In This Issue:  | | • | 40 YEARS OF CHANGE IN LOS ANGELES UNIFIED: Behind student success, a school librarian | | | • | LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS BUDGET WOES HIT ARTS PROGRAMS HARD | | | • | THE PROP 98 DISAPPEARING ACT: Vetoed budget contained an end-run around funding law | | | • | WASSERMAN FOUNDATION DONATES $1 MILLION TO L.A. UNIFIED | | | • | HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources | | | • | EVENTS: Coming up next week... | | | • | What can YOU do? | |
Featured Links: | | | | ON TUESDAY THE BOARD OF ED THREW OUT CHOCOLATE MILK, ELEMENTARY-AND-MIDDLE-SCHOOL LIBRARIES AND PARENT INVOLVEMENT IN LAUSD.
The chocolate milk issue – and the Gates-financed National Council on Teacher Quality study provided cover for the wrongdoing.
●see HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED WITH THE BROAD VIRUS [http://bit.ly/BroadVirus]: #17: A (self-anointed, politically connected) group called NCTQ comes to town a few months before your teachers’ contract is up for negotiation and writes a Mad Libs evaluation of your districts’ teachers (for about $14,000) that reaches the predetermined conclusion that teachers are lazy and need merit pay. ["The (NAME OF CITY) School District has too many (NEGATIVE ADJ) teachers. Therefore they need a new (POSITIVE ADJ.) data-based evaluation system tied to test scores…”
More column-inches and media-minutes were filled with blather about sweetened milk and kvelling about over the bought-and-paid-for NCTQ study that hardly anyone noticed that libraries and librarians; students and parents were thrown under the bus.
SO CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL #9, the High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, will be named for former Superintendent Cortines – no matter what the board and school district's policies say – and no matter what the parents and school community at HS#9 would like. #9 IS a pilot school – with increased local autonomy
●see HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED WITH THE BROAD VIRUS: [http://bit.ly/BroadVirus]
#6. Power is centralized.
#7. Decision-making is top down.
#8. Local autonomy of schools is taken away.
#9. Principals are treated like pawns by the superintendent, relocated, rewarded and punished at will.
#10 Culture of fear of reprisal develops in which teachers, principals, staff, even parents feel afraid to speak up against the policies of the district or the superintendent.
#32 Your school board starts to show signs of Stockholm Syndrome. They vote in lockstep with the superintendent. Apparently lobotomized by periodic “school board retreat/Broad training” sessions headed by someone from Broad, your school board stops listening to parents and starts to treat them as the enemy.
THE LIBRARY/LIBRARIAN ISSUE is – to oversimplify it with Beaudry’s own no-excuse excuse: Complicated. High School Librarians are represented by UTLA, Middle and Elementary School Librarians (aka Library Aides) are represented by CSEA. LAUSD has settled with UTLA, not with CSEA. Divide+conquer.
[Incidentally: LAUSD is currently hiring Library Aides – who: “As a paraprofessional who provides instructional assistance to students, a Library Aide performs a pivotal role in the operation of
Elementary, Middle, and Senior High Schools by providing assistance to students and teachers in a school library.” details: http://bit.ly/j8WkgI] Pivotal.
When presented with thousands of letters from children asking their libraries be preserved the superintendent bristled: “I better not learn those were written on instructional time.”
It's Civics Education Dr. Deasy. The teachable moment: The First Amendment and petition for redress of grievances.
Superintendent Deasy says he is open to further negotiations with CSEA – but his principal negotiator walked out of talks twice in a recent session. The offer on the table is something like this: The elementary and middle school librarians are being asked to take a reduction in salary and hours worked that amounts to 67%. And for many – a total loss in benefits. Teachers and students work six-hour-days in the classroom (plus planning time and homework); Librarians are being offered three-hour-days. And AFTER THAT factor in furlough days and the reduced instructional calendar. This is institutionalized under-employment.
I am making no pretense that I am an impartial observer, I am not neutral. I am for children in the library served, supervised and taught by professional staff.
● There is no more important classroom in the school than the library.
● A library without a librarian is a book room.
Libraries are the most technologically evolving classrooms in a school, but eliminating their staffing is not innovation – it's educational mayhem.
Libraries over the millennia have evolved – from scrolls to bound books, from hand copies to printed, from handset type to Linotype to photocompositors, from letterpress to offset to digital media, the computer to the cloud. The constant is human factor: The reader and the librarian. Not a gatekeeper but a guide.
