The recent cuts to higher education have been devastating — valued faculty are leaving, and Illinois students are going to schools in other states. Meanwhile, young people and their families are being crushed by the high cost of college, even at our public institutions. A bold investment in free tuition would lift the burden of debt off the next generation and provide stable funding and a wave of enthusiasm for our public universities and community colleges.

We need to be freed from the high interest rates that the loans have submerged us in...Only to not be able to find jobs OR a livable wage.

In the 1990s, I helped organize my fellow teaching assistants at the University of California, Berkeley. At the time, we were facing huge workloads, low pay and insecure health care. It took several years but with support from the UAW we ended up getting university administrators to negotiate with us and created a better workplace as a result. Flash forward to today and tens of thousands of research assistants (RAs) and teaching assistants (TAs) are still facing the same things we were when I was at Berkeley. Many are paid so little they have to work additional jobs and rely on loans to make ends meet. The good news is they’re organizing and a recent National Labor Relations Board decision restored the rights of research and teaching assistants at private universities to come together in union and negotiate collectively. But administrators at Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and other prestigious private universities are doing everything they can to stop RAs and TAs from organizing. They submitted legal arguments against the right of RAs and TAs to form a union and, when they lost, set up anti-union websites to get RAs and TAs to vote against forming a union. This anti-union campaign is just another example of the greed we’re seeing at universities across the country. As tuition continues to skyrocket for students, administrators have raised their own salaries dramatically while shifting most of the critical teaching and research work to lower-paid, temporary workers, like TAs, RAs, adjuncts and postdocs. Sign the petition now to tell administrators at Columbia, Harvard, the New School and other prestigious private universities to stop with their anti-union campaign and allow research and teaching assistants to come together in union to create a better workplace.

Our children will be harmed if this lawsuit wins because it will downgrade the quality of their education, lead to overcrowded classrooms with fewer resources, contribute to an elitist educational system where only the wealthy will get a great education, and will devalue our homes.

I am starting this petition in order to prevent Wood County schools from taking the kids summer vacation away from them. They have already cut a month off their summer break and I feel the kids need to be able to enjoy their time off in order to be ready to start school and be ready to learn at the beginning of the next school year. I have been affected because I have 3 children who can't understand why they have to go back to school so early when they have relatives and friends that live in other school systems who don't have to start back until the end of August or after Labor Day.

Transportation for ALL school aged Children and their Safety to and from school in streets filled with gun violence and gang activities

This is about those taking out student loans again being disadvantaged for taking out loans to further one's education. If one's monthly payment plan under an Income base repayment plan is $350, one's payment shouldn't be $2000 for the calculation of one's DTI for purchasing a home.

My petition is about getting someone to listen. It has affected me personally, it has affected my family, it is affecting thousands of students and something needs to change. The for profit colleges that are feeding Sallie Mae need to be controlled. Stop robbing our children, its hard to live a life when your living to pay off a debt so large because the interest rates are so high that you will never pay off your loan. Cant survive if all your money goes to your student loans.

The ability to expand the campus with future construction is necessary for Goucher to remain competitive as a small liberal arts college in a crowded market. Other local institutions, from University of Maryland College Park to Towson University, are in the midst of similar development projects, as are colleges and universities around the country. Goucher is committed to doing that in a way that preserves green space and honors our commitment to environmental sustainability. Goucher has been an upstanding member of the Towson community since moving here from Baltimore City, and has worked with its neighbors in the past to ensure that anything built on campus meets with community approval and Goucher's own exacting architectural standards. The college takes great pride in its beautiful campus and frequently hosts public events, performances, and lectures that bring the Towson audience to the college to hear national leaders, artists, and speakers. Most recently, we welcomed our neighbors and community members to campus to enjoy our Goucher Summer Stage concert series. To remain competitive, to keep bringing those benefits to the community, Goucher needs the ability to expand in a way that benefits all of us, which is why I support the college's request for re-zoning.

As educators and parents in this community, we know that parents and students don't have enough options when it comes to choosing a middle or high school. We will build for you a state of the art, new middle/high school that offers a full Project Lead The Way design and competitive sports programs to help our students achieve academic and athletic success!

I have a child in the Birmingham City Schools and I have high expectations of the school district and our community leaders.

As African American Adults and people of good will, we believe that African American History is vital to the development of African American children. As a result of our belief and as tax payers, it is our contention that African American Children have a right to learn who they are and that our tax dollars should be used to accomplish this learning objective. If the school system cannot provide this education (which they have never done in the past) it is imperative that our tax dollars be spent on programs during the school day or after school to fill this vital need for African American children. American History has developed and actively promoted many myths, fables, and fantasy and presented outright lies concerning African American people and their Contribution to American and Western civilization. The History Curriculum and Frame Works of the state of California Department of Education for students K-12 have failed to reveal who the African American student is and the achievements and contributions African Americans have made to the creation of Western civilization. The history curriculum and frameworks do not teach African American history in context with the many obstacles that African Americans faced and why they were able to overcome those obstacles and achieve extraordinary successes. A people's history defines a people's group identity and inspires and fires the imagination of a people when they learn about the accomplishments of their people, how they faced innumerable challenges, and how they were able to overcome those challenges. Your history tells you who you are and how you came into being. It tells you of your interaction with all kinds of people of this world and how you were able to work with those people to achieve positive results. The African American has a unique history that when told in context explains his/her true being that will help future generations formulate a world view and perspective that can guide him/her along their journey through life and can be summoned as a source of strength in good and bad times. History, as taught in the American Schools K-12, promotes white supremacy and black inferiority by just not discussing or obscuring the African Americans as vital and important contributors to the development of American and Western Civilization. African Americans are the invisible men/women of history. An example of this is Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa, who stated at the 2016 Presidential Republican Convention that white people are the only people who have contributed to the making of American and Western Civilization. The idea that African Americans have not contributed to civilization was the belief that was taught in schools to support the enslavement of African people centuries ago; however, this was said not 100 years ago, nor 50 years ago, nor 10 years ago, but right now!!! This type of history is destructive to the self-esteem and to the identity of African American children which produces self-hate. You have to know your history before you can fight for your future (Akon)