In This Issue:
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School SmARTS: PTA PROGRAM CREATES PARENT ADVOCATES |
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The Budget Process - Two Reports from the Budget, Facilities & Audit Committee: ARE ARTS AND REPAIRS BEING SHORTCHANGED? |
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John Marshall High School: ACADEMIC DECATHLON PUTS THE WORK IN TEAMWORK |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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EVENTS: Coming up next week... |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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With apologies, this edition of 4LAKids is a bit thin.
I spent the past few days at a quarterly California State PTA board
meeting in Sacramento – filled with excellent content, conversation,
thinking and action items. We are focused on children – with the
subjects being the Local Control Funding Formula/Accountability Plan,
Parent, Family and Community engagement, Early Childhood Ed, The Common
Core and Smarter Balanced Testing, Children’s Healthcare and all the
rest. The subject is 9 million California kids.
Parents are engaged and seizing the opportunity up+down the state. We
cannot allow the not-so-fast/use the new money to pay last year’s
deficit / “iPads will solve the problem” thinkers in LAUSD to blow the
opportunity here in this District. The time for “The fierce urgency of
now” is Now!
Read the EdSource piece following about School SmARTS, a PTA initiative
to reinvest in parent education, increase parent participation in their
children’s education and uses the arts to do the job. PTA didn’t come
up with School SmARTS because of the LCFF – but the LCFF/LCAP revolution
offers an opportunity to take the ongoing successful research-based
program to scale. School SmARTS isn’t good thinking because it’s a PTA
idea any more than Universal Free Kindergarten or Child Labor Laws or
the School Lunch Program and Universal Polio Immunization in schools
were good ideas because they were PTA ideas. Good Ideas stand on their
own.
My participation in the PTA conversation in Sacramento was compromised
by a family tragedy – at once unexpected+inevitable. Crises like comedy
are more about timing than the story itself. Sometime when history
repeats itself it is neither tragedy nor farce; it is déjà vu all over
again.
My wife’s mother slips away. For the most part we live long lives;
Valerie certainly did. We cling to our lives tenaciously …at our best
we are vital. And every one of us is mortal. I call my daughter to tell
her the unhappy news …a devastating job and we are both devastated. A
door closes. A window opens. Mortality+immortality are the two apparent
sides of the möbius strip as the circle closes and the sides are joined.
As I sit in small room spreading bad news and making funeral
arrangements a PTA brother enters rejoicing in the birth of a niece.
And so it is. Godspeed to the dearly departed and recently arrived.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
School SmARTS: PTA PROGRAM CREATES PARENT ADVOCATES
By Susan Frey | EdSource Today http://bit.ly/1cEFigj
February 19th, 2014 | With 117 years of promoting parent involvement
under its collective belt, the PTA thinks it has the right formula for
training parents in their new watchdog role under California’s reformed
school finance and accountability system.
The PTA program, called School Smarts, is aimed at giving elementary
school parents the tools they need to advocate for their children and
their school. The program includes a seven-week series of night
meetings, held at school sites, that highlight the importance of parent
involvement for their children’s success; explain how the school system
works at the state, district and school level; and offer effective
strategies to use to advocate for change.
School Smarts is being piloted in 14 school districts and 50 schools
throughout California, including Sunshine Gardens Elementary in South
San Francisco.
On a recent Thursday evening at Sunshine Gardens, about two dozen
families gathered for dinner before the parents participated in the
second weekly School Smarts training session. The sessions last from
about 6:30 until 8 p.m. Child care is provided for the children in the
cafeteria, while their parents attend the session in a nearby classroom.
Parents who have graduated from the program came to dish out the
enchiladas, rice and beans and help the new parents – many new to the
country as well as California’s public school system – get acclimated.
The graduates said the program has been transformative.
Erica Sanchez Vallejo, who graduated from the program three years ago,
is from Mexico. “Over there parents do not get involved in education,”
she said. “Here the focus is on educating the parents and being involved
with your child even if you don’t know English. I want to see my
daughter go all the way to college and graduate. This is what this
program has taught me.”
Isela Ramirez said she has become more involved with her children since
graduating from the program, expanding their learning beyond the normal
school day.
“I read to them daily,” she said. “They’re involved in sports. I take
them to the library. I do arts and crafts with them. I keep them
engaged.”
She also attends more school functions, including school board meetings,
and has become vice president of the campus PTA. “I feel like I have a
voice,” she said.
Ryan Wibawa – who came with his family, including his now 10-year-old
son Vincent, to the United States two years ago from Indonesia – was
attending his second session of the program. An engineer, Wibawa said he
is eager to learn more about the school system and hopes to be involved
in making decisions about the use of technology. He too notes a
difference between the education system in his home country and here.
