May 3, 2010

Dear Parents &amp; Colleagues,

<strong>Many of you have expressed becoming involved in protesting the projected cuts that our school is facing, thus I thought I would pass on the following information (I received the following via email).  I personally went on the website and it literally took less than a minute.  Hopefully you will find a minute to go on the site and use the form letter and/or add your own comments if you choose to do so.   -Bethanie</strong>

 As you know, it is great news that the early childhood program funding has been restored; unfortunately we cannot say the same for the K-12 funding.  For the past couple of weeks I have seen how painful it has been for school administrators to realize that many of their staff, our colleagues, are in danger of loosing their jobs due to the increase in class size to 35 and other budget cuts.   Our young preschoolers who will be going to Kindergarten next school year will be facing one of the most difficult conditions for their education.  Let's do something for them!!  Get involved!!

 There are “Raise Your Hand Coalition” meetings going on throughout the city.  The message is to mobilize support to influence the General Assembly and Governor Quinn to pass a FY 2011 budget which maintains education funding equal to last year's levels.  

 I also learned that this coalition just started a couple of weeks ago and it has grown exponentially very quickly because of their creation of the website <a href="http://www.noto37.org/" target="_blank">www.noto37.org</a><span style="text-decoration: underline"> </span> -- Please help spread the word to continue a communication campaign to state legislators before May 7th.  Share this e-mail with other colleagues/parents and urge them to use noto37.org.

 <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline">NoTo37.org</span></strong> is simple way to stand up for funding for our children's schools, and prevent catastrophic statewide cuts. Just visit <a href="http://www.noto37.org/" target="_blank"><strong>www.noto37.org</strong></a>, and the site does all the work for you - finds your elected officials, gives you a prewritten letter that you can edit if you wish, and sends the email-- all in about sixty seconds. This is our only chance to save our schools, so I hope you'll visit noto37.org today and spend what might be the most important minute of your day!

 Ms. Bethanie