We greatly appreciate your interest and involvement in working toward reforming the statewide school funding system. By continuing our work on this initiative, we are taking steps to ensure that our schools will be adequately funded in the future and we can stop this yearly process of substantial budget cuts.
his email is being sent to everyone who attended our March 29 Legislative advocacy session and others who have joined our Legislative Action Team since that meeting.
*UPDATES*
All of the information discussed at the 3/29 meeting can be found on the district’s web site. http://www.mmsd.org Click on “Take Action on School Funding”
*_Advocacy_*
__Remember to write letters or call your legislators about the Governor’s budget and school funding issues. Contact information is on the district’s web site. Please do so in the next few weeks!! If you need a reminder on talking points, a copy is attached and can be found on the web site. If you have specific questions, please let us know.
Also, write letters to the newspapers. Their editorial email addresses are below:
The Capital Times:
tctvoice@madison.com
Wisconsin State Journal
wsjopine@madison.com
For the papers: 200 words or less; no attachments; provide your name, address and phone number (only your name and city will be printed)
*Mark Your Calendars – April 19 Press Conference_*
__Representative Sondy Pope-Roberts will be having a press conference on April 19 at 10:00am in the Assembly parlor (2^nd floor, west wing). *All are encouraged to attend!!* This press conference is to promote a joint resolution that she introduced in the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate that demands that the Legislature fix the state’s school-funding system by July of 2009.
The resolution says that fixing the system is the job of the legislators. It also lists some key components of a new school finance system. *If you can attend the press conference to show support for this resolution and for the legislators who have signed on, please do so. *We need to make a strong showing in support of this resolution. The resolution is linked.
Meet Your Legislators_*
*__*If you are going to attend the press conference at the Capitol it would be a good time to set up meetings to visit your legislators. Give their office a call and schedule a meeting!!! If you don’t want to go alone, there may be others on this email list who will attend with you. Get a group together and let your voices be heard. The legislative contact information was in the March 29 hand-outs or can be found on the district web site.
Spread the Word_
We need many many voices in order for our message to be heard. Start recruiting others to join this list. Ask them to write letters and call friends. If you know of others who want to be on this list, please forward their email. If you need speakers to come to your PTO or community meetings to speak on this topic, please let us know and we will arrange for someone to attend.
Next Steps
We will provide more information available later this week on a time for the next meeting as well as a list of additional action items. At the next meeting, we want to empower you to take leadership roles in moving this initiative forward. There are a lot of things we need to do. If you would like to play more of a role in helping move things forward, please send me an email.
Thank you again for your support. If you have any questions, please email me asilveira@madison.k12.wi.us or the entire board comments@madison.k12.wi.us
Arlene Silveira
Madison Board of Education
AMPS 