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GET MAD – GET MOVING

You need to contact your legislators now to help prevent massive cuts to E-12 education during the 2009 legislative session.  We have reached a crucial point in the legislative session.  What happens in the next two weeks will likely determine education’s fate for the next two years.  Your action is urgently needed to protect our kids’ futures!

You need to pick up the phone, go to the computer, or pick up a pen and paper and contact the Governor, legislative leadership, the E-12 committee chairs and your own local legislator with a simple message:  Cuts to E-12 education are not acceptable!

In our state budgeting debate, all options, including increased taxes, need to be considered as part of any real and meaningful structural balancing of our state budget.

Without new revenue, the Governor and the Legislature will be forced to cut E-12 education significantly, use massive accounting shifts, and push more funding onto the property tax.

IF you don’t speak out NOW, be prepared for drastic measures, which may include:

• Significant real cuts in state aid to school districts that will result in larger class sizes and dramatically reduced opportunities for students.
• Tax and aid shifts that result in real cuts in per pupil funding and damage school district cash flow and long term planning capability.  The cost of this shift could well be in excess of $30 per pupil.
• A fund balance penalty that could reduce or erase all existing school fund balances.

We need your calls, letters, and emails.  Legislators are telling us that they are not hearing from people who are concerned about cuts to education.  Other lobbying groups are contacting legislators daily, many of them complaining that education already “has enough.”  Make it clear that education has NOT been held harmless in the past and we will certainly be harming our kids and their futures if we don’t invest in education.

Get MAD and get MOVING.  The future is in your hands!

Alliance for Student Achievement

Members:  Association of Metropolitan School Districts ▪ Education Minnesota ▪ Minnesota Association of School Administrators▪ Minnesota Association of School Business Officials ▪ Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals▪ Minnesota Elementary School Principals Association ▪ Minnesota Parent Teacher Association▪

Minnesota Rural Education Association ▪ Minnesota School Boards Association ▪ Schools for Equity in Education

Partners:  Minnesota School Public Relations Association ▪ Parents United for Public Schools ▪ Minnesota Community Education Association ▪ Minnesota Association of Special Education ▪ Ready4K

 

 Alliance for Student Achievement  
 Call to Action