[This is from my email inbox. And for full disclosure it was emailed to me by WEAC]
Important Message from Concerned Parents
Dear Friends of Public Education:
Tonight is an important night for Wisconsin K-12 public education. Scott Walker will present his State of the State address at 7pm, and is expected to go on the record supporting new education policies that members of the Wisconsin GOP and ALEC have been working on for years. As public schools are still reeling from the greatest budget cuts in state history, Tuesday’s State of the State address should tell us what additional, devastating K-12 education “reforms” our schools will face. We expect less accountability, more privatization, continued attacks on our teachers, and state authorized charter and virtual schools operating beyond local control and accountability.
View this statewide press release from parents that tells us what our schools have lost already. The voices and figures in this release are a reminder: Wisconsin schools in 2013 are not better. Drawing $1.6 billion away from public schools is not reform.
Read this release. Share it with your network. Respond with your experience, story, observation about the state of public K12 education in Wisconsin today. Ask everyone in your networks to do the same: write legislators, draft letters to the editor, point out where our schools are succeeding against all odds, talk to legislators about the harm that’s been done to schools in the face of a landmark $1.6 billion budget cut. According to the Wisconsin Department of Administration, we are in a much different fiscal situation than we were two years ago. We do have the funds to repair the damage to public education. But we have to show the political will to make that happen.
As Walker’s policies take shape and gain supporters in the legislature and beyond in the coming weeks, we will be told our schools are better off today, that Walker’s reforms are working. Your letters, stories and testimony are what’s needed to remind Wisconsin that our schools are not better. Wisconsin can afford to reinvest in our children; we can’t afford not to.
RESOURCES FOR RESPONSES, RECOMMENDATIONS, SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT:
Watch the State of the State address on Wisconsin Eye: http://www.wiseye.org
Respond with your stories, participate in the conversation, suggest real reform and a reinvestment in our public schools: http://www.wisconsinsfuture.org (Look up WAES, Penny for Kids, Schools in Crisis
Connect to your legislator — http://legis.wisconsin.gov/Pages/waml.aspx
Contact the Senate Education Committee — http://legis.wisconsin.gov/Pages/comm-info.aspx?c=1045
Contact the Assembly Education Committee — http://legis.wisconsin.gov/Pages/comm-info.aspx?c=1093
Read and respond — Wispolitics.com and/or you local media organization
Review and recommend a practical, responsible and ready “first step” toward fixing the state’s education-funding inequalities: http://fairfunding.dpi.wi.gov
Thank you for taking the lead and taking the time to tell the truth about our schools, their budgets and what our children really need to succeed in 2013 and beyond.
Your partners is supporting high quality public education,
Parents for Public Schools-Milwaukee
c/o Jasmine Alinder & Angela McManaman
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