Faith's Law

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) provides and maintains the Faith’s Law Resource Guide for pupils, parents/guardians, and teachers, which has sexual abuse responses and prevention resources available in their community. Also included is the contact information of entities that provide services for victims of child sexual abuse and their families.

Faith’s Law is named after prevention advocate and child sexual abuse survivor Faith Colson, who graduated from an Illinois high school in the early 2000s. Faith was sexually abused by a teacher at her high school. Years later, during the course of legal proceedings related to the abuse, Faith learned that several adults within her high school suspected that the teacher’s relationship with her was inappropriate but did not take appropriate action to report their concerns. As a result of her experiences, Faith pushed for change to state laws related to educator sexual misconduct in K-12 schools. Faith’s Law was passed by the 102nd General Assembly as two separate pieces of legislation. 

The ultimate goals of Public Act 102-0702 are to give parents/guardians notice regarding allegations of sexual misconduct that involve their student; equip schools across Illinois with better information regarding the employment history of an applicant or employee of a contractor; give schools the resources necessary to make well-informed decisions about who they are employing/contracting with; and protect students from acts of sexual misconduct by school employees, substitute employees, and employees of contractors.

District 64’s employee ethics and code of professional conduct policy, Board Policy 5:120, was updated to comply with Faith’s Law.