Many students are sleep deprived and a designated nap room would solve the dilemma of lack of concentration and enthusiasm due to exhaustion.

There is currently a petition circulating on MoveOn.ORG that was started by members of the Tuscaloosa Country Club neighborhood located in Westend Tuscaloosa that is requesting the resignation of Mr. Clarence Sutton Sr. as District 1 representative for the Tuscaloosa City School Board. The petition falsely states that Mr. Sutton Sr. was not "elected" when in fact he was elected by majority vote of the sitting board members (http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20150803/NEWS/150809917) which is one of several ways the board can fill vacant seats. The Tuscaloosa Country Club neighborhood is a small section of District 1 and its residents make up less than 2% of District 1's population, yet its residents feel that the interest of their children supersedes the needs of the other 98% of the children in the district. Instead of saying "the heck with *those* other kids" in the district and sending your children outside the district to attend school, why not spend energies concentrating on fixing the problem within the district where your children live? Mr. Sutton has stated that he will not support any plan that does not advocate for *neighbood schools* and the residents of the Tuscaloosa Country Club area do not want their children attending school within the neighborhood which they live. While all parents should want what's best for their children, parents must also realize that they have a responsibility to the upcoming generation as a whole and should want to not only want what's best for their own children, but all children in the surrounding area. As representative to District 1, Mr. Sutton is concerned with the welfare of ALL the children in his district, not just those that reside within this small affluent area. With the mindset of "it takes a village" let's show our support for ALL the children in District 1 by showing your support for Mr. Clarence Sutton Sr.

Removing parental school choices from District 1 is an agenda without a mandate. James Minyard certainly never promoted it. Parents deserve more options for our children, not fewer.

We, the undersigned students and parents of Chicago Public Schools, want to prove that our school lunches are inadequate. Currently the school lunches are terrible. We are fed the same options every day, the food is either overcooked or undercooked, the portions are too small and the quality is poor. We urge our principal, the Chicago Board of Education, and Aramark to act now to allow us to open the lunchroom kiosk, have vending machines, off campus lunch, food delivery, and increased options, portion sizes, and quality in our school lunch. This is important because we eat 1/6th of our meals here annually, and many students refuse to eat it. By signing this petition, we demand that school lunches get better. For more information, please visit http://rhsschoollunch.wordpress.com

The children in RVSD have been negatively affected for many years from the existence of the MAP program in our district. Our district has spent over $100,000 in legal fees in the last year alone and countless hours of board time on the MAP program which consists of approximately 5 % of the total children in RVSD. The current leaders of RVC are the same people that are the leaders of MAP including former RVSD trustees, all the MAP teachers, and the MAP leadership committee. A third party investigator found that MAP program (during its 19 years run by the current RVC leaders) had policies which created the effects of discrimination on protected classes of children. They have had virtually no ELL in MAP and have not translated the petition into Spanish. The existing leaders have known about the inequities with the protected classes of children as far back as 2005 and have done nothing to recruit these children into MAP. Documents exist from 2005 that identify MAP was responsible to translate their materials into Spanish. Now after 19 years of discrimination, these same people are claiming they want to become a charter to reach these children. The ACLU in a letter written to MCOE dated October 9th, 2015 stated that "it appears that the leaders of MAP wish to export the exact program (and its students and teachers) that an independent investigator found was operating in a discriminatory manner into a Charter School which will necessarily have greater autonomy from District oversight (their emphasis)." We will be sending a separate detailed letter to support many more reasons for denial that the people who signed this petition read and support. (http://www.saverossvalleyschools.com/letter-to-state/). Please deny the appeal and support high quality education for ALL the children in RVSD.

We are a community school that serves children in the west Philly and surrounding area with good teachers and staff and we deserve a chance to be heard.

College should be affordable for people of all financial backgrounds to attend and leave with a degree. Expenses (tuition, housing, etc.) should be made cheaper, not free, so students and people can earn a college education.

