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Dear (Contact First Name),
PAA exists on a slim budget, yet we have been able to accomplish so much this year! For Giving Tuesday, we have a fun, thoughtful way for you to support PAA and advocate for more strong voices for public schools at the same time! See below.
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For Giving Tuesday, let's reclaim our time together
Last July, the indomitable Congresswoman Maxine Waters used the procedural strategy of "reclaiming my time" to prevent Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from running out the clock with non-responsive testimony in an
appearance before the House Financial Services Committee. Rep. Waters' repetition of the phrase "reclaiming my time" in the face of a powerful person's attempts to brush her off struck a nerve with many, sending those three words viral.
PAA has created a t-shirt to honor that sentiment, one that you can order now (see below) to support PAA and make a bold statement about public education at the same time!
PAA wants to reclaim some of our time and our children's time that has been wasted by promoters of school "choice," wealthy education hobbyists like Bill Gates, mass school closures, standardized testing, mayoral control of schools, and all of the other ignorant and ill-advised school "reforms" pushed on us over the past 25 years. But we need your help to keep up the push back.
Here's what we've been doing to advocate for strong parent voices in public education. We have:
- surveyed parents on what's most important in public education, and shared the responses of the 584 parent participants in a webinar, with Congress, and the media;
- expanded the resources we developed for parents, including new fact sheets on Stand for Children, vouchers, and educational inequities;
- reached out to Congress with regular faxes voicing parent concerns on such issues as education funding cutbacks, vouchers, and school "choice;"
- sent regular newsletters with an action of the week to encourage national parent action,
- presented workshops at national conferences, held several webinars including July's PAA Week events, and collaborated with such groups as Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.
We have big plans for the coming year and hope you will support us today and join us along the way. Here's how:
- Pay for the t-shirt using the Donate button on our home page - $25 each ($20 for the shirt and $5 for shipping).
- Both the PayPal and credit card payment choices give you the option to leave a message and provide us with your mailing address. Please use the message feature to tell us what size t-shirt you want. We will need your mailing address to send it to you.
- If you prefer to pay by check, please send it with your mailing and size information to Parents Across America, c/o Siegel and Assoc, 405 W. Jackson Blvd, Suite 405, Chicago IL 60604.Please allow up to 8 weeks for this form of payment.
- Of course, you can also use our Donate button to make a donation without ordering a t-shirt. Or do both!
Thank you!
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Support a strong national voice for public school parents! http://parentsacrossamerica.org/reclaiming-our-time-for-public-education-giving-tuesday/
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Victory! Philadelphia public schools turned back to local control
Philly City Councilwoman and PAA founding member Helen Gym is delighted to report that the School Reform Commission which has been running the city's schools since the 2001 state takeover will dissolve as of June 2018.
Helen is encouraging Philadelphians to share their vision for the future of their schools
here. As she stated,
"Just as we stood together to bring back local control, we must stand together to make any new governing board representative of and accountable to the people of the city. I look forward to that journey and a chance over the coming months to re-establish a big vision for our public schools."
Congratulations, Helen, and Good Luck!
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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!
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Looking for regular updates on key education stories? Join the PAA News List by e-mailing [email protected].
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