New state laws taking effect Jan. 1 Minimum wage hike, pets in public housing among new changes Lawmakers approve kindergarten reform, plan to address childhood literacy

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By ANDREW ADAMS Capitol News Illinois aadams@capitolnewsillinois.com

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BY PETER HANCOCK Capitol News Illinois phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com

SPRINGFIELD

– Minimum wage workers in Illinois will see a boost in their hourly pay to $12 per hour starting Jan. 1, while tenants in affordable housing units will be allowed to keep pets. tenants to keep pets is the result of Senate Bill 154, by Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, and Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, D-Oswego. It provides that tenants of multifamily housing units that are acquired, built or renovated with money from the Illinois Affordable Housing Trust Fund may keep up to two cats or one dog weighing less than 50 pounds. to move forward with our pre-K program and the governor’s smart start program, I hope we can recognize that kindergarten is a pivotal piece of a child’s learning journey.”

On Thursday, members of the House of Representatives approved a proposal that would require school boards in Illinois to provide full-day kindergarten starting with the 2027-2028 school year.

MAP: https://public.flourish. studio/visualisation/13189365/ around the state. But she said they are still concerned about a requirement that would force districts to raise their own capital funding to expand school facilities to accommodate full-day programs. from Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Westchester, that would require the Illinois State Board of Education to develop a “comprehensive literacy plan.”

The measure, House Bill 2396, was met with bipartisan, though not universal, support, passing out of the House on Thursday on an 87-23 vote.

Those are just some of the more than 300 new laws that take effect in the new year.

The minimum wage increase is actually the result of a 2019 law that phases in a state minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. This year, it will increase by one dollar to $12 an hour.

“I think we can all recognize that our children are our most important resource in the state of Illinois,” Mary Beth Canty, D-Arlington Heights, said on the House floor Thursday. “As we look

The law allowing public housing in the journal Reading Horizons, MacPhee and her team found that 97 percent of Illinois teachers use phonics in their classrooms to teach reading. Despite the near universal adoption of this method, there is diversity across the state as to what programs are being used. Of the 80 percent of teachers using published curriculum for their phonics instruction, at least 41 different programs are used.

Some lawmakers were uneasy with the potential cost implications for local school districts, particularly stemming from potential increases in staffing needs and facility space requirements.

It applies to residents of housing units that are designated as affordable housing for low- and very-lowincome families. The bill passed both chambers in its final form on May 30 and Gov. JB Pritzker signed it into law Aug. 6.

“The vast majority of districts who don’t offer (full-day kindergarten), don’t offer it because they don’t have the space,” Warnecke said.

Currently, about 80 percent of districts in Illinois offer full-day kindergarten, according to Canty.

In 2022, nearly 38 percent of Illinois’ 4th grade students did not meet grade level reading standards, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This is roughly average and is not significantly lower than the nation’s overall reading scores.

Other new laws include:

Vehicle taxes: SB58 raises the private vehicle tax, which is a sales tax paid on the purchase of vehicles, by $75 for each model year where the purchase price is less than $15,000 and by $100 for vehicles priced above that amount. However, the registration fee for trailers weighing less than 3,000 pounds will drop to $36 instead of $118.

“When this goes into effect in 2027, are we going to be ramped up enough to be able to provide additional teachers throughout kindergartens across Illinois?” Rep. Dan Swanson, R-Alpha, said during debate over the bill.

The worry about funding is echoed by some in the education field, including the Illinois Association of School Administrators, or IASA. The association recorded its opposition to an earlier form of the bill when it went through committee earlier this month alongside the Illinois Association of School Boards and the Illinois Principals Association.

The bill sets up a “Full-Day Kindergarten Task Force” to study the best way to implement the expansion of full-day kindergarten. The task force will also be responsible for determining the criteria for districts’ eligibility for a twoyear extension to the deadline for rolling out full-day kindergarten.

Canty said in an interview that she is working on securing funding for the expansion.

“I have had some really great conversations with the budgeteers here in the House and with the governor’s team,” she said.

“Today’s students who struggle to read are tomorrow’s adults — adults who desperately need literacy to sign a lease agreement, fill out a job application, manage their own health care, support their children’s education and participate in democracy,” Lightford said on the Senate floor Friday.

Deborah MacPhee, a researcher and professor at Illinois State University, said early literacy education has become politicized with debates between competing systems of reading instruction.

“We have to be educating teachers to be using programs effectively,” she said.

Lightford’s plan is not the only bill at the Statehouse in recent weeks aimed at improving childhood literacy. Rep. Mary Flowers, D-Chicago, introduced a bill that would require schools to use phonics to teach reading, though it was met with pushback from teachers’ unions.

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College admissions: HB226, establishing the Higher Education Fair Admissions Act, prohibits public colleges and universities from requiring applicants to submit SAT, ACT or other standardized test scores as part of the admissions process, although prospective students may choose to submit them if they wish.

IASA chief of staff Emily Warnecke said in an interview that her organization supports the movement toward full-day kindergarten

The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.

Literacy improvements

On Friday, the Senate unanimously approved Senate Bill 2243

MacPhee said she liked that the bill requires the plan to involve “education stakeholders.” She said this will contribute to the ongoing conversation around what sorts of educational programs teachers should use.

In a 2022 study published

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide, as well as hundreds of radio and TV stations. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Attorney General Raoul Calls For Increased Access To Birth Control Coverage

than 62 million women have benefited from the ACA’s birth control coverage mandate.

