Our annual trip to Tallahassee to meet with our legislators will take place

Wednesday, January 25, 2012.

We will have bus transportation available and we’ll even buy you lunch!

This is a GREAT opportunity to meet with our Duval delegation face to face to share information with them why public education funding is so important.

We will board the buses to Tallahassee from the School Board Building at 6am and will be returning to Jacksonville by 4:30pm

More information and a link to reserve your space will be available in January.

The next Advocacy Training session will be held

Saturday, January 7 from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm
at Paxon School for Advanced Studies
3239 Norman Thagard Blvd., Jacksonville, FL 32254

DCCPTA is able to offer this training through the grant received from National PTA.

The following topics will be covered:

Strategy Formation
Meeting with Decision Makers

Recent participants have said this is among the most valuable training they have EVER received – and can be applied to MANY aspects of your life – NOT just advocating for good schools.

Current local unit PTA Board members are especially encouraged to attend – but the training is open to ANYONE in the district.

The training is FREE – but you must reserve a space as we are limited to 30 participants. Refreshments will be provided!

Registration will open soon.

Goals:
• Adequate funding for Public School Education (Pre-K – 12)
• STOP Unfunded Mandates
• Eliminate or Lower Class Size Amendment penalties

Organizational Considerations: (Who we are, what we have) We are parents; we are voters; we are the guardians, the caretakers, the protectors, the champions, the voices for over 123,000 children in our District.

Tactics: Postcard Campaign. We are expressing our valid and rational desires for public education in this state in a positive and polite manner, pleasantly and persistently. We want to make an impression and be memorable, so each of our elected officials realizes education funding is important and important to many of their constituents.

Here are a few fun ideas to get your local unit parents and teachers MOTIVATED to participate in this campaign:

Sand pails (from the Dollar Store) filled with donut holes. “Our Education Bucket has holes in it! Please help!” Make a cute display and offer cider or coffee/tea and donut holes during a postcard writing hour in the lounge, the cafeteria or the school courtyard.

You and a few of your friends (aka other passionate parents) take clipboards and ask parents sitting in the car-rider line to fill out a postcard while they wait in line. Better yet, ask them to turn off their engines and HELP YOU get a dozen postcards signed. Have some “talking points” printed and taped to the clipboards.
If your school PTA uses social media or email newsletters, or constant contact, send them an invite to participate in the postcard writing campaign. Make it at a variety of times to accommodate all schedules.

Give away a candy cane to each writer.
Ask the homeroom parents to collect postcards from the other parents in the class. (A little competition is always good: you can offer a reward to the homeroom parent who collects the most postcards or the class with the most parent participation wins a gift card for the teacher.

Have a “Support Your Child and Their Teacher” campaign. The teacher who has the most parents write postcards wins a (lunch certificate, hot chocolate mix and mug, movie tickets, a school spirit tee shirt etc.). Remember though, this is not to be a burden on the teachers; this is a PTA event, although many teachers are very willing to support and encourage our efforts.

Place a group of clocks on a table and make a poster to the effect of: “Do you know what time it is? Time to let Tallahassee know Education is important!”

Dress like elves, and be Santa’s helpers, checking to see who’s naughty and nice, nice equals those who send holiday wishes. Or: Don’t be a Grinch, write your postcards!

For High Schools, combine our postcard campaign with a voter registration drive.

Have a “Take 5!” Take 5 minutes and write as many cards as you can in 5 minutes.

Convey your gratitude for those who have helped your children along the way, whether it is a neighbor, scout leader, Sunday school teacher, and/or coach and ask them to write one postcard as well.

Join us for grassroots advocacy training made possible by the CCSSI grant.

Dec 3

9:15am check in
9:30am. Developing issue strategies
11am. Building coalitions
12:30pm done

This training is currently scheduled to be held at Andrew Jackson High School.
3816 N Main St
Jacksonville, FL 32206

Register NOW

Second part of this training (Meeting with Decision Makers & Working with the Media) will be held the first Saturday of January.

Have your parents, teachers, SAC, and community members write a few sentences as to what they want for schools in our district on these festive holiday cards provided by the CCSSI grant.