Currently, high schools in Okaloosa County start at exactly 7 o' clock in the morning. These start times are harmful for our teens, in regards to their mental health, grades, and their safety. Furthermore, early school start times are linked to increased drug use, sleep deprivation, depression, and other health problems related to lack of sleep. Many organizations, such as Start School Later, say that starting high school classes later would reduce tardiness to the first two periods of classes, improve student's grades and test scores, decrease drug use, reduction in car crashes among teens, and improvement in student's attentiveness. A few years ago, in neighboring Santa Rosa County, the starting time for high schools was moved to 9:15am as part of a new three-tiered busing system to save money on busing students to school. After this change, school attendance and grades improved and there were fewer tardies in first period. Another school district which changed their start time from 7:45am to between 8:55am and 9:10am saw their graduation rate jump from around 82% up to 90%.We support the three-tiered system, as it's the most cost-effective way of busing students to school. To keep elementary school parents happy with current elementary start times and to provide middle and high school students more time to get the sleep they need, we propose that these changes be considered: One option is to move the entire district 30 minutes later, so that means that the high school would begin at 7:30am. But Florosa and Longwood elementary schools would start at 9:30am, and in Seattle parents complained about these late elementary start times, and wanted them to start earlier, like 8am. Also not all schools are at the 7:45am minimum start time we request for all schools. Another option is to move all middle schools to the third tier, with elementary schools now starting directly after the high school tier. Start times would be 7:55am for the high schools, 8:30-8:35am for the elementary schools, and 9:25am for middle schools. Baker School would be on the 2nd or third tier (due to large busing area and one bus run that runs for up to 100 minutes long), and Laurel Hill on 2nd tier. There are many counties (with both early and later high school start times) in Florida that have middle schools on the third tier, such as Pinellas County, Bay County, Escambia County, and Leon County, among others, with middle school starts as late at 9:30am. In general, we request that the School Board and Superintendent come up with a later start times plan that meets these guidelines: - No bus stops, regardless of elementary, middle, or high school bus before 7am. - No school should start before 7:45am, and preferably not before 8am. - Middle and high schools must start at 8:30am or later, as per the CDC and AAP recommendations. - No schools should start after 9:30am, so afternoon bus runs are not after sunset. - Use the bus optimization software purchased in 2014 to optimize and shorten bus runs to allow the bus window to be shortened, saving money. - Finally, please implement later start times in August 2017, because doing nothing is to do harm. Please make the change now to help our middle and high school students get the recommended amount of sleep each night.

The revolution cannot, must not, and will not be televised, because it begins in the mind and the heart.

Norte Vista High School is an important place in our community that honors the Native American and Hispanic culture of Riverside in its choice of name and mascot. Unfortunately, there are those that want to erase our connections to our Native American roots by changing the mascot; we cannot allow a prominent symbol of honor and history to be removed from our school, and we cannot allow the peoples that lived here before to be forgotten. We ask you, Dr. Salazar, to bravely ignore those who would erase our heritage, and to not change the mascot that we love, respect, and who helps us to live up to the mission of our school by embodying the realization of unlimited potential.

