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| 1 | HOUSE RESOLUTION
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| 2 | WHEREAS, As of December 1, 2019, the City of Chicago stands | ||||||
| 3 | to lose a minimum of 102 birth-to-five classrooms and 363 staff | ||||||
| 4 | in more than 35 neighborhoods throughout the city; these | ||||||
| 5 | services have been provided by trusted community-based | ||||||
| 6 | organizations that have served these neighborhoods for | ||||||
| 7 | decades; and
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| 8 | WHEREAS, Should this loss occur as scheduled, it would not | ||||||
| 9 | only impact these agencies and organizations financially but | ||||||
| 10 | will also result in the denial of access for children and | ||||||
| 11 | families to a 10-hour full day of high quality, comprehensive | ||||||
| 12 | early learning opportunities; this loss will primarily affect | ||||||
| 13 | the neighborhoods of Englewood, Austin, and Back of the Yards, | ||||||
| 14 | which are already some of the most vulnerable, highest-need | ||||||
| 15 | communities in the City of Chicago; and
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| 16 | WHEREAS, During an overlap of two mayoral administrations, | ||||||
| 17 | this situation was created partly as a result of an extremely | ||||||
| 18 | opaque evaluation imposed on a flawed Department of Family and | ||||||
| 19 | Support Services (DFSS) RFP process; this was after the process | ||||||
| 20 | had already suffered from a 10-week delay and a complex | ||||||
| 21 | addendum published only 13 days prior to the due date; | ||||||
| 22 | information about the rubrics developed for this scoring | ||||||
| 23 | process and the subsequent actual scores have been denied to | ||||||
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| 1 | the individual applicants; graduate students were employed to | ||||||
| 2 | be the primary reviewers and to score the RFPs, but no further | ||||||
| 3 | information has been provided about their qualifications or | ||||||
| 4 | their knowledge of the communities involved; and
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| 5 | WHEREAS, If this disaster is not immediately rectified, the | ||||||
| 6 | entire early childhood ecosystem will be destabilized and | ||||||
| 7 | dismantled throughout the City of Chicago; therefore, be it
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| 8 | RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE | ||||||
| 9 | HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that | ||||||
| 10 | we encourage the City of Chicago City Council Committee on | ||||||
| 11 | Health and Human Relations to expeditiously convene a public | ||||||
| 12 | hearing to solicit testimony from the Commissioner of the | ||||||
| 13 | Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) for the | ||||||
| 14 | purpose of providing full transparency concerning the methods | ||||||
| 15 | and procedures of the scoring process of the DFSS RFP and the | ||||||
| 16 | qualifications of the evaluators and to answer any questions | ||||||
| 17 | the chairman, the committee members, or members of the | ||||||
| 18 | attending public may have; and be it further
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| 19 | RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be | ||||||
| 20 | presented to the Commissioner of the Department of Family and | ||||||
| 21 | Support Services, the Mayor of Chicago, and the Governor of | ||||||
| 22 | Illinois.
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