“In Indonesia, they are focused on test scores,” he said. “Children know
what to do, but they don’t know why they need to do it. Here children
are encouraged to be creative.”
“I like it here better,” piped up Vincent.
Colleen You, president of the statewide PTA, said that the School Smarts
curriculum is based on research on how to involve parents, and was
positively evaluated after its first year in 2010-11 by SRI
International. The researchers found that the vast majority of parents
felt much better informed about how to support their children at home
and at school after the program than they had before. They also
expressed a much greater willingness to become involved in various
school committees and said they better understood how to make changes at
their school.
Each year, the School Smarts curriculum is revised, You said. This year,
session 3 is about the state’s Local Control and Accountability Plan,
which requires districts to include parents in deciding how funds should
be spent to improve student achievement.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is funding the pilot program at
no cost to schools. But Alameda Unified was so impressed with the pilot
that it decided to make it a district program, this year allocating
$5,000 for each of its 10 elementary schools. The funds cover child
care, interpreters, materials, a light dinner and a stipend for a
coordinator.
Often graduates of the program teach the classes.
“Those graduates can empathize with the struggles of the new parents,”
said Barbara Adams, assistant superintendent at Alameda Unified.
Adams said that School Smarts graduates are participating at all levels
in her district: school site councils, English learner advisory
committees and the new Local Control and Accountability Committee.
School Smarts gives parents an opportunity to “build their
self-confidence, know that their advocacy for their child is important,
and learn how to advocate in ways that result in the action they are
hoping to achieve,” she said.
Creativity is also part of the lesson plan in School Smarts, which
includes an art project in most of the sessions. Part of the program’s
goal is to turn parents into advocates for including arts in the
curriculum.
On this Thursday, Sunshine Gardens parents gathered in the 5th grade
classroom of teacher Michelle Carabes, who leads the PTA training
sessions. Her room is an advertisement for how to use art to make other
subjects, such as math, come alive.
Not an inch of wall space is spared, as children’s colorful projects
dominate the room, even hanging in the air from clotheslines. One
clothesline holds a series of flowers called “Blooming Facts,” a project
in which students assign numbers to the letters in their first name
(A=1; B=2, etc.), then add up the numbers to determine whether their
“name” is a prime number or a composite. Students show how many factors
are in their name’s number by drawing petals for each factor on the
flowers they have created.
The parents’ project that Thursday – to make paper masks that represent
their child – also gives them a chance to get to know each other.
Parents from different cultures and economic backgrounds sit on short,
kid-sized chairs around tables, exchanging ideas, materials and
laughter.
After completing their masks, one parent from each table held up a mask and explained it.
Lidia Munoz, who has a 5th grade daughter at Sunshine Gardens, chose to
depict her 17-year-old son, Joel. Joel is focused on math, particularly
the issue of infinity. She made the pupils in the mask’s eyes the
mathematical sign of pi, an infinite number.
Kimberly Abalos held up a pink mask with a tiara representing her
daughter, Ruthie, 7, who loves books, dance and fantasy. “I gave her
only one ear,” Abalos quipped, “because she halfway listens to me.”
Wibawa’s mask of the quick-to-comment Vincent had an exclamation mark in the mouth.
The art element is a favorite among parents. “I reconnected with the
artist in me after so many years,” said Marivic Quiba, a graduate of the
program.
Quiba summed up what she learned from School Smarts in a speech at a
Parent Engagement Night meeting at Sunshine Gardens, held to encourage
parents to sign up for the training program.
The program has showed her that “learning begins at home, then at
school, then back home – it’s just a cycle,” she said. “It’s taught me
how to get involved, to understand the school system, to know your
child’s progress and what they’re learning.”
School Smarts has also taught her “to be visible,” she said, “to speak
up for the children to ensure they receive the education they so richly
deserve.”
●●smf’s 2¢: This is a successful research-based program that works –
involving parents in their children’s education and in the life of their
school.
• School Smarts is not expensive, but it is not free.
• It can work here in LAUSD.
• It’s the kind of parent engagement/involvement/participation thing
that NCLB and the Local Control Funding Formula had in mind – it can be
legitimately paid-for using LCFF funds .
• School Smarts produces results in all populations including children of poverty, English Language Learners and Foster Youth.
• You don’t need a PTA at your school to get School Smarts – just like
you didn’t need a PTA to have Universal Free K or Child Labor Laws or
the School Lunch Program or Polio Vaccinations or Seat Belt Laws or any
of the other programs that PTA has promoted and advocated for.