I am reading a Harvard graduate theis about innovating school design in Los Angeles – I am anxious to share a case study on library redesign for the future for Van Nuys High School. No futurist projects school libraries – no matter how electronic, virtual or technology driven – without Teacher-Librarians. And nowhere is the human interface more critical than in K-8.
Read Hector Tobar's excellent valedictory to the retiring Narbonne High School librarian below.
IN OTHER NEWS:
● The Supreme Court acknowledged that children have Miranda Rights too.
● Mayor Emanuel in Chicago announced that all the schools (which he runs) will have a five year performance contract. Maybe we can get that for the schools our mayor runs.
● The California legislature passed a smoke-and-mirrors 'balanced' budget.
● The governor promptly vetoed it.
● The state controller disputes whether it was balanced anyway.
● Superintendent Deasy congratulated the governor on his courage.
● The President – who has tried to solve social justice over beers in the Rose Garden and Public Education over hoops, will work on The War Powers Act and The Debt Ceiling over a round of golf.
It's complicated.
Happy Fathers Day. ¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
40 YEARS OF CHANGE IN LOS ANGELES UNIFIED: Behind student success, a school librarian
DURING HER TENURE IN THE DISTRICT, ROXANNA ROSS HAS EXPERIENCED THE RELATIVE ABUNDANCE AND OPTIMISM OF THE EARLY 1960S TO THE AUSTERITY AND LAYOFFS OF TODAY.
By Hector Tobar - LA Times columnist | http://lat.ms/mJ5Al5
June 17, 2011- She is the daughter of Scottish immigrants, tough people whose travels across the Atlantic first took them to the austere East Coast whaling and fishing hamlets. There is a shipwreck in her family history. A relative was lost at sea.
But it was on the dry land of Southern California that Roxanna Ross' life took root. Not long after arriving as a teenager, she enrolled at a high school built on a drained swamp to serve a community then known as "the celery capital of the world."
Most of the old farms in Lomita and Harbor City are gone. But Narbonne High is still there. "The trees are bigger," Ross told me, but much of the campus looks the same.
Ross graduated from Narbonne in 1963. Next week she'll retire from Narbonne, stepping down as the school's librarian after a 40-year career as an educator with the Los Angeles Unified School District.
From the relative abundance and optimism of the early 1960s to the austerity and layoffs of today, Ross has been on a sometimes bumpy, often wonderful ride through California's public education system.
She began her studies at what was then Long Beach State College three years after the California Legislature adopted a master plan to open up higher education to working families. Ross, the daughter of a Navy butcher, eventually got a graduate degree at the university.
"If we hadn't moved to California, I probably wouldn't be where I am today," she told me as we sat in the Narbonne school library, surrounded by books, many of which she purchased in more abundant times.
Ross made a career trying to give other sons and daughters of the working class the same sort of opportunities she had. First she worked in the classroom, then in the library.
When I asked her how the schools have changed in 40 years, budget cuts weren't her starting point.
"Parents are incredibly stressed out," Ross said. "Everything is so expensive. They struggle just to keep up, let alone get ahead."
Over the years, Narbonne High offered many different people an avenue to social mobility. But the rollbacks of the last few years are yet another blow, she says, in a generalized assault on middle-class life.
When Ross started teaching, most of her students still had stay-at-home moms. These days, it's usually two parents working long hours to pay car and health insurance bills that are bigger than mortgages used to be.
"I feel great despair when I think of what my money can do today and what it used to be able to do," Ross told me.
Harbor City is one of those places that's not in the news much but is, in its own way, at the center of things. It sits, both geographically and metaphorically, roughly halfway between the heights of Palos Verdes and the flatlands of Compton.
"This campus has always been very diverse," Ross said. Back in the early '60s, it had white, black, Asian and Latino students. Over the years, it's stayed diverse. "I've had students who lived in their cars and students who lived in Rancho Palos Verdes," Ross told me.
Ross has lived much of her life in the Harbor City-Lomita area.
Back when she started, working people there paid their taxes and in return they got a school system that offered their kids a world of learning — French, Latin, art, drivers ed.
More parents could afford to donate either time or money to the school. For those kids not destined to go on in academia, there were excellent classes in such practical subjects as culinary education. Over the years, Ross said, Narbonne sent many graduates to the nation's best culinary schools.
That was then.
At Narbonne, as at countless other public schools, drivers ed was done away with long ago. "So our parents have to spend hundreds of dollars on private driving schools," Ross said. The money the school's parents association used to donate to the library is gone too. Among other things, it's being used to keep the athletic programs going.
Electives — art and music — are being cut. The culinary program will disappear next year.
