HR0781 101ST GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0781 LRB101 20852 ECR 70667 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, As of December 1, 2019, the City of Chicago stands to lose a minimum of 102 birth-to-five classrooms and 363 staff in more than 35 neighborhoods throughout the city; these services have been provided by trusted community-based organizations that have served these neighborhoods for decades; and

WHEREAS, Should this loss occur as scheduled, it would not only impact these agencies and organizations financially but will also result in the denial of access for children and families to a 10-hour full day of high quality, comprehensive early learning opportunities; this loss will primarily affect the neighborhoods of Englewood, Austin, and Back of the Yards, which are already some of the most vulnerable, highest-need communities in the City of Chicago; and

WHEREAS, During an overlap of two mayoral administrations, this situation was created partly as a result of an extremely opaque evaluation imposed on a flawed Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) RFP process; this was after the process had already suffered from a 10-week delay and a complex addendum published only 13 days prior to the due date; information about the rubrics developed for this scoring process and the subsequent actual scores have been denied to the individual applicants; graduate students were employed to be the primary reviewers and to score the RFPs, but no further information has been provided about their qualifications or their knowledge of the communities involved; and

WHEREAS, If this disaster is not immediately rectified, the entire early childhood ecosystem will be destabilized and dismantled throughout the City of Chicago; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we encourage the City of Chicago City Council Committee on Health and Human Relations to expeditiously convene a public hearing to solicit testimony from the Commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) for the purpose of providing full transparency concerning the methods and procedures of the scoring process of the DFSS RFP and the qualifications of the evaluators and to answer any questions the chairman, the committee members, or members of the attending public may have; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the Commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services, the Mayor of Chicago, and the Governor of Illinois.