Fort Bend ISD currently has a proposal to rezone all Lake Olympia residents attending Elkins High School. Under this proposal, all Lake Olympia residents entering grades nine, ten, and eleven, will be required to attend Hightower High School, starting in the 2015-2016 school year. Please let the voices of Lake Olympia be heard.

Right now Oregon is 47th in the country for what we invest in higher education. There are only three states doing less to support students in America than we are! We have the opportunity to do something really big to support higher education by voting YES on Measure 86, which would allow the state of Oregon to create a fund called the Student Opportunity Fund -- a constitutionally-protected source of student aid for higher education and job training. I believe our students -- who make up the future workforce -- are every bit as important to our state’s economic vitality as infrastructure. Measure 86 would allow the legislature to use the same funding mechanism we use to pay for new bridges and highways to pay for our students to get a college education. Oregon’s graduates right now each have an average of $29,000 in debt. That’s not the Oregon I want to leave to our kids. Support our students and vote YES on Measure 86 on Election Day! There are some really good ideas out there to support students trying to get an education. We already have the Oregon Opportunity Grant which provides direct support to students in need. Also on the horizon, I am very excited about the innovative Pay it Forward proposal that my friends from Oregon Working Families have been leading the way on. Ted Wheeler Oregon State Treasurer

I have a smart student who is now frustrated and not doing well with the common core method. Why fix something that wasn't broken in OPUSD schools? Go back to the old way of teaching.

Majority of my peers spend their leisure time in school, participating in athletics, or establishing a social life; they are not plotting, executing, and contemplating the consequences of criminal activity. These are the primary reasons why adolescents should be given alternative trials and consequences; they do not share the same mental capabilities as adults, so they should be regarded as one.

The primary purpose of assessment in our public schools should be to improve teaching and learning. However, the high-stakes tests mandated in Massachusetts offer little benefit for students. High-stakes testing stifles innovation, narrows the curriculum, and hinders students from developing advanced thinking and problem-solving skills. Even US Education Secretary Arne Duncan admits that “testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools.”

Student loan debt has surpassed $1.2 trillion, and Americans are struggling to handle the burden of their education debt. That is why it is so important the Department of Education expands PAYE to help borrowers manage their student loans. Get more information on enrolling in these programs! -http://www.consumerfinance.gov/paying-for-college/repay-student-debt/#Question-1

This past June, due to increasing safety concerns, Jackson Street School had to make the very tough decision to remove the volunteer-built and beloved wooden structure, which had become an iconic play space for generations of Northampton families. As sad as the Jackson Street community was to bid farewell to the structure and gathering space, it views this moment as an opportunity to create a truly accessible, environmentally sound play and educational space, tied in greater measure to the best practices of outdoor play and learning which aid in building minds, bodies, and community. After a period of reflection and dialogue where students, faculty, staff, and families considered their options for moving forward, the Jackson Street community decided to expand a remaining play space (lovingly called the Ms. Agna Playground) and add an outdoor classroom, rather than build an entirely new playground. The community felt that this decision would yield the best stewardship of public and private resources and have the greatest positive impact. We must raise $246,771 and we need the CPA's help to do it!

I am writing this petition on behalf of my son, Ben. He is 12 years old, in 5th grade, and he is deaf. There is technology and assistance that would allow him to have equal access to education, and he is not receiving it from his school district. He struggles every day. Imagine wearing noise cancelling headphones in a classroom and then be expected to perform on the same level as your hearing classmates. This is what Ben has to do, as well as others like him. We went to the school during the 2012-13 school year and made a request for captioning equipment as well as other ideas to make the classroom accessible, and we were met with skepticism and ignorance on the subjects of his disability and accessibility. As time passes, my child sits in a classroom desperately trying to keep up with lectures and student interaction, which is so important to cognitive development and education, but also leaves him fatigued, frustrated and with headaches. Even those of you who may not be familiar with deafness or any other disability, you encounter accessibility for the disabled every day. Ramps, railings and special parking for those in wheel chairs, Braille on ATMs and “beeps” at crosswalks for the visually impaired and alarm systems that can be seen and heard are all examples of everyday accessibility that we take for granted. These are some of the ways that people with disabilities are able to be productive members of our society. My son needs access to technology that converts the words spoken in the classroom into text and displaying them on a computer screen so that he can follow the teacher’s lecture, other students’ questions, class discussion or other oral information presented in the classroom. Captioning captures all pertinent oral information presented in the classroom. This technology would allow Ben to use his voice in class to participate in discussions which are critical for his education and for improving voice quality so that others will more readily understand his speech. Captioning technology will allow Ben to develop oral vocabulary and hone the ability to “listen”. As Ben puts meaning to sounds with the help of this tool he will be learning to communicate independently. Ben does not use sign language. He is in a very small percentage of the Deaf community that chooses the spoken word. This is the mode of communication that he has chosen. If Ben did sign, he would have an interpreter. Would it not stand to reason that the school district would allow him interpretation in his mode of communication? Even students who use sign language often prefer speech to text in an educational setting. Please help Ben achieve his dreams by giving him a fair and appropriate education. He is a loving intelligent young person, who without this technology has very little chance of achieving his potential.