CST Weekly, published weekly on Wednesdays and distributed in the Township of Bloom, (publishing 52 issues annually). W ritten permission is required to reproduce contents in whole or part from the General manager or the publisher CST Weekly does not assume the responsibility for nor are we able to return unsolicited marterials. Deadline for advertising is every Monday at noon. For information on subscriptions or advertising call us at (773) 783-1251. Our office is located at 8741 S. Greenwood Ave., Ste# 107, Chicago, Illinois 60619.

CST Weekly,published weekly on Wednesdays and distributed in the Township of Bloom, (publishing 52 issuesannually). W ritten permission isrequired to reproduce contents inwholeor part from the Generalmanager or the publisher CST Weekly does not assume the responsibilityfor nor are weable to return unsolicited marterials. Deadline for advertising is everyMonday at noon. For information on subscriptions oradvertising call us at (773)783-1251. Our office is locatedat 8741S. Greenwood Ave., Ste# 107, Chicago, Illinois 60619.

CST Weekly,published weekly on Wednesdays and distributed in the Township of Bloom, (publishing 52 issuesannually). W ritten permission isrequired to reproduce contents inwholeor part from the Generalmanager or the publisher CST Weekly does not assume the responsibilityfor nor are weable to return unsolicited marterials. Deadline for advertising is everyMonday at noon. For information on subscriptions oradvertising call us at (773)783-1251. Our office is locatedat 8741S. Greenwood Ave., Ste# 107, Chicago, Illinois 60619.

Editorial: to the appropriate school support personnel.

Drug prices: SB1682 requires pharmacies to post a notice informing consumers that they may request current pharmacy retail prices at the point of sale.

Chicago — Attorney General Kwame Raoul, as part of a coalition of 22 states, urged the Biden administration to scrap dangerous federal rules that allow employers to interfere in the reproductive health decisions of their employees.

The rules, put in place under the prior administration, took away contraceptive coverage from women who should have been entitled to complete coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They added broad, unreasonable exemptions that allowed nearly all types of employers to deny birth control coverage to their employees based on religious or moral objections.

In a comment letter addressed to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su, Raoul and the coalition applaud the Biden administration’s proposal to restore access to cost-free contraceptive coverage by rescinding the moral exemption and creating alternate means to cover contraceptive services for individuals whose plan sponsors claim the religious exemption. However, the letter also expresses opposition to the administration’s decision to retain the overly broad religious exemption promulgated in 2018, which is deemed far beyond what is necessary to protect those with religious objections.

After the prior administration issued broad exemptions that allowed employers to stop providing contraceptive coverage if they claimed religious or moral objections, between 70,500 and 126,400 women are estimated to have lost birth control coverage. Further, it did not provide a mechanism for individuals to obtain no-cost contraceptive care from another source, completely undermining the spirit of the Women’s Health Amendment’s purpose to eliminate discriminatory barriers to preventative women’s health care.

In February this year, the Biden administration proposed new regulations to correct these problems. The proposed changes would rescind the moral exemption while retaining the religious exemption. The proposal would create an Individual Contraceptive Arrangement (ICA) to ensure that patients enrolled in health plans or coverage sponsored by objecting entities would still have the opportunity to obtain contraceptive services at no cost.

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FOID card changes: HB562 enacts several changes to the Firearm Owner Identification card law. Among other things, it provides for a streamlined renewal process for FOID cards and Concealed Carry Licenses for people who voluntarily submit fingerprint records. It also allows the Illinois State Police to issue a combined FOID card and Concealed Carry License to qualified applicants, and it establishes a new Violent Crime Intelligence Task Force to take enforcement action against people with revoked FOID cards.

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Student mental health: HB576 and SB1577 allow students in Illinois up to five excused absences to attend to their mental or behavioral health without providing a medical note. Those students will be given an opportunity to make up any work they missed during the first absence and, after using a second mental health day, may be referred

“More than 60 million women rely on coverage for preventative services, including contraception, as a fundamental part of their health care plan,” Raoul said. “Access to contraceptive care supports people’s ability to control their reproductive health and promotes access to education, jobs and financial empowerment. Employers do not have the right to stand between their employees and the reproductive health care they need.” its public health authorities from regulating or shutting down lemonade stands or similar operations that are operated by children under the age of 16. Known as “Hayli’s Law,” it was inspired by 12-year-old Hayli Martinez, whose lemonade stand in Kankakee was shut down by local officials.

Official flags: HB605 requires state agencies and institutions to purchase Illinois and American flags that are made in the United States.

Hair styles: SB817 prohibits discrimination in schools against individuals on the grounds of wearing natural or ethnic hairstyles, which include dreadlocks, braids, twists and afros.

The ACA’s contraceptive coverage mandate was signed into law in 2010 to correct historic inequities in women’s health care. It required all employers and sponsors of health plans to cover the cost of preventive services necessary for women’s health, including contraceptive care. It is estimated that more

Lemonade stands: SB119 prohib- www.citizennewspapergroup.com

Raoul and the coalition of attorneys general welcome these proposed changes and also urge the Biden administration to narrow the religious exemption. Their letter calls for needed improvements to the ICA by expanding it to include a wider spectrum of individuals who are excluded from contraceptive coverage and providing additional protections to secure patients’ privacy and safeguard them from retaliation. The letter also calls on the administration to create a process for contesting medical bills and to launch an outreach campaign to inform patients and providers about the ICA and help with enrollment.

Juneteenth: HB3922 recognizes June 19, or “Juneteenth,” as an official state holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the

United States. In June, President Joe Biden also signed a bill designating Juneteenth as a federal holiday.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Joining Raoul in filing the comments are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.