When schools can’t fund prevention, taxpayers fund crisis.
This episode makes the fiscal case for dedicated Illinois investment in RSSI — a statewide resilience framework already working in schools.

What does it actually cost Illinois when schools don’t have the tools to respond to trauma early?

In this inaugural episode of The Springfield Signal, special education teacher Beth Lindgren and family liaison Miguel Sandoval make the fiscal case for dedicated state funding for RSSI — the Resilience-Supportive Schools Illinois framework developed by the Center for Childhood Resilience and endorsed by ISBE.

Drawing from decades of classroom experience, Beth explains how the price of inaction shows up elsewhere: juvenile detention, residential placements, emergency psychiatric holds, and educator burnout. Miguel shares how schools serving families under intense stress — from immigration uncertainty to poverty — have long relied on discipline because prevention infrastructure wasn’t funded.

RSSI offers a different path:
• A brief, voluntary school screener
• A personalized resilience snapshot
• Evidence-based tools across four pillars
• A framework already operating statewide

The missing piece? Stable state investment — particularly coaching support that turns data into daily practice.

Illinois built RSSI. The evidence exists. Schools are using it.

The question for Springfield is simple: do we fund what works, or keep paying for what doesn’t?

Produced by The Signal Lab using AI-generated voices. All content is human-written, fact-checked against CCR and ISBE materials, and reviewed by CCR’s communications team. Personas are fictional characters representing authentic professional perspectives.