Illinois Families for Public Schools

"pile of ethical concerns wrapped in red flags" 💯💯💯

Here's the Board rule in question: www.cps.edu/sites/cps-po...

Concerningly, Board doesn't need to vote on no-cost contracts & delegates that authority. So, contract & amendment were just "accepted" as single lines in Board reports (e.g. www.cpsboe.org/content/acti... ); given issues w/ "free" tech, seems like rule the Board should be re-evaluating

the merger with a palantir partner makes it all worse, but the original contract was *already* a pile of ethical concerns wrapped in red flags

a for-profit company owned by private equity underwritten by United Healthcare offering a "no cost" service?

Why did the board of education approve this?

And now Palantir “the shady data firm ICE uses to target immigrants” has a direct line to students’ sensitive personal data.

Tell Chicago Public Schools: keep ICE's Big Tech partners out of our kids' counseling services!

www.ilfps.org/keep_ice_big...

Department of Education Condemned for Ending Support for Students with Disabilities - National Center for Learning Disabilities Broad Coalition of Disability, Civil Rights, and Education Organizations Call for Reversal of Layoffs at Department of Education October 14, 2025 – Washington, D.C. – A broad coalition of national, st...

We join 300+ disability rights orgs to raise alarm over mass layoffs at the Dept. of Education. Key offices are critical to protecting students with disabilities. These layoffs jeopardize laws & 50 years of progress.

ncld.org/department-o...

@sf.gazetteer.co @eddiekimx.bsky.social

The banality of Palantir’s evil airport ad Why is a company that makes millions tracking down immigrants for ICE advertising at SFO?

"Why is a company (Palentir) that makes millions tracking down immigrants for
ICE advertising at SFO?"

And why have they snaked their way into "free" school-based student mental health services across the US?

What we know: www.ilfps.org/keep_ice_big...

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Alert: Federal Special Education Staffing Gutted Putting IDEA Protections at Risk Hundreds of employees in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) — including staff in both the Special Education Programs and Rehabilitative Services divisions — were laid ...

"Without staff to administer and monitor the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the $15 billion in federal funding for special education may not reach the states, leaving millions of students without essential services and oversight."
actionnetwork.org/letters/aler...

NCDHHS Partners with Hazel Health to Provide Virtual Mental Health Services for K-12 Students in North Carolina /PRNewswire/ -- The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services today announced students across North Carolina will soon have access to...

😩 www.prnewswire.com/news-release...

Also Wake Co NC, Cleveland, Columbus…

@houstoncvpe.bsky.social
@edvoterspa.bsky.social
@strongflschools.bsky.social
@krisnordstrom.bsky.social
@honesty4ohioed.bsky.social

School Districts | Hazel Health Hazel Health is the nation's #1 health care provider for K-12 students. We partner with school districts to deliver high-quality physical and mental health care services, supporting students through e...

Also! very much not just a Chicago problem bc the provider Hazel Health is in 19 states, 180 school districts—incl lots of biggest school districts in US: LAUSD, Jeffco CO, Fairfax Co VA, Philly, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Clark Co NV, St Louis (& signing contracts w states) www.hazel.co/schools/home

Text headline: Keep ICE’s Big Tech partners out of our kids’ counseling services! Image: graphic in dark blue-green background of police figure holding giant magnifying glass that is casting light (ok, yes that should be a flashlight! sigh.) onto a computer monitor with an image of a doctor and a mobile phone with an image of a patient

CPS “free” telehealth therapy services provider just merged with a Palantir-partner startup. (Yes, that Palantir!) Handing students’ most sensitive data over to Silicon Valley was never ok; and it’s just beyond bad now. Tell CPS to pause this contract! Details here: www.ilfps.org/keep_ice_big...

Take action on the devastating US Dept of Ed special education services staff cuts: sosarizona.org/restore-ed/ (thx to @sosarizona.org for the action link--it works for any state!)

Trump Is Gutting Special Education I was able to speak to someone from inside the latest reduction in force about what this means.

"Informal reports say only two senior staff now remain to oversee services for 8.4 million infants, toddlers, children, and young adults with disabilities...'There’s no one left to do the statutorily required work under IDEA.'” mrsfrazzled.substack.com/p/trump-is-g...

‼️ 🧊 Keep ICE partners out of our kids’ Chicago Public Schools’ mental health services.

Reach out to your Board of Ed member and urge them to stop an automatic renewal of the Hazel Health contract.

Find them here: www.cps.edu/about/chicag...

Email addresses here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Organizing is essential. Courage is contagious. Social proof is persuasive.
People do the thing they think people like them do.

IL-FPS learned this week that Hazel Health, a for-profit telehealth startup with a CPS contract to provide counseling services to HS students, merged with another tech startup, Little Otter, founded by a member of the “Palantir mafia”, alums of Peter Thiel’s notorious surveillance tech behemoth…😱+🧵

About this site Organizing My Thoughts is the official newsletter of writer and organizer Kelly Hayes. In this newsletter, you will find interviews, essays, must-read lists, and other musings about how we can take po...

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“So, some of us have elected to defend immigrants by stepping into zones of unsafety ourselves…This is a place where immigrants are loved, needed, and appreciated, and we will not give up members of our beloved communities without a fight.” — @mskellymhayes.bsky.social

They Came for Our Neighbors. We Showed Up. Before long, there were dozens, and then hundreds of people in the streets, watching and responding.

“Our city has been rendered wholly unsafe for immigrants, or for anyone who federal agents might profile as an immigrant. To get to work, to take their children to school, to move about their communities, immigrants in Chicagoland must engage with risk” organizingmythoughts.org/they-came-fo...

Find your Chicago Board of Ed member here (www.cps.edu/about/chicag...) and then email them (email addresses bit.ly/writeCBOE ) asking them to review and then fix or, better yet, cancel this contract before it renews!

Handing students’ most sensitive data over to a company with deep ties to the tech broligarchs building the surveillance state at a time when Chicagoans are being hunted on our streets by agents of that same state is not ok. Free tech is never free, and that’s *especially* true in 2025.

tl;dr here? Chicago Public Schools' contract with Hazel Health must NOT be automatically renewed. The Chicago Board of Ed needs to review it, fix it, if that's even possible, and if it can’t be fixed, CANCEL it.

Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans

Will recordings of teen’s counseling sessions eventually end up in a federal database?
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/t...

Documents offer rare insight on Ice’s close relationship with Palantir For years, little was known about the multibillion-dollar company that handles data for the US immigration enforcement agency. Now, a cache of emails, training documents and reports sheds light on how...

Which brings us back to Palantir. One of their major clients? ICE: www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Relatedly, in response to the Trump administration’s ramping up federal law enforcement and military presence in Chicago, CPS has highlighted Hazel as a resource for students experiencing anxiety & trauma, as communities across the city are terrorized by ICE’s secret police.

Is CPS students’ data from online counseling sessions already being used to train AI algorithms? *Will* it be in the future because of Hazel’s merger with Little Otter?