through civil discourse and viewpoint diversity. 

Space is limited so don’t miss your chance to learn more about your future New Trier School Board Members! Sign up here. 
"Culturally Responsive" Teaching Standards voted in by JCAR -- and are now being introduced as IL legislation

The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules of the Illinois Assembly (JCAR) voted February 17 to allow the new “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Standards” to move forward and dictate how teachers will be trained to teach in the classroom through a lens of politicized “social justice.” Originally the standards were to take effect for all existing programs by 2025.

But Rep. Rita Mayfield (above) has a hastier timeline and filed a bill earlier this week proposing “beginning October 1, 2021, culturally responsive teaching standards shall apply to the issuance of all professional educator licenses endorsed in teaching, school support personnel, and administrative fields.” This legislation essentially not only would codify these standards into state law but do so more quickly.  

Kudos to all you constituents who weighed in. Language in the final ISBE standards was tweaked because of feedback received. Unfortunately the standards overall still reflect the extreme and progressive worldview and allow very little the way of balance. Why does this matter? The standards do not close the achievement gap but only widen it -- see the experience in Buffalo, New York. With New Trier's school ranking no longer in the top 10 in Illinois, our children deserve excellence in education, not class time spent pushing division and hate. Some states are even passing legislation to ban critical race theory from schools.

Your energy will be needed on future issues, including the Mayfield bill, as well as a reading list introduced as Illinois legislation in January that would require 42 books on race, including White Fragility, How to be an Anti Racist and Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race as “required reading for students in every public elementary and secondary school beginning with the 2021-2022 school year.” Also, keep an eye out for the new sex ed standards being pushed by Planned Parenthood for K-12 students.  

What can you do? When you see politicized language and topics in your kids’ school work, address it with the teacher and school administration and school board; you can also send it to us at newtrierneighbors@gmail.com. And write your legislators with your thoughts.  

Click here to see a program on education (featuring Shelby Steele, Pastor Corey Brooks, Gabrielle Clark, whose son is suing his Nevada charter school over racialized training at his school, and former charter school leader Ian Rowe), as well as an op ed and short video produced by Eli Steele on the state of education nationally as well as in Illinois.
Governor Pritzker’s Budget Proposal Gets an “F”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has introduced a $41.6 billion budget for 2022 that papers over the state’s problems rather than addressing them.
 
In his budget address, the governor said he won’t hike income taxes or rely on federal aid to balance the budget, and that the state will pay its official pension costs in full. 
 
But none of these promises addresses the real issue: Illinois’ structural problems. 
 
Illinois has the nation’s worst credit rating and the most pension debt in the country. The state is losing more population than any other state, home values are falling and residents pay the highest property taxes in the nation. 
 
Gov. Pritzker’s 2022 budget ignored all these issues. 
 
Like every governor in the past 20 years, Governor Pritzker says his “budget is balanced.” And as usual, this is just not true. 
 
To read more about the budget, click here for Wirepoints’ top-line review and a broader takeaway of the budget proposal.
New Trier Neighbors was excited to be invited along
with other community organizations and members
to submit ideas for commemorating the
Village of Wilmette's Sesquicentennial in 2022!

We look forward to helping the Village and
community honor this milestone.