Dear McGaugh Families,
Thank you for your generous financial support to Project SEEK; their Call to Action was a success and you donated enough money to fully fund the computer lab, media center and art lab. Our kids are so fortunate to have such dedicated, talented people investing so much into their futures.
We now need your ideas. Your PTA representatives are meeting with state legislators on Tuesday, February 7th, after our yearly legislation conference in Sacramento. We know that more budget cuts are coming, so we need to be practical and work with this reality – how do we run things more efficiently?
For example, we could remove the strings attached to state funding, such as required testing and reporting; we need to focus on the basics now and bring back additional testing when we have more money to pay for this. Also, we currently must spend about $1,000 per classroom to mount an Elmo projector – even if the hardware is already installed and it's just a matter of moving already existing equipment around in the room. Parents could easily volunteer to do this so we could save that money for teachers.
Please give our state representatives, Assemblyman Silva and Senator Harman, ideas on how we can protect our kids' education and stretch our educational dollars a bit further. Send your thoughts to Tammy Metzger by Monday, February 7th, and she'll incorporate your responses into her letter.
Or, send your thoughts directly to Assemblyman Jim Silva through his website at
http://arc.asm.ca.gov/member/67/ and Senator Tom Harman at
http://cssrc.us/web/35/default.aspx. If you send Tammy a copy of your letter, she'll hand deliver it to their offices and will mention key points of various letters during the meetings. A well written letter -- that is read by a high level staffer -- is one of the best ways you can make a difference and affect policy.
Thank you for your support!