Use your VOICE!

Campaign starts Nov 14th and will run to Dec 1st.
Cards and talking points from the DCPS Legislative Coalition can be picked up at the Nov 15th DCC PTA General Meeting or contact Vickie at WEB@DCCPTA.org to arrange for drop of cards to your unit. MAKE SURE – all cards need a ZIP code. This will drive home to our legislators that our members are paying attention.

The first week of Dec, we ask units to send their cards back through school mail to the Teachers’ Supply Depot. From there DCC will hand deliver / mail all the cards to our State Legislators.

Prizes will be awarded for the schools / units that turn in the most cards ($100 gift card to Office Depot or Staples). All schools that participate in this postcard campaign and the next one will be eligible for a raffle chance for another $100 gift card, as well as earn the “I Have A Voice” legislative award.

The long term goal of the coalition is to ask for the State to come up with a sustainable funding source for public education.

Short Term Issues that the coalition asked the Duval Delegation to help with:

1. Class Size Amendment – F.S. 1003.03
   
   
   • Challenge: It is not feasible to require school districts to pay a penalty for failure to comply with class size requirements when funding has been reduced $1,000 per student or 16% over the last five years.
     
     
   • Recommendation: In an environment of continual revenue reductions and to avoid additional revenue reductions for school districts, explore other ways of having accountability without a monetary penalty. Especially where districts such as Duval Public Schools have expended all prior year and committed all current year class size funding and supplemented with general funds to comply with class size requirements.

2. Instructional Materials – F.S. 1006.40(2)
   
   
   • Challenge: State mandate to purchase new textbooks is too restrictive.
     
     
   • Recommendations: Purchases must be made within the first 4 years 2 years after the effective date of the adoption cycle; and
     
     Allow the purchase of instructional materials or other items having intellectual content that are aligned to the State standards and shall be used instead of State-adopted core materials described in section 1004.40(1) which assist in the instruction of a subject or course.

3. Opportunity Scholarship Program – F. S. 1002.38
   
   
   • Challenge: The Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) is extremely disruptive given the short timeline, affects a greater number of schools and students, adds significant unfunded costs and is not effective in increasing student achievement.
     
     
   • Recommendations:
     
     
     1. Provide 1 year extension to transfer decision implementation
        
     2. Revise criteria to 2010-11 standards for eligibility; and
        
     3. Do not provide transportation for students leaving their neighborhood school.

4. Differentiated Accountability – F.S. 1008.33
   
   
   • Challenge: The lack of local control and flexibility as well as the duplication of services within the DA Model requires additional time and funding and limits district’s ability to focus on the priority needs of our students.
     
     
   • Recommendation: Establish local control over accountability requirements and funding to schools by reducing the number of required reading, mathematics and science coaches employed by the FLDOE DA Regional offices by 80% of the allocated budget. This will enable the district to provide targeted support and better alignment of resources to meet student needs.

Download DCPS Legislative Agenda 2011 – Detail

If you are interested in attending the iAdvocate Training – Click here to register.

National PTA training will be offered to Northeast Florida citizens to help them become better advocates. We will also be sharing information about the Common Core State Standards Initative that will soon be impacting our Florida students.

JOIN US as we explore how our iAdvocate for Kids Grassroots Advocacy Leadership Program:

Indenties Issues, Creates Issue Strategies, Builds Coalitions, How to meet with Decision Makers, and working with Media.

This training is perfect for the PTA Leadership / Programs VPs and other who would would like a more indepth training on being a grassroot advocate. It will provide the big picture view of how to be better advocates for our children. It will also allow the opportunity for those individuals who would like to train others in grassroots advocacy to become part of the DCC PTA iAdvocate Trainers Committee.

Refreshments and lunch will be served.

REGISTER HERE

Join us for our first workshop on iAdvocate Grassroots Advocacy

Topics covered: Meeting with Decision Makers & Working with the Media

9:30am – noon

The Shultz Center ***new location

Refreshments provided. Open to all. Seating Limited to 50. Registration is now open – Click here to register.