Follow the link below or contact me if you want further info about School Smarts at your school.
The Budget Process - Two Reports from the Budget,
Facilities & Audit Committee: ARE ARTS AND REPAIRS BEING
SHORTCHANGED?
►LA UNIFIED ARTS BUDGET: MOST FUNDS WILL GO TO 'ARTS INTEGRATION' TEACHERS, NOT CLASSROOM TEACHERS
Mary Plummer | KPCC Paas/ Fail | http://bitly.com/1hfgTPt
February 21st, 2014, 5:00am :: The Los Angeles Unified School District
plans to increase spending on arts instruction by nearly $16 million
over the next three years – but the majority of the new money will go to
hire 101 “arts integration” teachers, trainers that will show classroom
teachers how to integrate arts into academic lessons, officials said
Thursday.
During the same period, the district plans to add 44 new dedicated
traveling elementary arts instructors, bringing the total number of
dance, choral, music, theater and visual arts elementary teachers to
220. There are about 450 elementary schools in the district.
The figures are from a draft arts education budget school district
officials distributed in a Powerpoint presentation to the school board's
budget committee Thursday. They did not distribute the document to the
public or publish it on the district's website.
School board member Steve Zimmer asked why the new budget reflects a
“dramatic increase" in arts integration and a much smaller increase in
other areas of arts education when the school board in 2012 directed
officials to make arts a core subject.
“The 'arts at the core' resolution signaled the board’s belief that
access to arts education in robust and meaningful ways is an
instructional priority of the board of education,” Zimmer said. “If it
is not an instructional priority of the administration, we need to have
that conversation.”
An administrator at the district replied that the district is focusing
on arts integration because it's a more cost effective way to serve the
district's students.
“It is our belief that ultimately in the arts integration approach it
would be actually less expensive to do that that way,” said Gerardo
Loera, executive director of the district’s Office of Curriculum and
Instruction.
School board member Monica Ratliff said she was “fairly skeptical” of the district’s arts integration approach.
“I would be interested in finding out what research the district had done previously where it has been shown to work,” she said.
Loera said the district also plans to spread its 32 instrumental music
teachers to twice the number of schools next year. They'll serve 320
schools instead of 160 – or 10 schools a piece during the school year,
according to district numbers, in essence chopping their time at each
school from a full year to just one semester.
During the meeting, Zimmer also asked administrators for a deeper dive
into the equity issue of which students in the district have access to
the arts, something he brought up at last week’s school board meeting.
The budget document showed the district will spend $19,783,968 for arts
education in the current school year and plans to increase it gradually
to $35,500,389 in 2016-2017 school year.
Officials said they're not even sure they'll be able to increase the funds that much.
“All of this, of course, is dependent on the revenue actually becoming
available as well as what the board ultimately decides in terms of its
priorities,” said Loera, who led the district’s presentation to the
Budget, Facilities and Audit committee.
After the meeting, the district’s K-12 Arts Coordinator Steven McCarthy
said the district is heading in the right direction. He said he’ll
follow up on board members' questions about arts integration.
“What they gave us is a good start," said Sarah Bradshaw, school board
member Bennett Kayser's chief of staff. Kayser requested Thursday's
presentation at the budget committee, which he heads. "We’re going to
have to do some deep diving on it, check out the realities of it, and go
forward, but it’s still not enough.”
__________________________
►DESPITE $20 BILLION IN BOND FUNDS, LA SCHOOLS COMMITTEE UNCOVERS 50K BACKLOGGED REPAIR REQUESTS
Annie Gilbertson KPCC Pass / Fail | http://bitly.com/MRzIh9
February 20th, 2014, 5:26pm :: A Los Angeles Unified school board
committee on Thursday found a backlog of 50,000 neglected repairs at
campuses - a number that is only expected to grow. School district
officials said the budget for repairs has been slashed by more than 65%
since 2008.
Monica Ratliff, who joined the school board last year, said the public deserves to know why repairs are piling up.
“I believe it is a question people do want an answer to," Ratliff said.
"I haven’t been here long enough to be able to answer that question, but
if someone at some point could, I think that would be valuable.”
The text of the five bond measures passed by Los Angeles voters since
1999 totaling $20 billion all said the funds would go to, among other
things, fix crumbling campuses.
"Measure K will permit local schools to repair leaky roofs, unsanitary
bathrooms, and electrical wiring," read the arguments for the measure,
according to information compiled by the League of Women Voters.
"Everyone knows it is cheaper to upgrade and repair schools now, before
problems get worse."
Tom Rubin, a consultant for the committee that oversees bond funds, said
it's more common for bond funds to be used to replace a roof rather
than fix a leak.
