On average, New Jersey’s 2,500 school buildings are 50 years old and are four times more densely populated than office buildings. Age, overcrowding, and deferred maintenance strain ventilation, heating, and electrical systems, which, in many cases, result in dangerous conditions that threaten the health of students and staff and impede students’ learning. Everyday, students in New Jersey are exposed to hazardous conditions like mold, lead, PCBs, and poor indoor air quality resulting from decades of delayed repairs and the failure to start and complete new school construction projects. On May 24, 2011, the New Jersey Department of Education, together with the New Jersey Schools Development Authority, requested that each SDA district (formerly known as Abbott Districts) identify and describe any potential emergent conditions that may exist in the district’s school facilities. The DOE regulations 2 define an emergent condition as “so injurious or hazardous that it causes an imminent peril to the health and safety of students and staff.” In response, school districts submitted more than 700 applications for emergent projects to be reviewed by the DOE on an “expedited basis” as required by the regulations. In the spring of 2012, a mere seventy-six of the applications were approved. Now, over a year later, the SDA has completed only a few of these projects and has not committed to complete the remaining projects by the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year. This is unacceptable. Allowing repairs to wait for over two years unnecessarily exposes students and staff to unsafe and unhealthy conditions. We request that you ensure all approved emergent projects be completed by this September -- before our children and staff return to school. Communities across the state remain in desperate need of functioning, modern, and safe school facilities. Every day our students and those entrusted to teach and care for them, enter buildings that are unhealthy and unsafe. If we expect to have thriving schools and effective learning environments, these emergent repairs must be addressed. Every child has a right to receive a quality education and the facilities in which these students receive their education should be of high quality, and sound structure.

The Texas State Board of Education (TXSBOE) has already begun working on its once-a-decade adoption of science textbooks for Texas classrooms. And for years, an anti-science faction of that board has done all it can to undermine the science of evolution and climate change by giving equal weight to nonscientific beliefs like climate change denial and the idea that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. Whether you have school-aged kids or not, this fight is too important to the future of Texas and the nation to ignore. With over 5 million students, Texas is one of the country's biggest buyers of textbooks. And that has an impact on other states, because book publishers often follow our lead so that they don't have to create different versions of the same science books.

The purpose of this petition is to stop kids from being singled out in gym class. We need to eliminate the concept of being "picked last." A team should not be determined by its weakest or strongest player, but by how well they work together. When gym teachers select at random order each time, this will allow kids to make new friends and ensure greater self development. Schools should aspire to be safe havens. They should be about bringing students together and not spreading them apart. JOIN IN! SIGN ON!

Under pressure from the White House, members of Congress are plowing forward with a student loan interest rate "solution" that is bad for students -- worse for students in the long-run than allowing the current interest rate (6.8%) to stand. With the Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013, the government stands to make $184 billion over 10 years off the backs of hard-working students, pushing them further into debt, and making it harder to pay for college.

For more than 30 years, the Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Graduate Center for Worker Education, located in downtown Manhattan, has provided an opportunity for New York City working-class professionals to earn masters’ degrees in Urban Policy & Administration with specializations in New York City Government and Health and Nutrition Sciences. Proud alumni have gone on to elected and public office in New York City and careers in law, higher education, labor unions, public health, and non-profits. In short, the GCWE has made it possible for New York City's diverse, working-class population to get the skills and credentials they need to advance in their professional careers and also advance the interests of the working-class as a whole. Despite the vitality of this program, recent events have left students, alumni, faculty, and staff in CUNY seriously concerned over the future of the Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education and its degree programs. Professors have been dismissed, enrollment and classes dramatically reduced, and support services have all but stopped at the center’s Downtown Manhattan campus. Since spring 2012, Brooklyn College has withdrawn the resources that had once nurtured the Graduate Center for Worker Education, and has visibly removed necessary educational services for its hard-working students. The removal of essential staff, faculty, and resources has been followed with negligible communication by the college administration to students, faculty, staff, labor unions and the many communities that the center serves. For those students struggling to finish their degrees this situation has created an environment that is not conducive to learning. The GCWE, stripped of the people and programs that made it work so well in the past 30 years, no longer provides students with an environment that fosters the mutual respect, trust, support, and the tools needed to excel within an institution of higher learning. For the remaining students, classes are cancelled with little notice, no administrative staff is available to help, and no faculty advisors and deputies are available for essential consultation about our academic progress. Today, the halls of the GCWE campus are virtually abandoned and the program is all but defunct. Left with no other choices, GCWE students have begun applying to other CUNY campuses. Unfortunately, these other campuses are not as well-suited to working-class, trade unionists seeking a professional education to better themselves and New York City. We deserve a learning environment that promotes the educational and pedagogical goals of New York City working-class professionals. Therefore, today, we students, alumni, concerned faculty and citizens ask you to join us in demanding that Brooklyn College and CUNY honor its commitment to the working-class professionals of New York City by restoring the full-service degree programs at the Downtown Manhattan campus of the Graduate Center for Worker Education. We view the withdrawal of staff and faculty and the restriction of admission to New York City residents as a breach of CUNY’s commitment to educate students seeking to improve their lives and those of their diverse communities The dismantling of this long-standing program ranks with other attacks on working people across the country. Brooklyn College should be better. We seek the immediate restoration of the GCWE for the working people of New York City.