OUR SCHOOLS ARE ALREADY OVERCROWDED; MORE HIGH-DENSITY DEVELOPMENT WILL MAKE SCHOOL OVERCROWDING WORSE. Development at the proposed densities for Sub-units S1 and M2 would result in 72-96 additional houses or town homes to be served by Willow Springs ES and Eagle View ES. Willow Springs was built for 750 students, currently has 1000 students and is projected to increase by 15% by 2018-2019 without any new development. Eagle View is projected to be at 118% capacity by 2018-2019. Both schools feed into Fairfax HS, which is projected to be at 107% capacity by 2018-2019. (http://www.fcps.edu/fts/planning/maps/index.shtml) THERE IS NO PLAN FOR ADDRESSING SCHOOL OVERCROWDING; MORE HIGH-DENSITY DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT A PLAN IS IRRESPONSIBLE. The staff report calls for passing the buck to Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS): “To mitigate impacts of the proposed development … FCPS would look to the developer and support from the county at the time of rezoning.” Until citizens recently brought it to their attention, the School Board was unaware of the proposed change to the Comprehensive Plan, and has no plans to build new schools in this area. FIXED RESOURCES AT SCHOOLS MAKE MORE EXPANSION THROUGH TRAILERS IMPOSSIBLE. Both Willow Springs and Eagle View already have a semi-permanent network of trailers. Additional trailers are not an option because of fixed resources which cannot be expanded, such as gymnasiums, cafeterias, land, and parking. LEE HIGHWAY IS ALREADY GRIDLOCKED; MORE HIGH-DENSITY DEVELOPMENT WILL MAKE BAD TRAFFIC EVEN WORSE. This section of Lee Highway is already at a standstill during rush hour, and this impacts our quality of life negatively -- it makes it hard to get to our jobs, get home to our families, and drive our kids to school and extracurricular activities. Our school buses regularly have difficulty arriving on time due to traffic. For these reasons, we urge you to maintain the densities of the current Comprehensive Plan at this time. Thank you for your consideration of our petition.

I want to transfer schools but I can't due to overpopulation at vandeventer middle school. I'm having a hard time at my new school and I really want to go back since it's my last year of middle school.

Our son Hunter, has turned his life around and wants to continue going to school and the board of Elizabethtown area school district will not allow him to attend because of a past expulsion. They didn't take the time to see what he has accomplished since the incident and say they are not obligated to help due to his age. Anyone who knows the man that he has become can attest to the fact that he deserves the chance to continue his education...

We are a collective of nursing students attending New Community Workforce in Newark. We've attended this program for over two years and done well in all of our classes until now. But now that we're ready to graduate, a majority of us were given failing grades on our final exams. We were told that 100% of our class failed the obstetrics and psychiatry exams. We were also told that 60% of us failed our pediatrics exam - which is shocking because this was a take home exam. But what's worse, we've been denied access to our individual test results so we don't know which answers we got wrong or right. Our objective is to review our final exams before we take them again on October 20th. But this impossible because New Community refuses to give them back to us. We have all studied hard for these final exams - so how is it that the majority of us failed? We believe something is wrong! Please sign our petition and demand that CEO Richard Rohrman provide each of us with our original exams. We also want New Community to create a transparent process for current and future students so we are better prepared to achieve success in our chosen fields!