Beyond all that, there's less respect for the teaching profession than ever before. When Ross first started, teaching drew people with a fiercely independent streak. "You could be creative. It was fun," she remembered. Now we treat our teachers like bureaucrats, quantifying their performance.
"State standards don't take into account that intuitive experience that a teacher has with a student," Ross told me. "It's not that the standards aren't credible or valuable. But it's all so cut and dried, black and white."
When Ross completes her last day June 24, she will leave a legacy of a library filled with computers and excellent reference books, including a complete 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary.
Some things haven't changed, she told me. Students still come in asking about Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the schools' most popular books. But other parts of the job are recent arrivals.
"Ms. Ross. How do I check this disc for viruses?"
"Just a minute. I'll show you."
Ross, white-haired and 65, gives a teenager a basic computer lesson.
She's also taught almost the entire student body how to use the school district's new digital library.
"It's one of the best things the district has done for school libraries," she told me as we scrolled through its databases. "I hope and pray the district doesn't do away with it."
She wants to think that, after she leaves, students will still have it to research questions on any subject that enters their minds — AIDS, the Civil War, American literature.
But in these days of illogical and cruel slicing and dicing, no one can know that for certain.
LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS BUDGET WOES HIT ARTS PROGRAMS HARD
AS LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS ARTS TEACHERS MINGLED DURING A BENEFIT FOR THEIR PROGRAMS, SOME TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT THE PRELIMINARY LAYOFF NOTICES THEY'D GOTTEN.
By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/mKgFlR
June 13, 2011 - Debra Engle went to a celebration of the city school district's arts program with a dark cloud hanging over her head.
Like almost 7,000 other school district employees, Engle had received a preliminary layoff notice earlier this year and could lose her job by midsummer. For the last several years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has faced large budget shortfalls and the school board has approved cutting positions and programs to try to balance the budget.
The nation's second-largest school system is facing an estimated $408-million shortfall, and many unions have agreed to their members' taking four unpaid days off. But, depending on the state's budget, district officials could still approve cutting jobs over the summer.
"The amount of stress that it brings is horrible," said Engle, as musicians played and guests sipped coffee and ate finger food in the courtyard of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex during Saturday night's benefit event.
Almost no academic program has been spared, but Los Angeles Unified's arts program has been particularly hard hit. In 2008, there were 335 full-time elementary arts teachers. This year, after state and federal funding dried up, there are about 250, according to district officials. The district and state have also allocated less funding to the arts.
Many teachers say they have to travel to more schools, spending as little as one day a week at each campus.
"It doesn't give you the chance to build much sustainability," said Ginger Rose Fox, who teaches at 10 schools in the San Pedro area. Last year, she worked at seven.
Others said it was sometimes difficult to scrounge up enough materials for class.
"I've had to beg principals to allocate money for one ream of white drawing paper," said Michael Blasi, who teaches at nine campuses in South Los Angeles.
Many who attended the benefit, which included a silent auction and student performances, said they were concerned that scores of campuses are not offering a full slate of arts programs. This year students at the City of Angels Bellevue campus could take instrumental music, visual arts and dance. Instructors who taught those classes have received preliminary layoff notices, and some worry that those programs could be cut back in the future.
"Not all kids want to do theater. We have a lot of kids who are shy and don't want to be singing," said Katy Hickman, a theater teacher at the campus. "You need a critical mass of colleagues to offer a robust program."
Because layoffs are based on length of service, many teachers said they were trying not to spend too much time thinking about when they were hired to calculate their odds of keeping their jobs — the less seniority they have, the more vulnerable they are.
"I don't know where I am" on the layoff list, said Blasi, who has received layoff notices two years in a row but so far has managed to avoid losing his position. "I'm afraid to ask."
THE PROP 98 DISAPPEARING ACT: Vetoed budget contained an end-run around funding law
By Kathryn Baron | Thoughts on Public Education/TOP-Ed | http://bit.ly/klIkpO
Posted on 6/17/11 - When Gov. Brown vetoed the budget yesterday, he also halted one of the “legally questionable maneuvers” referred to in his veto message, in which legislators attempted to ignore the constitutional funding requirements of Proposition 98. Analysts at the education consulting firm School Services of California said they were reviewing the numbers in the budget bill when they noticed something was missing from the Prop 98 guarantee – more $1 billion.
In a video conversation and an article for their clients, Vice President Robert Miyashiro and Associate Vice President Michael Ricketts describe how the Legislature essentially suspended Proposition 98 without the constitutionally mandated two-thirds vote.