But even those repairs aren't being done. Records show 38 of the high
schools surveyed are in critical need of new or repaired roofs. The
roofs of more than 50 schools are reported as being in poor condition.
Even life-cycle repairs such as roof or air-conditioner replacements
will inevitably exhaust available bond funds. Officials estimate those
repairs will run over $13 billion over the next fifteen years, much more
than the remaining bond funds.
The money is not coming from other usual pockets either. The state used
to earmark 3% of the district's funding for upkeep, but since California
moved to a flexible spending model, much of those funds have been
diverted to other uses.
This year, L.A. Unified's maintenance office set aside $99 million for
repairs, but officials estimate it will take closer to $400 million
every year.
Thursday's debate at the Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee was
ignited by Matthew Kogan, an L.A. Unified teacher who has gone public
with his criticism of the district's plan to spend $1.3 billion on an
iPad for every student and teacher when there are broken toilets and
sinks without piping in some schools and rat droppings are routinely
found on students desks in others.
Kogan started a facebook group called Repairs not iPads where teachers
are posting photos of neglected water fountains, ceilings and windows.
After KPCC reported on the group and other media followed, the school
board budget committee decided to take up the issue.
“It’s not just iPads versus maintenance: it’s everything versus iPads,"
Kogan said during Thursday's meeting. "What hasn’t been cut to the bone?
Early education, adult education, arts education!”
John Marshall High School: ACADEMIC DECATHLON PUTS THE WORK IN TEAMWORK
MARSHALL TEAM MEMBERS FORGE FRIENDSHIPS, GAIN
CONFIDENCE AND LEARN AS THEY TRAIN FOR THE STATEWIDE COMPETITION AFTER
WINNING THE L.A. UNIFIED CONTEST.
By Alicia Banks, LA Times | http://lat.ms/1cED2FT
February 22, 2014, 3:00 p.m. :: Kenneth Huh and his parents have the
same conversation over and over at the dinner table. They want to
discuss the John Marshall High School junior's medals in the speech and
interview portions of the Academic Decathlon earlier this month.
Kenneth, 16, suffers from hearing loss in both ears and the impairment
affects his speech as well. He has trouble pronouncing words beginning
with H, S and Z.
His parents, Kenneth said, are proud of him for those awards. "They
don't bring up my six other medals, like in art and math," he said,
smiling.
Winning the medals culminated in what he describes as "the best week of
my life." Before joining the decathlon team, he isolated himself. Those
who were nerdy or shy, or those with disabilities, he said, were his
only friends.
"Joining decathlon, I was the odd one out, but as I got to know [the
team members] more, I got included and felt better about myself,"
Kenneth said. "Now, one of my favorite things to do is say 'hi' to
random people in the hallway or outside."
Members of Marshall's nine-member decathlon team have learned about
themselves and one another, along with the 10 academic subjects they
needed to know for the grueling competition. This year, the Los Feliz
school beat out all other L.A. Unified campuses; Marshall will go on to
compete in Sacramento next month. The school placed first in the L.A.
Unified competition in 2010 and won the district's first national title
in 1995.
Aside from Kenneth, Marshall's team members are Aninda Bhowmick, Kimiyo
Bremer, Alexander Guillen, Ha Min Ko, John Lascano, Wen Lee, Alayna
Myrick and Marvin Paparisto. The team consists of A, B and C students.
The coach is Larry Welch.
Granada Hills Charter, which placed second in the L.A. Unified
competition and has won three consecutive national titles, will also
compete at state. One of Granada's coaches, Mathew Arnold, said team
morale remains high.
"The school has done a great job of supporting the team, nurturing it
and helping it grow," Arnold said. "It's part of the school culture."
At Marshall, study sessions start at 2 p.m. and are held six hours a
day, six days a week. Students zip between rooms on the school's third
floor and receive help from teachers and former team members Amy Tan,
who is a co-coach in math, and Stanford University freshman Kevin
Martinez, who specializes in economics.
Speech and interview practice start at 3:30 p.m. The boys slip into
pressed blazers. To warm up, some read Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also
Rises" with a cork between their teeth. The team's only girls, Kimiyo
and Alayna, change into high heels over their mismatched socks. Alayna
practiced her speech about family and baseball; her gaze never veered
from the lockers a few feet away.
She joined the team after shattering her ankle playing softball. She wanted to feel part of a group again.
Alexander has a different story. He stopped attending decathlon
practices last summer to continue playing varsity football. But he came
around after his mother and Welch implored him to return to the
decathlon team.
He said participating in decathlon eased his mother's fears that
Alexander would drop out of school, as his brother did a few years ago.
