This petition is intended to expose and put an end to certain predatory policies/practices by the servicer of thousands of educational loans in the United States. I ask that you read it carefully, sign it, and forward it to all of your friends as soon as possible to protect the thousands of borrowers currently being subjected to the disenfranchising practices described below so that we can put an end to the victimization of American student loan borrowers. Several months ago, Acapita Education Finance Corporation (“ACAPITA”), the lender for thousands of federally guaranteed student loans, transferred the servicing responsibility of thousands of the student loans owned by ACAPITA from Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. ("ACS") to Brazos Loan Servicing, Inc. ("BRAZOS"). ACAPITA made this change in student loan servicers without advance notice to its borrowers or granting its borrowers an opportunity to object to this change. While BRAZOS claims to have loan servicing policies which comply with the letter of the law, BRAZOS's loan servicing policies are significantly different from those of ACS, and these differences serve to materially disadvantage and place enormous administrative, temporal and financial burdens on borrowers whose student loans are currently serviced by BRAZOS. Some examples of the differences between ACS's loan servicing policies/practices and those of BRAZOS which serve to disadvantage borrowers include the following: 1. While ACS's student loan servicing system allows borrowers to schedule as many payments as borrowers desire on ACS’s website for up to a month into the future, BRAZOS's online payment system currently does not accept more than ONE monthly payment from a borrower per month for any loan currently in repayment. In order to make more than one instant payment in a month during a period that a borrower's loan is in repayment, BRAZOS requires the borrower to call BRAZOS's office in Texas during BRAZOS's business hours. Hold times to reach BRAZOS representatives often easily exceed 30 minutes, and in the event that a borrower is finally able to reach a representative, the borrower must give a BRAZOS representative the borrower's bank account information ANEW EACH TIME he or she calls BRAZOS. This means that, including hold time, borrower identity verification and the repeated verbal transmission of bank account information over the phone, it can easily take over 45 minutes just to make a payment on a student loan after one has already made a payment online in any particular month. Consequently, a working borrower can easily spend almost his or her entire lunch hour just attempting to make an additional payment on his or her student loan, placing a material administrative burden on the borrower and rendering payments on loans serviced by BRAZOS (beyond one payment per month) harder to make. Further, if a borrower is unable to get through to a BRAZOS representative and complete a payment transaction before 3pm on any business day, one more day of interest accrues on the borrower's account than would otherwise have been the case. This can amount to hundreds or thousands of dollars per year of unnecessary interest accumulation, depending on the borrower’s loan balance. The effect of this policy/practice of limiting a borrower’s ability to make more than one payment online per month is to give a borrower with a loan serviced by Brazos which is currently in repayment a series of increasingly burdensome options to make more than one payment per month. Such options are basically limited to the following: (a) accruing temporal, postage and interest costs to physically send payment to BRAZOS via the United States Postal Service and wait for the USPS to deliver the payment to BRAZOS, helplessly allowing hundreds or potentially thousands of dollars per year in interest (depending on the size of the loan) to accrue on the borrower’s loan while payments are in transit; (b) incurring substantial accumulated costs to pay a courier service for expedited physical delivery of payment to BRAZOS, which, while not having the same effect as an instant payment, can still save hundreds or even thousands of dollars of in interest per year, depending on the size of the subject loan; or (c) experiencing stressful and burdensome telephone hold times which, combined with redundant conversations with customer service representatives (which can easily exceed 45 minutes per instance as noted above); or (d) waiting until the following month to make the next month’s payment, helplessly accruing hundreds or potentially thousands of dollars of unnecessary interest on such loans per year (depending on the size of the subject loans) in the process. 2. While ACS’s student loan servicing system allows borrowers to make instant payments online during periods of deferment and/or forbearance, BRAZOS’s loan servicing system currently does NOT allow borrowers with loans in deferment and/or forbearance serviced by BRAZOS to make instant payments online AT ALL. Consequently, a borrower in deferment or forbearance who desires to make an instant payment MUST call BRAZOS’s office to do so. The effect of this policy is to give a borrower whose loans which are currently in deferment or forbearance and serviced by BRAZOS a series of increasingly burdensome options to make payments on such loans. Such options are limited to: (a) Accruing temporal, postage and interest costs to physically send payment to BRAZOS via the United States Postal Service and wait for the Postal Service to deliver the payment to BRAZOS, helplessly allowing hundreds or potentially thousands of dollars per year in interest to accrue on the borrower’s loan while payments are in transit, unless some portion of the borrower’s loans being serviced by BRAZOS are federally subsidized, in which case the interest on such subsidized loans is paid by the government while such loans while in deferment, but inter...

We as the students, parents, and wider community believe that while district leadership must address monetary issues, they are obligated to make decisions that are in best interest of ALL students. Merging Paul Robeson High School into Sayre High School is not in the best interest of ALL students involved.

The Maryland Institute College of Art has announced the closing of the Jewelry Design program! This nationally recognized program has produced hundreds of award winning jewelry designers. As America grows its "new" manufacturing sector, we feel closing the jewelry design program at MICA is a bad decision for Baltimore and America's need for young "artrepreneurs."

With a possible 160s schools closing in Chicago, parents will need time to select schools. Disclosure by March 31, 2013 with 60 days of community input will make official notification available May 30. Teachers also need to know the status of employment before May 31, 2013. ASK your legislators to decrease the community input process by 30 days.