The governor’s May revise assumed that the Legislature would extend temporary taxes, bringing in about $4 billion for the next fiscal year. Without that revenue, the Proposition 98 portion owed to the schools would drop by about $1.6 billion. “Any greater reduction in Proposition 98 funding for schools, whether through cuts or deferrals, would require a suspension of the guarantee,” requiring Democratic and Republican votes to reach the two-thirds threshold for suspension, they write in their article. To balance the budget, the Democrats proposed deferring $2.85 billion, an additional $1 billion.
Like the best of illusions, this one appeared to fund K-12 education without any new cuts, at about $50.4 billion. At the same time, however, legislators raised the amount deferred into the 2012-13 school year by nearly $3 billion, about a billion more than the governor first proposed.
“We think this is a very troubling precedent,” Miyashiro said in the video. In the 23 years since voters approved Prop 98, it has been suspended twice, he noted, “but never has the legislature simply ignored the two-thirds vote requirement for suspension and underfunded the guarantee.”
How can they do this?
Apparently, it’s not difficult. “The legislature can actually do anything they want until they’re challenged,” explained Ricketts with a wry laugh. If the budget hadn’t been vetoed, and this provision was allowed to stand, he said it could have rendered Proposition 98 meaningless “for purposes of establishing a base for funding for education because the legislature year-to-year could fund it any level it wanted to just with a simple majority vote.”
Gov. no girly-man
The veto also gave Gov. Brown a little more street cred with educators. Talk around the hall lockers is that he exhibited more muscle yesterday in taking on his party and the Republicans than his predecessor Gov. Mr. Universe ever showed.
“I think it was a very strong leadership move for the governor,” said Mike Hanson, superintendent of Fresno Unified School District. ”He’s laying out the rules of the game; it’s got to be a budget that will work.”
Like many superintendents, Hanson has had to make years of painful cuts and is hopeful that the governor’s firm stand will force a reengagement that brings both political parties back to the table to develop a “permanent and attainable” solution. Fresno Unified will have 522 fewer teachers next year, and several hundred fewer classified staff, and the district is actually in better shape than most because it has a 7 percent reserve – which they’ll soon be drawing down.
“If the governor were to fold and to sign the budget, his political future in the state would just be in the toilet,” said Bob Blattner of Blattner & Associates, an education consulting firm based in Sacramento. “It would be another four years of Schwarzenegger with a smaller collar size.”
Blattner said his clients were terrified that the budget approved on Tuesday would have led to mid-year budget cuts because so many of the savings and revenues were based on shaky assumptions. He said the governor’s action gave them hope for a structural change that would give them a sustainable and predictable budget solution. He said that by standing up against the status quo of legislative inaction, Brown showed that there’s an adult at the wheel who knows where the state should be going.
WASSERMAN FOUNDATION DONATES $1 MILLION TO L.A. UNIFIED
THE PRIVATE FOUNDATION'S CONTRIBUTION WILL FUND FOUR PROGRAMS AND UP TO FIVE POSITIONS FOR THE SCHOOL DISTRICT, WHICH HAS BEEN BATTLING MULTIMILLION DOLLAR SHORTAGES FOR SEVERAL YEARS.
By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/jDiVYV
June 18, 2011 - A private foundation has donated $1 million to the city school district to help pay for several academic programs and new positions, officials said Friday.
The Wasserman Foundation, headed by entertainment/sports entrepreneur Casey Wasserman, has donated more than $4.3 million to the district since 2009. It now pays for about 10 positions in the district.
Numerous philanthropic groups, including the Gates and Walton foundations, and billionaire Eli Broad have made donations to the district to help pay the salaries of mostly senior district officials. The donors have strong ties to charter schools.
●see HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED WITH THE BROAD VIRUS [http://bit.ly/BroadVirus]:
#37 - Grants appear from the Broad and Gates foundations in support of the superintendent, and her/his “Strategic Plan.”
#38 - The Gates Foundation gives your district grants for technical things related to STEM and/or teacher “effectiveness” or studies on charter schools.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest, has struggled to deal with multimillion-dollar shortfalls for the last several years.
The Wasserman donation will help fund four programs and up to five positions, including those overseeing a new school budgeting effort and an administrative job, to ensure that campuses turned over to groups inside and outside L.A. Unified under the Public School Choice program are meeting their stated goals, according to school district officials.
"We must take advantage of this unique moment in time — the confluence of an energetic new Los Angeles superintendent and a national willingness to move our public education system into the 21st century," Wasserman said in a statement.
Supt. John Deasy, who took over in April, has said that the district needs to encourage outside donations but that although he welcomes the support, he and the school board must set the district agenda.