Girls get a dance and boys get to go to a baseball game. A girl-only group gets home-ec, while a boys-only group goes to the science museum. That could become the reality soon for students in Rhode Island. A bill that would allow schools to separate girls and boys from the extracurricular activities of their choice just passed in the Rhode Island legislature. It’s sitting on the Governor’s desk where he has just a few days to veto or it will become law, but there’s still time to stop it if we act now. S-12 would undermine the strong anti-discrimination laws that have protected Rhode Island children for decades by allowing public schools to limit extracurricular activity to students of one sex only. These discriminatory policies reinforce harmful sex stereotypes and fail to provide girls and boys with equal access to fair education, a principle protected by Title IX. Governor Chafee could put an end to this unfair law with a stroke of his pen. And he’s more likely to act if he knows we’re watching. It’s his duty as Governor to protect the right of all children—regardless of sex—to have equal opportunities in education by vetoing S-12 today.

What would you do if you found out your child’s teacher, who your school insists is “highly qualified,” was actually inexperienced and had actually didn’t have a credential? Great teachers are the backbone to any great school. A well-prepared teacher working with other professionals in a stable environment is critical to strengthening schools and improving learning. The U.S. House, as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Action (ESEA) reauthorization process, is considering a proposal that would continue to allow underprepared teachers who do not have adequate training or certification to be identified as ‘highly qualified’ under federal law. According to the Office for Civil Rights Data Collection, children of color are twice as likely to be taught by novice teachers. Students with disabilities are also taught disproportionately by inexperienced and unprepared teachers. Tell Congress to VOTE NO on H.R. 5 and to oppose any extension of the temporary provision allowing teachers in training to work in high-need schools, because it waters down the entry standards for new teachers. Federal law should protect students and set a standard for teaching quality that ensures all students are taught by teachers who are well-prepared for the job. “Highly qualified” should mean something – it should tell parents that the school district is serious about providing quality instruction!

Mitch Daniels was a high-ranking Bush administration official and Governor of Indiana - and it's just come out that while Governor he emailed his state's Commissioner for HIgher Education, Teresa Lubbers, demanding that she attempt to purge books by the massively influential historian Howard Zinn from education courses because he didn't like Zinn's political views. We need answers on how far it went. Having a Governor personally intervene to deny credit for studying an academic he or she didn't like is disturbing enough - what makes it even worse is Daniels just became President of Purdue University, one of the most important research universities in the United States.

Why is Governor Corbett prioritizing playing politics with our kids Under Governor Corbett, Pennsylvania's children have been hit by $1 billion in cuts to our schools and the loss of 20,000 laid-off educators and school staff. At the same time the Governor is pushing through corporate tax breaks that perpetuate the underfunding of education. This Governor’s radical agenda of mass school closings, mass firings, mass privatization and mass budget cuts is destroying our public schools, destabilizing communities, and hurting our children. For the children of Pennsylvania Governor Corbett's agenda means: • losing art, music, physical education, libraries and the rich learning environment our kids need • gutting sports and extracurricular activities • fewer social workers, school nurses, counselors, paraprofessionals and teachers and more crowded classrooms with less one-on-one time with kids • cancelled after-school programs that keep kids safe and engaged • losing services that address the social, emotional and health needs of our children • fewer quality neighborhood schools that anchor our communities This petition has been started by two young women: Deionni Martinez, a 9th grader, from Philadelphia and Jamaka Scott, a recent high school graduate, from Pittsburgh. At Kensington School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) in Philadelphia, Deionni is worried about how these cuts will impact her dreams of a future in the performing arts. Deionni practices her clarinet 90 minutes a day and immerses herself in the arts programs at her school. But what will happen when her teachers and the arts programs she loves get cut? "Students talk about the cuts all the time...and everybody is saying the same things. That they stay in school because the arts gives them something to look forward to. It is a reason to stay in school, to get through math class, because here we get to do something that makes it worthwhile. But if they cut out the programs that get us through the day, many students will just leave...they'll be gone." Jamaka just graduated from Pittsburgh Creative And Performing Arts School and knows how destabilizing these budget cuts are to students. In recent years, cuts to the music and the arts program at her school eliminated a mentor and music coach she had practiced with since 5th grade. “These cuts are bad for students because they take away the people we felt most comfortable with. It’s hard for students to do their best when your teacher changes all the time. We need more funding for our schools. Students shouldn’t be denied a good education because politicians cannot stand up for more funding.” We can't afford to turn our backs on Deionni, Jamaka or any of Pennsylvania's children. It's time for Governor Corbett and the state to prioritize children over prisons and corporate tax breaks.

We support giving the voters the right to vote on a school facilities bond this November 2013

At a time when the City University of New York (CUNY) pays an adjunct faculty member carrying a full course load as little as $25,000 per year, the university has offered former CIA Director David Petraeus $150,000 to teach a seminar next year. That is just 15-20 students. These funds surely could be better spent – to help students who cannot afford to pay the 30% tuition increase that CUNY has been implementing over five years. And it is outrageous to spend so much on one class, when some CUNY classes are so over-subscribed that students sit on windowsills and radiators because all the seats are full. CUNY has been underfunded for decades – a sad sign of our under-commitment to higher education. That means the CUNY administration needs to make every dollar count toward educating the young people of New York. CUNY’s mission is to provide a college education to the “children of the whole people,” and these expenditures of funds are an insult to the people of New York, especially those most connected to CUNY, and that mission.

I teach at City College of San Francisco, the best school I've ever taught at. The ACCJC, the accreditation commission, has fatally and unjustly revoked our college's accreditation (to take effect in July, 2014) for reasons that are politically and ideologically motivated. This outrageous attack on City College of San Francisco - one of the largest and best in the country - is an attack on all public education.