With 160s schools closing parents will need time to select schools. Disclosure by March 31, 2013 with 60 days of community input will make official notification available May 30. Teachers also need to know the status of employment before May 31, 2013. ASK your legislators to decrease the community input process by 30 days.

Students are not mass produced robots and since each student learns differently and brings his or her own set of unique issues to teaching learning/dynamic a student's educational growth cannot be measured by a great emphasis on standardized tests. Furthermore a one size fits all teacher evaluation framework assumes a number of assumptions that are not necessarily true for all students.

State testing should not be used to dictate curricula nor deprive struggling schools with needed funding. Rather, it should be a tool to identify a student's academic strengths and natural proclivities. The discouraging results of the punitive policies of "NCLB" have led to: increased class sizes, school closures and furthermore, have reduced educators to "teaching to the test"; thereby defining a limiting notion of academic success. End the proliferation of "high stakes testing" mandates beleaguering our public schools. Cease and desist the promotion of unqualified tests which serve to benefit the test makers but not the test takers. Stem the flow of tax dollars away from for-profit corporations. Halt the march towards de-professionalization of educators. Acknowledge that the corporate model does not produce positive results in the classroom. Channel resources back into the classroom in order to compensate dedicated teachers, hire new teachers (who have invested in classical training), provide class materials, and support programming which enhances public education. It is crucial that we invigorate the public education system with well-rounded curricula which strongly supports the arts, foreign languages, science, technology, crafts, appropriate training in a broad range of physical education and good citizenship opportunities, as well as the three Rs. In this way, we would be enabled to invest in successful individuals who are well-primed to makes valuable contributions to our social fabric.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of school closings or charter school expansion, you should be very concerned by the recent trend of massive school closings and rapid expansion of charter schools. Many charter schools are expanding at a faster rate than can be sustained financially or academically. As a result, some charters have not been able to sustain the academic progress or operating stability they experienced in the past. Likewise, the wholesale closure of public schools has caused a shock in the system that extends beyond the classrooms. The social and economic costs outweigh any savings to be gained. These costs include disruption to students' learning; increased violence; displacement of teachers; reduction in salaries and costs of starting up new schools and disposing of public assets (which could be better spent in the classroom). It should be noted that rapid expansion of any type of school--whether charter, selective enrollment, magnet or neighborhood--without the financial capacity or sufficient population will result in failure. Chicago Public Schools, if left to its own devices, will continue to start new charter schools in communities with declining populations. As a result, Chicago Public Schools will continue to have more available seats than students. CPS has at one point claimed that there are 600,000 seats in the system, and only 400,000 students. CPS closed 50 schools in 2013 in an effort to correct the problem. Unfortunately, the data they used to make decisions were incomplete and inaccurate. CPS engaged a firm in 2013 to help them complete a master facilities planning process. The study--which only included half of CPS's school buildings-- wasn't scheduled to have been completed until June, 2014--more than a year after the schools were closed. In the interim, CPS proceeded to close schools without a master facilities plan in place. CPS opened 7 more charter schools in 2015, and is now poised to open or expand 20 more charter schools and open 12 new alternative high schools in 2016. This, in spite of the fact that there is excess capacity among traditional and charter schools. The consequences of closing schools are significant, and should not be taken lightly. Studies have shown that students typically lose 6 months' academic achievement as a result of transferring to different schools. Unfortunately, the receiving schools often perform at the same levels or worse than the schools that close. New schools take at least 5 years to fully develop. On top of that, a Catalyst Chicago study of Chicago charter school finances revealed that nearly 50% have had significant cash flow problems in recent years, including challenges funding state mandated contributions to teacher pension plans. This does not bode very well for long term sustainability for some charter schools. Unfortunately, the children who are most likely to be impacted are the ones who can least afford the disruptions.

The Federal ParentPlus loan program for public post secondary education is substantially more expensive than the Federal Student Subsidized loan. Make terms and rates the same as Fed Sub Student loans.

The average student loan is $30,000. College tuition at both public and private universities has been escalating way beyond inflation. High tuition is one of the main causes for the widening gap between rich and poor. Faculty will be better off with affordable tuition rather than pricing it out of the reach of the middle class. The tuition income should be directed mostly at education rather than adminitration. The financial stability of many colleges and universities is threatened by out of reach tuition and the alternative of free online courses. Ensuring affordable tuition is both the financial and moral answer.

In 2011, the Governor of TN was considering allocating TN Lottery Reserves to help support TN budget deficit. It has been reported that the CEO of the TN Lottery earns $600K a year. Rural schools are receiving after-school funds to purchase MacBooks while most of the proceeds come from the poor inter-city lottery players who do not even have an after-school program. So, is this reverse Robin Hood? Before moving to TN from GA, I thought the GA Lottery was bad, cutting back funding every year. At least the GA Lottery pays 100% of a high achieving college freshman's tuition. $4,000 does not pay even half the tuition for any college my son's applying to attend here in TN. According to the 2012 Quality Counts report from the Education Research Center TN scored in the bottom 10 of the 50 states in each of the four tested areas in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Currently, TN students ranked second to last on the ACT test and approximately 21% of TN adults hold a college degree, far below the national average. Our children's education should be out top priority, and the mishandling and misappropriation of TN Lottery funds needs to stop.

My son is arguably smarter than most of his teachers. Yet they won't move him ahead in grade level. In essence, they're sucking his incentive to improve his knowledge. I have consistently been promised they will challenge him and have failed...............