Is Gov.Corbett deliberately trying to undermine education in PA? Is this part of Norquist's agenda, to whom Corbett pays homage? What's going on? Gov. Corbett, restore funding to the schools. You were hired to serve the citizens of PA, not Norquist.

The task force recommendations, which are opposed by students and educators, will reduce access to education, funnel students into select educational tracks, and force students into higher student loan debt. Task force funding is supplied by organizations who will benefit from increased student loans and increased use of technology.

In Culver City, parents can set up nonprofit organizations and pool donations to provide a better education for our children. For many years parent's donations have paid for native speaking adjuncts (at El Marino) to provide vital help in language immersion classrooms, as well as other booster club supported positions, such as classroom helpers at Linwood E. Howe. Other schools have similar programs, or would like to start similar programs. 1- The union "Association of Classified Employees" or ACE wants to take over these programs and force booster club financed adjuncts and other part time employees to join the union, and they threaten a lawsuit. 2- Since the same small pool of donations would have to pay for union dues, administrative overhead and higher union wages, our kids may only receive about half of the attention they get now. Parents will lose control of their programs and see their donations pay for very little. Many parents may stop donating altogether, effectively killing the programs. 3- The Culver City school board needs a reason to stand up to the union. By signing this petition you are adding your voice to ask the school board to protect parent-funded volunteer programs and services across the entire Culver City Unified School District. ************************************************************************************** We are about to lose one of the best parts of our children's education: our volunteers, and our parent-supported positions. The Culver City School District (CCUSD) is under threat of a lawsuit by the Association of Classified Employees (ACE). The district told parents that all ACE believes that parent-funded positions can be seen as taking away work from members of their union. Parent leaders at all schools are working together to fight this threat! We need your help and support. Parents were recently informed that the Association of Classified Employees (ACE) President Debbie Hamme has threatened to file a grievance, seeking to force all Culver City Unified School District (CCUSD) parent-funded booster clubs to cease and desist the employment of paid classroom volunteers. ORIGIN OF THE CRISIS According to the district, the origin of this "crisis" is the threat of a lawsuit against the district issued by the leader of the Association of Classified Employees, Debbi Hamme. The district has told parents that all booster club (parent-funded) positions and other volunteer work by parents that could be seen as taking away work from members of Ms. Hamme's association may have to stop. The parents would then be responsible to give enough funds to the district so that it could hire union members of ACE for those positions. Moreover, due to union and district requirements, the current paid volunteers are likely to be fired and replaced. Alternatively the current paid workers would be forced to join the union. Because the current wages of the booster club funded positions are raised 100 percent by the parents - at zero cost to the district - the union further wants the booster clubs to continue to fund raise and send the money directly to the district to pay union employees. Because the unions require that all employees be paid the union scale, the booster clubs would have to raise significantly more money to pay the higher wages. The booster clubs would be expected to continue paying for the programs, but lose all rights of hiring, control, supervision or decision-making. We do not have confidence that Culver City parents will donate directly to the district, and simply trust the district to use the money wisely, that parents will pay any additional overhead and that the district will somehow find the resources to administer and supervise the programs. The consensus is that parents will not continue to fund under those circumstances. WHAT WE WANT We believe that parent-funded programs work. In this current economic climate, when more and more funds are being diverted from education, parents have stepped up to fill the gap. Culver City nonprofit booster clubs have come up with creative ways to provide necessary workers to the classrooms that our school district does not supply on its own. No booster club supported jobs have taken employment away from any union member. • We ask CCUSD to protect the volunteers and parent-supported services across CCUSD to the maximum extent allowed by law. • We want the school district to treat the parents equitably. • We insist that our school district give ALL parents at ALL schools the right to fund-raise for positions that are not supplied by the school district, but which have been identified as necessary in our children’s education. • We want CCUSD to give parents at all schools the right to fund raise for positions and then manage those positions by their nonprofit in coordination with the site principal (as is the right of any independent contractor). CASE EXAMPLES: LINWOOD E. HOWE had created and fund-raised for four in-class instructional assistants for the 2010-11 year and had fund raised enough for six this year. Under threat of legal action from ACE, the Linwood E Howe Boosters agreed to a compromise, which reduced the scale of the program significantly. Instead of six instructional assistants, the parents had to scale back and have gone most of the year with three part-time positions. Based on that experience, the head of the booster club at Lin Howe is not confident the program will be able to continue without a clear policy from the school board. EL MARINO The leaders of the 23 year years strong Advocates for Language Learning El Marino (ALLEM) at El Marino were also told that they could no longer run the adjunct program. Adjuncts are native language support providers, who help the teachers and students in the classroom, in either Japanese or Spanish. They would have to turn over all the money they privately fund-raised to the district and the district would hire the union members. According to t...