"I call on a new generation of leaders and philanthropists … to join us in our effort to engage all Californians in the education of our children," Deasy said in a statement.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
Parent Involvement: L.A. UNIFIED TO SPEND $20 MILLION ON PARENT CENTERS: by Howard Blume – LA Times/LA Now | htt... http://bit.ly/lF3hN8
Parent Involvement: SAN JOSE SCHOOL PARENTS SAY BIGGER, NOT BETTER, IS A BAD PLAN FOR PARENT VOLUNTEER PROGRAM: By Sharon Noguchi | ... http://bit.ly/jrWbfu
AUTHORITIES WARN SCHOOLS ABOUT MISHANDLING CONSTRUCTION BONDS: By Corey G. Johnson/California Watch | http://bit... http://bit.ly/jw3E18
JOBS AND SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT: Themes in the News for the week of June 13-17, 2011 by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/lu... http://bit.ly/mfHWEj
House GOP Seeks to Bolster Charters in ESEA/NCLB Rewrite measure introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-CA. bl http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/06/house_gop_seeks_to_bolster_cha.html
A MONTH IN NEW JOB, CHICAGO MAYOR EMANUEL IS HAVING AN IMPACT + CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS BOARD RESCINDS TEACHER RA... http://bit.ly/m5e65e
CHOCOLATE MILK vs. OJ: LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/mEKW3X LAUSD is right to ban chocolate and other flav... http://bit.ly/iquU33
By the numbers: HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED BY THE BROAD VIRUS: by Sue Peters, a parent in S... http://bit.ly/igw1Io
Mayor Tony: TEACHER QUALITY MUST BE JOB 1 OF EDUCATION REFORM IN L.A. …+smf’s 2¢: A study released last week by... http://bit.ly/iAJqvc
●see HOW TO TELL IF YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS INFECTED WITH THE BROAD VIRUS [http://bit.ly/BroadVirus]: RX#5: Vote your mayor out of office if s/he is complicit.
LEGISLATURE APPROVES MAJORITY BUDGET PLAN AHEAD OF DEADLINE!: Wed, Jun 15, 2011 5:25 pm - The state Legislature ... http://bit.ly/lfAqyF
SCHOOL LIBRARIANS GET THE THIRD DEGREE: by Gena Haskett / BlogHer Original Post | http://bit.ly/lrVaGl June ... http://bit.ly/kKRfxF
THE LAUSD BOARD MEETING: Chocolate Milk, Elementary + Middle School Librarians and Parental Input are Out.: stor... http://bit.ly/jCxUBZ
An Open Letter to Los Angeles Parents, Students & Teachers – THE LAUSD COMPANY LINE: SMOKE, MIRRORS & LIES: by C... http://bit.ly/ig6xby
WE NEED TO FIX THE ECONOMY TO FIX EDUCATION: Diane Ravitch's position gains support from a new study that sugges... http://bit.ly/iC7hZx
A SPEECH FROM ARNE DUNCAN WE’D LIKE TO HEAR: by John Merrow from the LEARNING Matters blog | http://bit.ly/kGDl... http://bit.ly/ip8pIp
The Mayor’s Partnership: SUCCESSFUL SCHOOL WILL SOON CLOSE: LOS ANGELES TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL IS ALL IT SHOULD B... http://bit.ly/lP4WXo
A Little Light Reading: DISRUPTING DISRUPTION - How the language of disruptive innovation theory and the“tools o... http://bit.ly/lj1YIJ
Hell Freezes Over! L.A.Times Editorial Board, Justice Antonin Scalia + smf agree: A VICTORY IN THE SUPREME COUR... http://bit.ly/mrG0Q9
HS#9: FORMER LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT RAMON CORTINES RELUCTLANT TO ACCEPT NAMING HONOR: Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC |... http://bit.ly/mvprA4
A PARENT GUIDE TO THE BROAD FOUNDATION’S PROGRAMS AND EDUCATION POLICIES: from Parents Across America / http://p... http://bit.ly/mutgvY
NCTQ Study: L.A.UNIFIED; A REPORT CARD - A review by the National Council on Teacher Quality highlights some of ... http://bit.ly/lvQBd3
NCTQ Study: CONCERNS ARISE OVER LAUSD’s ‘SALARY CREDIT’ SYSTEM - Teachers get $519M for furthering training; som... http://bit.ly/iqZGw9
Other Voices: CALIFORNIA TEACHERS’ UNIONS COLLABORATE WITH STATE OFFICIALS TO IMPOSE CUTS: By Allison Smith and ... http://bit.ly/kphxxJ
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • Find your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Brown: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!.
|
