I am beginning this petition on behalf of all the students at Alliance Highschool for being suspended or punished for their individuality. Our piercings do not create a "distraction" or "danger" to the learning environment!

I'm an educator who is stunned at the inappropriate name of the test that public school students have to now take, called the "SLO student assessment", which is demeaning to say the least. Imagine the name for the "Department of Universal Mathematics" test. Would we call it the "DUM student" test? I would certainly hope not. The same logic should have prevailed here. Such an offensive acronym should never have been approved and should be changed at once.

The University of Maryland’s Art Library is scheduled to close and be absorbed into the McKeldin Library collection. Dean of Libraries, Patricia Steele announced this decision during the summer, while faculty and students were away from campus, without any consultation with the Department of Art or the Department of Art History & Archaeology, whose students and faculty rely on the Art Library’s collections for their research and teaching. At more than 100,000 volumes, the Art Library houses one of the most comprehensive collections of art historical resources in the area. The Architecture Library was slated to close before the beginning of fall semester, but that closure has been delayed, in part as a result of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s petition and letter-writing campaign. Both libraries are currently still open but the hours have been cut back substantially. During the fall semester, the Art Library will be open only from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. The current hours will make it very difficult for faculty and graduate students to use the collections, since they are teaching and/or taking classes during these times. Despite university budget crises in recent years, top art history programs around the country have maintained dedicated art libraries. These libraries are not only essential for the research and teaching of faculty and graduate students—they also factor into national rankings. The university library system serves several user populations with differing needs, and branch libraries are particularly important to the graduate and faculty communities. The University of Maryland should strive to support not only undergraduate students, but also the graduate students and faculty whose research endeavors uphold the University’s status as a prominent research institution. A counter-argument will probably be made by UMD Libraries that moving these two satellite libraries' collections to McKeldin will make them more accessible to students during the long hours that McKeldin is open. However, McKeldin's stacks are already quite crowded as it is and last year many books on the fifth floor were damaged by mold caused by a faulty HVAC system and were discarded. Although we do not know this to be certain, there is concern that many of the books could be moved to offsite storage, making them even less accessible to students and faculty. A major concern within the Department of Art History, among other things, is that the closure of the Art Library will make research much more difficult for current faculty and students and will diminish the attractiveness of our program to prospective students and future faculty members. Please help save the University of Maryland’s Art Library by signing our petition and sharing it with friends and family who understand the importance of this academic resource for the University at large.

Charter corporations are competing to take over York City schools and profit from our kids. If that happens, our tax dollars will go to a private corporation to run our schools without the same oversight or accountability we now have. Charter CEOs will make a killing, but you will lose your say in how neighborhood schools are run. Local taxpayers and elected officials should be making decisions about our children's education. Help us stop the corporate takeover of York City schools!

Inflating tuition, inflating debt and inflating administrative pockets According to a study by The Institute for Policy Studies [IPS] institutions with higher paid presidents showed a correlation to declining permanent faculty, greater than national average student loan debt increases, and non-benefited part-time faculty grew significantly faster under these inflated administrations. The most inflated administrative salary institutions boasted twice as much spending on administrative salaries as funding for student scholarships! Our taxes should fund the education of the population. The expensive board-members, presidents, principals, and superintendents have profited for too long cutting funds by decreasing scholarships, limiting offered classes and extra-curricular and siphoning money away from the faculty. If the highest paid coach, principal, president, board-member was limited to the 95th highest percentile salary of faculty members, either faculty wages must increase or administrative bodies must allocate their salaries elsewhere. The Huffington Post reported numerous public college presidents take home over 500,000 up to millions a year in salary; the equivalent of 50 student's tuition or 8 full time faculty.

In 2012, the State suspended the voter-elected Board of Trustees of City College of San Francisco, even though the Board passed a balanced budget and an accreditation plan that is now mostly completed. Decisions are now made in back rooms without public oversight, resulting in sky-rocketing administrators' salaries. It's time to put the public back in control of City College and other California Community Colleges.

My niece Gabriela just transferred to Science Park H.S. It's a great opportunity she couldn't miss. Unfortunately she lives about 3 miles from the school and her parents can't take her. The school offers free tickets to take NJTransit but family members don't feel safe enough letting this 7th grade girl going by herself. Children safety should be a big priority in the city of Newark, especially with so many sex offenders living in this city. There are hundreds of other parents struggling with the same issue.

I've talked to a surprising amount of CSUS students who are in the same boat as me this semester and this petition is our chance to do something about it. It's imperative that we enroll in SWRK 125A this semester, but the class is sadly full. - Don’t want to wait another semester or year for classes you need? - Don’t have money for an extra year at CSUS because you can’t get the classes you want? - Do you want to enroll in SWRK 125A for the Fall 2014 Semester? If I can get enough votes, I will deliver this petition to the Dean as well as the Chair of Social Work. Thanks for your time!

