California Educator

September 09

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CTA photo by Dave Earl Carpenter Photo by Scott Buschman ACTION left: Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (center) joins CTA Executive Director Carolyn Doggett, Vice President Dean Vogel, President David A. Sanchez, and Secretary- Treasurer Gail Mendes for a Summer Institute town hall meeting at UCLA. below: Kathy Bakhit, of the Citrus College Faculty Association, speaks at the town hall meeting at Presidents Conference in Asilomar. CTA creates new organizing campaign to set the stage for changes in Sacramento At summer conferences this year, CTA leaders fo- cused their efforts on organizing around the massive cuts to public education, rallying local communities to engage in the fight, and changing the two-thirds rule to pass a budget and approve new revenues. In response to the sad state of public education funding in Cali- fornia, CTA is mobilizing mem- bers with a major organizing cam- paign to bring awareness to the more than $17 billion in cuts. The new strategy encourages every lo- cal affiliate to plan events to reach their local communities and stand up for our schools. (You can get in- volved by logging on to www. standupforschools.org. See sidebar on facing page.) While parents and members of the community drive by schools in their neighborhoods and see the grass is groomed and the flag is up, many have no idea how bad the situation is inside California schools, how schools are starving for additional resources. “Public education has taken a beating,” said CTA President Da- vid A. Sanchez at Summer Institute in Los Angeles. “It doesn’t do our students any good for us to just grin and bear it and pretend every- thing’s okay.” The summer conferences set the stage for discussing the new approach CTA leaders have envi- sioned for organizing against the latest massive cuts. Members at- tending the Presidents Confer- ence and Summer Institute talked Presidents Conference Leaders at the first-ever town hall meeting during Presidents Conference in Asilomar offered personal input on how to educate community members and the pub- about tactics members might use to get the word out, such as not masking the problem and letting parents know how bad things are at school. Some talked about holding town hall meetings to en- gage the public in the discussions. Others spoke about the necessity of changing the two-thirds vote to secure and safeguard funding for public education. The follow- ing is what members at the con- ferences had to say.

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