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School budgets are threatened with another hit, this time from the Trump budget proposal which would shift millions from important neighborhood school programs into charters, "choice," and vouchers. Time to visit your Congresspeople at home again to get their commitment not to steal funds from our schools for privatizers who have not shown better results!
PAA ACTION OF THE WEEK
 
Say NO!!!! to
Trump 2018 education budget  

  Does not reflect our values or support quality education 
 
 

Congress is on break through June 5, so you have some time to drop by your federal  

elected officials' home offices to talk about what's wrong with the Trump/DeVos education agenda.

Parents' real choice

Betsy DeVos insists that the way to fix schools is to give parents more choices. But either she doesn't know or she just doesn't care what parents really want. We say:
  • most of us do not want to make the same choices that Betsy DeVos made, to home school/private school her children;
  • most of us do want to be able to send our children to a high-quality school in our community, and
  • we do want our federal tax dollars to go towards school programs that actually work, like lower class size and school-community collaboration.
Facts still matter!


Here's some useful information you can share with your Congresspeople and Senators:
Ask your elected representatives, "Why waste valuable funds on programs that have not made a significant difference for children? Why not strengthen the schools we have instead of throwing good money after bad?"

TWEET OF THE WEEK
Please tweet this or retweet by following @parentsacrossam

@realdonaldtrump @BetsyDeVosED yr education budget does not reflect our values or #realparentchoice for strong neighborhood schools

PAA NEWS

Did you miss the excellent student privacy toolkit webinar?


Don't worry - you can watch the webinar recording here
(click on screen at the bottom of that page).

You can download the toolkit here. Among the many great resources are sample letters to share with your school and school district. Now would be a good time to use these resources - it may take the district that much time to get the answers to your questions!

We want to thank Parent Coalition for Student Privacy's Rachael Stickland and PAA co-founder Leonie Haimson for spearheading this important work, and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood for collaborating with PCSP on this excellent toolkit.

Thanks also to PAA-Roanoke Valley leader Laura Bowman for moderating the webinar and for her contributions to the toolkit.

The effort received quite a bit of notice in the media including an article in Education Week and one in the Washington Post.
 
California charter wars continue

Our PAA-North Bay (CA) chapter has been battling an elite charter school's efforts to establish itself permanently within one of their local neighborhood schools. The group shared an extensive article that clearly points out the resulting segregation and negative financial impact of the charter school.

A "follow-the-money" blog post details the national web of privatizers behind the effort to establish a charter school beachhead in Marin County. They wrote:

Rather than a "grassroots" effort we might better refer to the charter school as another "astroturf" group fronting for powerful corporate interests with its sights set on taking and breaking our children's public school and transforming it into yet another private corporate venture.

Great rally for public schools in Boston

Congratulations to our affiliate Citizens for Public Schools in Boston for helping turn out 4,000 people to rally against the Trump/DeVos education agenda and in support of the schools all of our children deserve.

You won't be able to read this whole Boston Globe article without signing up but this CPS photo is worth 1,000 words.

 
PAA leader gets her voice back


Unbelievably, the Chicago Public Schools had barred PAA-Chicago leader Rousemary Vega from speaking at Board meetings for over three years. Rousemary's powerful presentations at Board meetings had become too much for the sensitive souls on the mayoral-appointed Boa rd. Rousemary's husband, PAA-Chicago leader Jesus Ramos, was also banned after district security injured him during a board meeting.

This week Rousemary finally made it back to the podium after the district sent her a letter outlining the very restricted circumstances under which she would be allowed back.

This tiny woman has proven that parents' voice are powerful!

JOIN US!


If you share our overall goals of progressive, positive education reform and more parent input in education policy making, we invite you to affiliate with us if you are an existing group, or to form a new PAA chapter. The more of us there are, the stronger our voice will be at every level.  Here's how! 
If you have questions, comments, suggestions or stories to share, please e-mail us at info@parentsacrossamerica.org or visit www.parentsacrossamerica.org.

Looking for regular updates on key education stories? Join the PAA News List by e-mailing PAAnews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

 
 


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