This statement also applies to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s corporate education reform policies. We at Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates and the following signers hereby assume that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation experts are motivated by a sincere desire to improve education. But we fail to understand how your organization has become the national and global arbiter of the means and ends of education in the United States and around the world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s narrow focus on standardized testing risks turning learning into drudgery and killing the joy of learning. As the Gates Foundation’s national and global push for the Common Core, high-stakes testing, and teacher evaluations based on test scores has led many governments into a national and international competition for higher test scores, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has assumed the power to shape education policy in the United States and around the world, with no debate about the necessity or limitations of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s goals. We are deeply concerned that measuring a great diversity of educational traditions and cultures using a single, narrow, biased yardstick could, in the end, do irreparable harm to our communities, our schools, our profession, and our students. You and the OECD have much in common, Bill and Melinda. Your imposition of corporate reform policies, which are measured using a single, narrow, biased yardstick, are successful in one area only: making a profit for you, test companies, publishers, and the privatizing corporate reformers. Your policies continue to use our children as guinea pigs in your corporate reform experiments and risk doing “irreparable harm to our schools and our students”. We the undersigned reject the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s tight control of education policy. Venture philanthropy’s influence on public education has been all-pervasive and we demand an immediate restoration of democracy in our schools. Divest from corporate education reform. (Note: We will deliver this letter with signatures along with a published copy of all Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates at the #EducatingGatesRally in Seattle on June 26th. Readers, please send us a note to add your name as a signer. Join us at the rally! ) Sincerely, Susan DuFresne, General Education and Special Education Kindergarten Teacher, Co-Author of Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates Katie Lapham, NYC public school teacher, Co-Author of Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates Anthony Cody, NBCT, M.Ed, Retired Teacher of 24 years, Author and Education Blogger at Living in Dialogue Jennifer Rumsey, Parent, High School English Teacher Mark Naison, Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University and Co-Founder of the Badass Teachers Association Julianna K. Dauble, M. Ed. Teacher, Activist & Parent Linda Myrick, Teacher, Bellevue School District Kris Nielsen, Parent, Teacher, Activist Keitha Bryson 1st grade teacher – Highline Public Schools Michelle Murphy Ramey Elizabeth Lynch – Public School Teacher, Adjunct Professor, Grandparent, Activist Lance Fialkoff, Founder, Musical Media for Education (MME) Joan Kramer, Retired School Librarian Noel Hammatt Susan Polos, National Board Certified Teacher, Board Member Section of School Librarians, New York Libray Association Kathleen Canavan, M.Ed. Terry Preuss, NBCT, Career Public Educator, Broward Teachers Union Executive Board, Broward County Public Schools District Advisory Council, Concerned American Parent and Citizen Helmut G. Preuss, Concerned Parent, co-founder ABC+LOVE Tracy Eddins, Kindergarten Teacher, Parent and concerned human Cynthia Liu, Parent and Founder, K-12 News Network Rosalie Romano, Educator for a sustainable future with social justice for all Ani McHugh, Parent and English Teacher Lissa L. Coleman, Certified School Dropout Prevention Specialist Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters Judie Haynes, ESL author, educator and professional development provider Thomas Garrard, Teacher Librarian Amy Walls, Teacher and Parent T. Daniel Brown, Parent, 4th grade Teacher, Grand Ledge, Michigan Susan M. Goncarovs, Art Teacher K-12 and ^0^ Sheri Kittay, Parent and Teacher Karen Glennon Retired Teacher with Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree, Master Teacher, author, and parent Krisha M. Allgood, Badass student and Teacher-to-be Ms. Robin Lunt, Parent Sabrina Joy Stevens, former teacher, current public school guardian & Executive Director, Integrity in Education Maria Schrenger, Parent and 1st grade Teacher Marie Corfield, BFA, MAT, Elementary Art Educator, Concerned Parent, Vice President Flemington-Raritan Education Association, Vice President Hunterdon County Education Association http://mcorfield.blogspot.com/ Lesa Aloan Wilbert, M. Ed. Karen Adlum, Trained Professional Teacher, Early Childhood Development/Elementary Education and concerned citizen for our future democracy Robert D. Skeels, public education advocate Becca Ritchie, Veteran Middle School Educator, Education Activist and concerned citizen Mary Reed, 1st grade Teacher Linda Liddell-English teacher Ann Marie Finnen, Music Teacher and Parent Sherm Koons, Teacher, human, Washington County Career Center, Marietta Ohiohttp://hypnohio.blogspot.com/ Jeanne Berrong, California Public Educator Tina Andres, California Teacher and parent Michael Struchen, proud public school English Teacher Jannike Johnsen, M.Ed, Special Education Teacher, parent, and concerned citizen Stewart Bloom, Retired Elementary/Reading Recovery Teacher, Fort Wayne, Indiana.http://bloom-at.blogspot.com Kathleen Jeskey, Teacher, Parent, Grandparent; Oregon Save Our Schools, Oregon BATs Gerardo Barboza, M.Ed. Education Policy Research englishincostarica.org Helen Sadler, Educator Nancy Bailey, Ph.D. former Special Education Teacher and Principal, public education advocate, author and blogger Nancy Bailey’s Education Website athttp://nancye...

We want healthy and safe school hours for ALL Greenwich students. When teens get the required 8.5 to 9 hours of sleep: • School attendance goes up • Tardiness decreases • They sleep less in class • They have fewer car accidents • They visit nurses and counselors less often • They report less depression and irritability • They suffer fewer concussions and sports injuries Starting school early, without a doubt, undermines optimal health and success.