SPRINGFIELD – To further increase student safety, State Senator Doris Turner spearheaded a measure through the Senate that would allow school busses to have two extended stop arms.

“Student safety has to be our top priority,” said Turner (D-Springfield). “Allowing school busses to have an extended arm would provide more protections for passengers and hopefully lessen the number of drivers who pass stopped busses.”

Senate Bill 2340 would allow a school bus to be equipped with a maximum of two stop arms that partially obstruct the roadway. The extensions would be required to be on the driver's side of the school bus and contain a system of flashing red lights.

“Too often, the safety of our students at bus drop offs and bus pick-ups are placed in jeopardy by distracted drivers. While we hire great bus drivers and teach children to look both ways, we can’t control the actions of a distracted motorist,” said Tip Reedy, Superintendent of Williamsville School District. “We value and appreciate the efforts of Senator Turner and other lawmakers who are taking steps to prevent the occurrence of unsafe and illegal passing of stopped school buses before a tragedy occurs.”

SPRINGFIELD – Recognizing staff shortages in the EMS workforce, Senate Majority Leader Kimberly A. Lightford advanced legislation in the Senate to attract and retain EMS workers.

“The pandemic further exacerbated how vital the EMS professionals are,” said Lightford (D-Maywood). “We need to expand the workforce by prioritizing recruitment and retention of highly-skilled workers.”

Senate Bill 761 works to tackle the emergency medical field workforce shortage head on by allowing more flexibility for EMS directors to use alternative staffing models and creating a task force to bring greater training, recruitment and retention to the field.

Senator Holmes seeks to bring paint recycling to Illinois

SPRINGFIELD – Many homeowners have something lurking in their basement or garage that could be disposed of, but there hasn’t been a means to get rid of it safely: unused household paint. A new initiative sponsored by State Senator Linda Holmes would establish a program to dispose of household paint, and the legislation passed Thursday in the Senate.

The Paint Stewardship Act in Senate Bill 836 creates a means for consumers to dispose of household paint in Illinois. No state resources are in place today to deal with this waste. Under this law, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency will use PaintCare, a nonprofit organization that operates the post-consumer program with paint manufacturers to run the process and provide convenient, free dropoff sites statewide.

“It is exciting to offer this prospective service to Illinoisans with old paint taking up space in their homes,” Holmes (D-Aurora) said. “To get rid of it in an environmentally safe manner will give us an opportunity to make our state’s soil and water cleaner for our children and to safely produce our crops to feed the state and nation.”

Under this program, paint manufacturers are required to submit a plan and pay a fee to the Illinois EPA to stand up a paint collection site, service or event, which will allow residents to drop off unused paint to specified locations free of charge. Those collection sites or events will be within a 15 mile radius for 90% of Illinois residents.

“Consumers will now have the opportunity to declutter their homes of old paint and feel confident that their waste is being recycled and disposed of in an environmentally sustainable way,” Holmes said.

PaintCare operates similar programs in several other states with paint stewardship laws, including California, Minnesota, Colorado and New York. They have collected 62.6 million gallons of paint.

Having been approved by the full Senate, Senate Bill 836 will now go to the House for their consideration.

SPRINGFIELD – A measure sponsored by State Senator Sara Feigenholtz that will alleviate obstacles for adoptees to obtain post-adoption information related to their birth and adoption passed the Senate on Wednesday.

“This measure levels the playing field for all adopted adults who are seeking information about themselves through the confidential intermediary program. Permitting record access for those who were placed through child welfare agencies that have since closed their doors, does exactly that,” said Feigenholtz (D-Chicago). 

Senate Bill 2134 adds clarifying language to the Adoption Act to permit a confidential intermediary to have access to stored records from closed adoption agencies. Currently, records of closed agencies are housed at the central state storage facility.

SPRINGFIELD – State Senator Christopher Belt advanced a measure through the Senate Thursday to tackle the increasing number of food deserts in Illinois.

“People should be able to have easy access to healthy and affordable food at all times,” said Belt (D-Swansea). “By providing financial assistance to grocery stores, we can incentivize the establishment and expansion of stores in areas that are considered food deserts.”

Under this legislation, the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity would be required to provide grants and other forms of financial assistance to privately-owned grocery stores and grocery stores owned by a unit of local government, school district or community college district, located in or to be located in a food desert.

SPRINGFIELD – Families of children with behavioral health challenges that require mental health assistance have faced multiple barriers when seeking mental health assistance.

Working alongside Dr. Dana Weiner, the governor’s newly appointed Children's Behavioral Health Officer, State Senator Sara Feigenholtz championed Senate Bill 724, which defines the Interagency Children’s Behavioral Health Services Act and lays out a roadmap to finally get children the help they need.

“The importance of this roadmap to appropriate treatment cannot be overstated,” said Feigenholtz (D-Chicago). “This work is transformative and will be a game changer for children's behavioral health in Illinois.”

Senate Bill 724 would implement recommendations from the Governor’s Behavioral Health Transformation Blueprint that was released in February. The initiative, which set out to research the current state of mental and behavioral health issues facing children in Illinois and develop recommendations to better help families, was spearheaded by Dr. Dana Weiner and Senator Feigenholtz in collaboration with the Illinois Departments of Human Services, Healthcare and Family Services, Children and Family Services, Juvenile Justice, and Public Health, and the State Board of Education.

Measure adopts several recommendations of the Whole Child Task Force, passed as part of the Black Caucus’ four-pillar agenda

SPRINGFIELD – Building upon her steadfast leadership to take a more holistic, trauma-informed approach in schools, Senate Majority Leader Kimberly A. Lightford passed a measure to equip schools with the training and resources they need to meet the diverse trauma and mental health needs of students.

“While there are individual schools, centers and programs that do a strong job supporting the well-being of students, these efforts are locally driven. They are not systemic,” said Lightford (D-Maywood). “We need a real shift toward a systemic approach to supporting students’ cultural, physical, emotional and mental health needs.”

Schools across the state would be equipped with training and resources to meet the diverse trauma and mental health needs of students, under Lightford’s measure. The Illinois State Board of Education would create a Children’s Adversity Index, which would measure community childhood trauma exposure across the population of children 3-18 years old by May 31, 2025.

ISBE, under the bill, would create a committee to make recommendations amending education licensing requirements to include training on adverse childhood experiences, trauma, secondary traumatic stress, and creating trauma-responsive learning environments and/or communities.

Lightford’s measure – Senate Bill 16 – builds upon the Black Caucus’ four-pillar agenda. In January 2021, following the tragic, racially charged deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, Lightford led an education overhaul to tackle systemic racism in schools.

The plan included the Whole Child Task Force, which was commissioned to lay out a comprehensive set of steps the state can take to create a safe, supportive and healing center for children.

 “For all students to succeed in schools and beyond, we need to ensure every school is equipped to meet the diverse needs,” said Lightford. “We need to continue laying the foundation for Illinois to become a national leader in addressing student needs and well-being.”

Senate Bill 16 passed the Senate Thursday and heads to the House or further consideration.

SPRINGFIELD – State Senator Suzy Glowiak Hilton is leading a measure that would ensure Illinois schools would permit students to display articles of clothing that have cultural or religious significance at their graduation.

“Graduates should have the right to represent who they are,” said Glowiak Hilton. “Discrimination, of any kind, has no place in our schools.”

The measure requires the Illinois State Board of Education, in consultation with stakeholders, to create resource materials to list items that relate to a student’s cultural, ethnic and religious identity that schools should recognize and protect in its dress code policies regarding graduation attire.