The New Fairfield Board of Selectmen took $123,368 from the School District's Debt Service for school construction account in order to cover their deficit spending. Despite the Voters restricting this account for school construction or debt reduction in 2009, despite the Town voted for TWO separate budgets in 2014, despite State law requiring a Town Vote for transfers in excess of $20,000 between Departments, and despite the moral and ethical issues, the BOS took money from our children (and never asked nor informed the Superintendent of Schools or the Board of Education). Before the Fiscal Year ends on June 30, ask them to restore those funds to the schools.

Christiaan Summerhill is a friend and colleague to many of us in Boston, and we want to support him and other Black male teachers who teach in the Boston Public Schools and around the country. Please contact [email protected] with questions or comments.

This petition is about maintaining strong public schools for all Wisconsinites.

Ohio charter schools have cost taxpayers and local schools millions and have only resulted in substandard results for our children. Even charter school supporters have recognized that reform is needed to protect our students from a poor education and our tax dollars from misuse. Nearly every major newspaper throughout Ohio has called for reform: • “The state legislature must eliminate the poor oversight and lax rules for Ohio’s troubled charter schools.” – Plain Dealer, Jan. 2, 2015 • “Lawmakers have solid evidence that current charter-school law is broken, and credible suggestions for how to fix it.” – Columbus Dispatch, Dec. 22, 2014 • “In too many cases, charter schools in low-income communities perform worse than traditional public schools that serve the same neighborhoods and promote themselves deceptively to parents.” – Toledo Blade, Dec. 29, 2014 • “Currently, the management companies often have the upper hand, to the detriment of effective oversight.” – Akron Beacon Journal, Dec. 23, 2014

I believe we have had and can continue to have a excellent Education for our K-12 students, our Technical College system, the UW System as well as the Private Colleges. The idea that we are going not only reduce economic support for these institutions now there is a proposal to reduce requirements to teach our students. I believe does not support the principals that have governed our Great State.

I am very concerned about the attacks on public education in Wisconsin. Keep standards high in Wisconsin schools. Why would we lower them?

At a 201 board meeting, Mr Cronin acted in a very unprofessional way and attacked another board member verbally. He knew he was being recorded and acted this way in front of the BOE, parents and other public members. This type of behavior is unacceptable for our students (per student handbook) and should also be unacceptable for our BOE members. We are asking that the BOE ask Mr Cronin to resign from his position. We cannot trust someone who acts like this to be able to make rational and wise decisions for our children. You can watch what happened at the board meeting here - (copy and paste since it won't let me hyperlink it) http://youtu.be/V4yBypIWdrQ Mr. Cronin starts his attack around 47 min. Please start attending our board meetings and letting them know this kind of behavior is absolutely unacceptable in our district! We are taking this petition to the BOE meeting at the end of June. Please sign and forward to anyone else you know in 201.

My child was bullied and the girls are allowed to stay in school and my straight A student has bad grades and now wants to kill herself because nothing was done to the girls.

Governor LePage recently vetoed a bill that would have adopted new K-12 science standards that include climate science. For the first time, all Maine students would have been presented the evidence that supports the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. With his veto, Governor LePage is standing in the way of Maine kids learning the truth about climate change. While Governor LePage claimed he vetoed the science bill for cost reasons, he was heavily lobbied by climate deniers to block the science standards. The opposition in Maine is part of a coordinated effort by vocal anti-science activists across the country to stop the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), almost entirely because the comprehensive standards include climate education. The world-class NGSS were developed by the National Academy of Sciences, together with scientists and science educators from Maine and throughout the country. The Maine Science Teachers Association and Maine STEM Council strongly support the new standards, which are designed to increase scientific literacy among all students. Science supporters have vowed to bring the bill back next year. But to prevent a repeat of Governor LePage’s veto, parents, teachers and science education supporters need to speak out to make it clear that Mainers support climate science education. Please sign the petition to Governor Lepage in support of a high quality science education that includes climate science for Maine students!

Our children in public K-12 schools are suffering from the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing, such as curriculum narrowing to focus more exclusively on tested subjects and content (English and Math, at the expense of other subjects like science, social studies, and the arts), more test prep and drilling in early elementary (despite going against the advice of early education experts and developmental psychologists for more play-based experiential learning), loss of instructional time due to school wide testing days and test prep activities (and even more days of testing if we move to PARCC), loss of computer lab opportunities for actual learning due to new computerized PARCC tests. It's time to end this trend.

The music and arts educational programs are of very important cultural significance! Every child should have the opportunity to bring forth the song in their soul, the skill in their minds and their hands, and the passion in their heart! http://www.ijreview.com/2015/06/336560-atlanta-cut-kids-music-education-schools-new-superintendant/?source=FBshare

Act 31 of 1983 ended our state's 50% reimbursement guarantee of local school funding. Every year since has seen a reduction of state funds going to local school districts. Currently, Pennsylvania only funds 36% of local education expenditures--ranking near the bottom as 45th in the nation for low state funding. The Pennsylvania legislature has shifted the burden of financing PreK-12 education onto local property owners. The local property owners in Pennsylvania, people like you and me, pay over 45% of education costs compared to an average of just 29% in other states. The Pennsylvania legislature, since 1999, has also failed to fund $29 BILLION in pension obligations while local school districts and school employees have continuously made the required contributions. Now the legislature is trying to shift the burden of these unfunded obligations onto the local taxpayers. This is unacceptable. New funding sources need to be accessed to rectify this issue. We believe that the Costing Out Study of 2006 was a move in the right direction toward adequacy because it determined the base cost of educating a student to meet state education standards. And now that the state is the prime determiner of educational adequacy, they should be the prime funder of education. We believe that the Funding Formula of 2008-2011 was a step in the right direction for allocating funds to School Districts with equity. It would make sense for the state to continue in that route by developing a method for FAIRLY allocating funds to districts based on an equalized local effort and not on the lop-sided local spending formulas and political vote-swapping in use today.