Springfield, Ill. –The State Board of Education took action yesterday to continue its work to reduce the thousands of pages of administrative rules that burden Illinois schools. In action at its regular monthly meeting on May 19, the State Board unanimously approved moving forward with the elimination of over 100 pages of administrative rules and made amendments to other rules to ease the administrative burden on schools.

“The Governor made it clear that one of the new State Board’s first priorities was to eliminate the unnecessary rules the Board was imposing on schools,” said State Board Chairman Jesse Ruiz. “We’ve received valuable input from educators around the state and with the dedicated work of our agency staff we’re making great progress. In every case, we’re taking action on rules that bring no benefit to students and cause schools unnecessary work. Schools need to be able to focus on teaching and not on filling out reams of needless paperwork for the State Board.”

The Board’s rule reduction action this month will help streamline the teacher certification process, remove difficulties in the certification of speech and language pathologists, limit requirements for filing teacher evaluation plans with ISBE, eliminate unnecessary school building inventories and remove bureaucracy from a school’s textbook loan program.

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) continues to seek suggestions for the rules reduction initiative through a special email account, lessredtape@isbe.net, through its interaction with schools and districts throughout Illinois and from agency staff. Once a suggestion is brought forward, the ISBE Legal Department begins a review process of the rule to determine if elimination or amendment to the rule would help schools.

This month’s action brings the total reduction effort to approximately 400 pages since the Board began its work last September. A complete review and overhaul of the Illinois State Board of Education’s 2,800 pages of rules will continue over the coming months. The rules reductions approved by the board will not take effect until approved by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.