Lawmakers introduce bills to punish sexual assault in schools, end fossil fuel investments

Republican lawmakers put forward a proposal to expel students who sexually assault another student at school.

Current Illinois law has no provisions requiring schools to expel a student who commits sexual violence or assault against another student at school. However, the law says that if a student brings firearms, knives, brass knuckles, or other any other weapon that can be used to cause bodily harm into a school, they must be expelled for at least a year.

Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, said the goal of Senate Bill 98 is to force schools to confront and deal with issues of sexual assault at a school or any activity or event related to a school.

He said this issue was brought to his attention when he caught wind of an incident that involved a 10-year-old girl in Taylorville.

The girl’s mother, Ashley Peden, spoke alongside McClure at a Capitol news conference on Wednesday in support of the bill. Peden, who is a teacher in Springfield, said the way that the Taylorville school district handled the assault against her daughter caused her to rethink her decision to be a teacher.

“The lack for safety of all students has been a concern of mine from the very beginning, so much that at one point I was asked, ‘are you worried about your daughter or the other students,’” she said. “To which I quickly replied, ‘I’m worried about every single one of them, aren’t you?’”

Peden said that between late January and early February 2024, her 10-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted by an older student who was 14 years old on their school bus and at their bus stop. The assaults increased in severity every day until the final assault, where her daughter was chased from her bus stop and raped.

After reporting the incident, Peden said she obtained an emergency order of protection for her daughter and brought it to the principal of Taylorville Junior High School, who made a “safety plan” for her daughter. Peden said the plan prohibited the accused student from coming into contact with her daughter at school, which the order of protection already called for.

“This safety plan was shared with the bus company, my daughter’s fifth grade teacher and office staff,” Peden said. “No one else knew of the assaults. No one else knew of the safety plan.”

“As an educator myself, I have been a part of a situation where all staff needed to know about something about a student. It was as simple as an email saying, ‘Student A should not be in the presence of Student B, we need to keep them apart.’ I asked for it to be just as generic as that, and I was not granted that,” she said.

Peden said after several meetings with the school board and multiple court orders, the student was removed from her daughter’s school and sent to an alternative school for the rest of the spring semester. However, in August, she received a phone call about the student’s reentry into her daughter’s school and again asked the school to remove the student.

“We have laws where a student gets expelled for bringing a weapon on school grounds, but what about cases like this, when the student’s body is the weapon?” Peden said. “This boy continuously brought his weapon to school on the bus and to the bus stop. This is not acceptable. This is not ensuring safety for all students.”

McClure said the bill is aimed at stopping schools from sweeping issues of sexual assault under the rug.

“What’s happening right now is silence in these schools,” McClure said. “Because they’re not telling the parents in some cases, and other students aren’t even aware of what’s happening. That’s a danger to them as well.”

Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer, R-Murrayville, filed an identical bill in the House. He said this issue needs to be addressed in schools across the state.

“It’s not punishment for the individual who committed the crime,” he said. “It’s to protect all of our kids and to ensure that the people who committed the crimes get the help that they need.”

Divesting pensions from fossil fuels

Some Illinois Democrats are pushing the General Assembly to pass legislation that would require the state’s five pension systems to divest from fossil fuel companies.

Under Senate Bill 130, the pension systems for legislators, state employees, university employees, teachers and judges would be prohibited from investing in any fossil fuel companies or their affiliates. Pension systems would be required to complete divestment in fossil fuel companies by 2030 but would be prohibited from making any new investments in them once the bill is signed by the governor.

Fossil fuel companies covered under the legislation include subsidiaries, affiliates and parent companies of 200 publicly traded companies with the largest fuel reserves in the world, the 30 largest public companies owning coal-fired power plants and any company with fossil fuel operations at the core of its business.

Supporters of the bill said it is important Illinois not financially support fossil fuel companies as the state moves toward clean energy goals. Those goals include requiring coal and gas power plants close by 2045.

“It is really imperative for the state pension funds to be more mindful and aligned with the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act that we made a commitment to, and this will align with that,” bill sponsor Sen. Adriane Johnson, D-Buffalo Grove, said at a news conference.

Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, a budget leader in the House, said he believes divesting from fossil fuel companies will ultimately lead to better investment outcomes for pension systems as lawmakers search for ways to improve pension liabilities. Illinois has a $143.7 billion unfunded pension liability, according to the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

“Divesting our pension funds from fossil fuels will increase returns in the long run,” Guzzardi said. “Not only is it aligned with our goals on climate, but it is aligned with our goals on guaranteeing a safe retirement for all public employees.”

Fossil fuel investments underperform other types of investments, according to Guzzardi. A University of Waterloo study found American pension funds would see greater investment returns without investments in the energy sector.

It’s not clear how much of Illinois’ pensions are invested in fossil fuel companies, Guzzardi said, which is why lawmakers are using the bill to ask the pension systems to disclose their investments in fossil fuels.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.