Advocate for the Virginia School Principal

Advocacy is an essential component of a professional association’s ability to meet its mission. Associations have a responsibility – and what VASSP President Mike Davidson calls a duty – to provide needed information to legislators and other policymakers on matters critical to education issues. 

If you are interested in becoming more involved in public school education advocacy issues, complete the form at this link and submit to VASSP.
VASSP Grassroots Network is Critical in Education Advocacy
VASSP's Virginia Education Advocacy Network is important to the mission and vision of VASSP. The objectives of the network are as follows:
  1. Elevate the voice and influence of school leaders in policy and public discourse.
  2. Enhance the Virginia Education Advocacy Network to ensure active representation of network members in all 100 House of Delegate districts and 40 State Senate districts.
  3. Expand VASSP's influence on national-level policies affecting school leaders.
  4. Assist the VASSP Board in representing middle and high school principals on committees and commissions of the Virginia Department of Education and other state agencies and the Governor's office.
Our advocacy network consists of constituents contacting their elected officials about issues that are important to them and establishing relationships with these legislators. These relationships are then leveraged to influence public policy decisions. By establishing relationships and championing public school education, you encourage public officials to make a commitment to you and all the members of VASSP.

Advocacy is different from lobbying. Lobbying is an effort to influence the thinking of legislators or other public officials for or against a specific cause or specific piece of proposed legislation. On the other hand, advocacy is the promotion of a cause, idea, or policy. In other words, your active support of improving school leadership and of middle and high schools is considered advocacy.

In today’s legislative and education policy arenas, it is critical that educators are aware, involved and represented – because results are shaped by the voices that are heard and the faces that are always there.   Legislators and other education policymakers depend on public education representatives to “fill in the gaps” and to “plead the case;” and if you are not represented when your issue comes up, they will listen to someone else.  That is why VASSP has a director of government relations/lead lobbyist for you and to make your case before the General Assembly and State Board of Education. This full-time position has been held by Elizabeth “Bet” Neale since 1998. In addition, former VASSP President Dr. Roger E. Jones, dean of the school of education at Lynchburg College, directs the Center for Educational Leadership for VASSP and its foundation, the Virginia Foundation for Education Leadership. Dr. Jones is also VASSP's longtime education law editor. See the 2016 General Assembly Update: Changes in Virginia School Law.