We need to give support and funding to our schools in Arizona. Every year the schools are scrambling around trying to figure out where they can cut costs, what teachers and support personnel they can lay off, and what schools to close. We have to put money where our mouths are. The children are our future and need to be our first priority.

Oregon will soon be making some enormous changes to our educational system. These changes are coming at us fast. But guess what? Most of the people responsible for these changes are not educators--they are politicians, CEOs, and administrators. We need professional educators at the helm of this ship, not people outside the profession. Please help us to make this happen. Scott Dionne

Oregon will soon be making some enormous changes to our educational system. These changes are coming at us fast. But guess what? Most of the people responsible for these changes are NOT educator--they are politicians, CEOs, and administrators. We need change agents who are professional educators to oversee these changes. Help us to make this happen.

The Utah Legislature is attempting to force moral views into the school system to the detriment of children and public health by passing a law that would ban the talk of contraceptives in health and sex education classes, or allow schools to skip sex education all together. Current state law requires teaching abstinence-only programs and educators are not allowed to advocate the use of contraception. Gov. Herbert must be told that we owe our children more than an unrealistic ideal: we owe them an education, and the knowledge that will help them protect themselves.

It is time to launch a citizen's right to use his or her money for the good of the children in his or her community. It is time to make it law that any parent, regardless of income, gender, race, religious affiliation, or status in life should have the right to use his or her share of his school district's per child funding, or ideally state funding, in the form of a voucher that would permit him or her to send their child to the school of their choice, so long as the money is earmarked for teaching of non-religious subjects in that school of choice. It should not matter if the school is itself religiously affiliated, as long as it meets state and district standards of pedagogy for subjects like mathematics, reading, grammar, writing, spelling, geography, history and the social sciences, and no public money is used to fund the teaching of religion. It is hypocritical to limit at the K-12 level what we do not limit at the post-secondary level. We permit PHEAA and federal grants to be used at private and religious affiliated post-secondary schools. Take as an example schools like Catholic Villanova and St. Joseph's University, or private University of Pennsylvania or Dusquesne, etc. We never limit the use of public funds to just the neighborhood community college, for example. We sponsor our children's effort to achieve the best. If we are willing to adequately fund our children and expand their choices once they graduate from high school, should we not also maximize their choices in getting into high school and college in the first place? Vouchers should, by law, be available to every child in the Commonwealth. FInally, we should stop segregating children by school based upon how much housing their parents can afford. All state funding is needed, not local funding, as the major source of school funding. Adjustments can be made that adjust funding per student based on real-evidence of cost regionally, but otherwise funding should be evenly distributed. This may require all districts to pool their resources, or a legistaltively derermined portion of their resources, in a state pool, to be re-distributed per child. Provisions to reimburse home-schoolers for approved and verifiable costs will be determined by the Legislature.

Tony Frank and the entire CSU administration has committed to a vision of excellence in everything the university does. Part of that vision includes the possibility of building a new on-campus stadium. As such, CSU has formed a committee to investigate the feasibility of such a project. We're voicing our support for that process and the potential for such a stadium to be built.

In the state of Missouri, there are currently college students that do not qualify for state scholarships that their colleagues do because they have not yet completed a high school diploma or GED. Let's bring this to the attention of the state of Missouri and try to level the playing field for the sake of our students!

no more cuts in teaching staff in New LOndon schools,or in the art &music depts especially. Reduce #'s of students per teacher, many students here are non-english speaking,placing an extra burden on the already stretched out reduced teaching staff. Local population made up from many nations, newly arrived. drawn here largely by the 2 casinos nearby.

Our lawmakers are taking funds that educate our children and giving these funds to corporations. We will continue to lose teachers and damage our school children 's future if lawmakers continue to cut education funding!