My 15 yr old daughter was hit by a car walking to PMHS August 29, 2014. She has always had a bus until the budget cuts made for the 2012-2013 school year. The walk is 1.3 miles, 100% commercial and during the morning commute. The buses need to be returned before someone's child is killed.

Research shows that teenagers have difficulty sleeping before 10:30 pm, and that they need 8.5 - 9.5 hours of sleep per night. Moving school start times to later than 8:30 am improves student performance and graduation rate and lowers depression rates in teens. Yet high schools in Missoula start at 7:55 am. Additionally, high schools finish at 3:00 pm, which means that many teens are home alone for several hours before their parents. If MCPS high schools started at 8:55 am and finished at 4:00 pm, teens would be more likely to get needed sleep and less likely to get into trouble during the afternoons. See: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/08/25/343125751/pediatricians-say-school-should-start-later-for-teens-health http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6896471

Our son, Brayton Martin, started kindergarten last week. The second day he got off the bus it was brought to our attention by other students riding the bus that the afternoon bus driver was forceful with Brayton pushing him into his seat. We questioned Brayton who has a speech delay and he said "she is mean and it only hurt a little". The next morning at the bus stop I learned it was witnessed by other kids on the bus. I contacted Doe Run who informed me that I need to contact the bus company, Joseph c. Graybill Inc. The bus company said they would review the video and call us back. We followed up with another phone call to the bus company and they said the video was fine, nothing concerning was seen. In the meantime, we have heard from other parents at the bus stop of incidents their child has had with this particular bus driver. With this new information, we requested to view the bus video and the bus company said no it is not permitted. When we argued our case, they said it would need to be approved by the superintendent, Dr. Hatten. We contacted Doe Run, in the meantime, who were not made aware of this situation. They informed us they too were not allowed to watch the video since it had to do with the bus company personnel, not between their students. They apologized that they could not offer any more help. The guidance counselor did however speak to the bus driver to be sure there was not an issue with any students on her route which she stated there was not. We needed to once again follow up with the bus company and were informed the superintendent would not allow us to watch the video. We have discovered this is not a law rather a policy. Dr. Hatten said this policy is in place for student privacy. We are asking for your help by signing this petition to allow us to watch the video of our son, Brayton Martin, on the afternoon bus, number 23, on August 27th, 2014. As a parent, I am sure you understand that we just want to be sure our child and your child is in safe hands. If your child rode this bus, please sign giving us your permission to view this video. Also, many of you have reached out to me regarding issues your child has had with this bus driver; we urge you to contact Doe Run. The school said they have not known of any other problems. Thank you so much for your time. Sincerely, Coty & Lisa Martin

This year, most school districts across Washington state were forced by Secretary Arne Duncan’s selective enforcement of the No Child Left Behind Act to send letters to all parents that labeled our schools as failures. We are parents, teachers, students and community members who reject this label that has been placed on our schools. We know that our schools are not failures. In fact, their accomplishments have been remarkable, especially given the deeply flawed policy imposed on them by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). While there are certainly changes needed for our schools – many due to the legacy of racism, class inequality, and lack of equitable funding for our schools – we believe that those changes should be directed by communities that make up local school districts, not by top-down mandates. This website will share stories and testimonials about the great things that are happening in our schools that should be supported and connect our communities so that we can organize opposition to Arne Duncan’s policies and No Child Left Behind. According to NCLB, our schools should have had 100% of students test at proficient levels in reading and math by 2014. No county, no state, and no school district has ever achieved 100% proficiency on standardized tests and, in fact, the way the tests are designed make it statistically impossible to achieve that goal. Washington, like many other states, originally had a waiver in place that would have exempted it from this absurd NCLB mandate. However, when the state legislature refused to pass bills tying teacher evaluations to test scores (following overwhelming evidence that this would not improve teaching or learning), Arne Duncan chose to punish Washington state by revoking the waiver. With the waiver gone, nearly all of Washington’s schools have been labeled failures, we have lost control of millions of dollars in federal money, and some schools will be at risk of state takeovers and mass layoffs of teachers. This kind of political game-playing has no place in our schools. Our schools and teachers should not be labeled as failures simply because we have rejected extremely flawed education policies. In August 2014, 28 school superintendents from around the state authored a letter, where they declared that their schools’ successes are not reflected in these ratings and criticized No Child Left Behind. We agree. It’s time for the voices of parents, teachers and students to be heard and respected. Endorsed by: Parents Across America (PAA), Seattle Education Website, Social Equality Educators (SEE), Wayne Au, PhD, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington Bothell*, Jesse Hagopian, Teacher, Garfield High School*, Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Council member*, Sue Peters, Seattle School Board Director* *For identification purposes only For more information, visit http://www.ourschoolsarenotfailing.org