He won nine medals at the competition, five of them gold.
"My brother told me 'You're going places.' It was the proudest look I've
ever seen on his face," Alexander said. "To have that from my mother
and brother was the greatest satisfaction I could have. I thanked Mr.
Welch for that after the city win."
On a recent evening, the team discussed a practice economics exam. One question stumped the students — except Kimiyo.
"Yes! I got it. Do you want me to explain it?" she asked excitedly, as the group broke into laughter.
She said she joined the team as a way to challenge herself and as a way
to thank her mother, a single parent, for working hard to support her.
Aninda joined decathlon after a trip to Bangladesh a few years ago. He
saw throngs of children begging for taka, the country's currency, and he
met a boy of about 13 who quit school to work in a car repair shop to
support his family.
"It changed me and motivated me to use my time and the opportunities I
had for myself," Aninda said. "Their lives aren't great and yet, I have a
decently pretty good life. I was wasting it."
He started as a C student his first year and moved up to the B group.
His parents were suspicious, wondering if Aninda truly was attending
decathlon sessions — until his report card showed six A's and two Bs.
His father cried.
Aninda didn't do it alone.
"Whenever someone has a problem or [is] feeling down, everyone gathers
to help them out with a little intervention, if you will," Aninda said.
"I had trouble with confidence before decathlon, but now I know I can do
anything."
The group ended the recent study session by testing one another's
strength with push-ups. On Valentine's Day, they played air hockey,
activities that Welch sprinkles throughout the study sessions to keep
the atmosphere fun.
Some students call him the father of the group. It fits — especially because Welch doesn't have children.
Welch worked with Kenneth on his pronunciation and articulation three
months before the competition. Kenneth won a gold medal in speech and a
silver medal in interview.
"The work that Mr. Welch does for us is insane," Alexander said, noting
that the coach spent two years trying to convince him to try decathlon.
"I've never seen someone dedicate themselves the way that he deals with
us. Props to him."
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
LOS ANGELES UNIFIED PARENTS, TEACHERS CRITICIZE iPAD
ROLLOUT, CALL FOR SCHOOL REPAIRS: By Dakota Smith, Los An... http://bit.ly/1e7XeRG
School SmARTS: PTA PROGRAM CREATES PARENT ADVOCATES: By Susan Frey | EdSource Today http://bit.ly/1moAqyX
John Marshall High School: ACADEMIC DECATHLON PUTS THE WORK IN TEAMWORK: Marshall team members forge friendshi... http://bit.ly/1jr2eBG
HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER ARRESTED FOR ALLEGED SEXUAL ASSAULTS THAT OCCURRED IN 1999 AT FRANKLIN HIGH SCHOOL | http://bit.ly/1pdZcnD
Ripped from the pages of the supermarket tabloids: MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN’S DEATH INSPIRED REALITY STAR OMAROSA... http://bit.ly/1gHsAPp
PEARSON FOR PROFIT: You Do the Math: by Alan Singer from the Huffington Post | http://bit.ly/1bm8BpD
INDEPENDENT STUDY: Gov. Brown’s new online learning target: by Tom Chorneau, SI&A Cabinet Report | http://bit.ly/1oSC0v6
Sylvia Rousseau: L.A. UNIFIED NAMES CARETAKER FOR VACANT BOARD SEAT IN SECRET SESSION + more ... http://bit.ly/1jHnYZy
13 CANDIDATES FILE FOR BOARD DISTRICT 1 ELECTION: from CITY OF LOS ANGELES CLERK - ELECTION DIVISION by Order... http://bit.ly/1oS13hQ
Weigh in: NEW NATIONAL ARTS EDUCATION STANDARDS ALMOST FINAL: Mary Plummer, Educatio... http://bit.ly/1j9bees
LCFF: Promise of CA’s New School Finance Law Hinges On Parents: by Peter Schurmann, New America Media, News Re... http://bit.ly/1j8ZVTz
THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY ...with Dr. Benjamin Bloom (of Bloom’s Taxonomy) and Dick Dale (of The DelTones)! http://bit.ly/auDNT3
ONE CHILD AT A TIME: Custom Learning in the Digital Age: This radio documentary was broadcast on KPCC/89,3 at... http://bit.ly/1dG8Zyg
Video: DR. STEPHEN KRASHEN DEFENDS SCHOOL LIBRARIES AT LAUSD BOARD MEETING: Posted by Robert D. Skeels to solidaridad http://bit.ly/1jzkFDA
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Committee - February 25, 2014
Start: 02/25/2014 1:00 pm
Agenda: http://is.gd/XqPg9z
*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:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Monica.Ratliff@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!.
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