Love Your Schools

Did you get one of these stickers today? If not – there is still time. They are free. All they cost is you taking time to exercise your right to vote and help us keep a quality education in your school.  You can also ensure that the Wood Library will continue to meet the needs of our community!

According to a PEW research study – voters fall into four categories: Regular voters; Intermittent voters; Registered but rare voters and Unregistered adults.  Regular voters make up of roughly 35% of the population — 20% of us don’t vote regularly and 23% of registered but rare voters make it to the polls most likely because they don’t know enough about what is up for vote (76% reported this as the reason).  And unfortunately 22% of our population are not registered so they can’t vote.

If you want more info on what the school budget vote is and the propositions go here.

Which category will you fall into today?  Please get out and vote!

We need all of us to ACT NOW.

Our state legislators are NOW FIRMING UP OUR STATE BUDGET. It was our impression that our Senators and Assemblymen/women were finally getting the message from us — that we need them to eliminate the Gap Elimination Adjustment quickly. We thought there was movement toward reinstating some of this aid to our schools. That is NOT the case.

On March 14 — it appears that the supportive rhetoric and promises of help have been broken, ignored or gutted by both the Senate AND the Assembly in their one-house budget bills.

Each house bill did precious little to restore the significant GEA deductions we all have had to bear over the past four years because they have introduced new proposals to channel that money elsewhere.

This has to stop and if you don’t do anything about it NOW – it won’t.

PLEASE click the links below and take a minute to call or email our Senator and Assemblyman NOW and ask them to NOT support this diversion of funds. We need some of that promised funding to come back to us – not go elsewhere.

Please – I urge you to do this now before you forget. You don’t have to attend a meeting – please just do this now. We can make a difference if our voices are heard.

CLICK HERE FOR A SAMPLE LETTER you can use for calls and e-mails/letters.

CLICK HERE for sample Tweets for your use.

CLICK HERE for contact information for state Senators.

CLICK HERE for contact information for state Assembly members.

THANK YOU!

  We want you to attend our next Love Your Schools Meeting – Feb 6th in the Ewing Room at the Wood Library in Canandaigua.

Come join us as we  brainstorm how we can improve our May Celebrate Schools Rally (this year it will be May 17th) as well as organize our communications plans for school budget information; voter registration outreach and firm up plans for two roundtable discussions being planned with two of our legislators right here in Canandaigua!  (Yes, they answered our letters and you’ll get an opportunity to sit across the table and have a conversation about what is important to you!)

SOOOOO.. Please put this date on your calendar — we NEED you!

Neither sleet, rain, snow or frigid temps can stop Love Your Schools from meeting to help ensure a high quality education continues in Canandaigua!  Our meeting is on TONIGHT  despite the school closure.  In fact, we were hoping that now that all school events have been cancelled – you all can join us now for our meeting at WOOD Library tonight from 7 – 8:30 pm.  We hope to see you there!  On our agenda is how we can get more folks involved in our efforts; what our priorities are for 2014 — as well as an update on our advocacy efforts (eduACTION activities) and a proposal for us to take a stand on Common Core.  We’ll also discuss plans for our May Celebrate Schools rally.  So join us for the conversation;  some sweets and possibly some hot beverages as well!

We will be having a Love Your Schools Meeting Jan 7th at 7 pm at The Wood Library in Canandaigua.   Bring a friend or two!

Please join us so we can continue our efforts in 2014. We’ve been working with a few dedicated folks and really need more people to help if we are to have greater impact on educational advocacy and maintaining a high quality education in Canandaigua!

This just in — Move On has started to circulate an electronic petition that will be sent to the NY Board of Regents letting them know that we need equitable funding for education in New York State!

Please take 2 min to read this and sign it!  It’s important to get our voice heard NOW – while there is still hope and time that they can make changes to the budget to properly fund public education!

Here is the petition:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/fund-education-fairly?source=s.icn.em.mt&r_by=9644968

To share this on FB: Go to the LYS FaceBook page to share our post / link:https://www.facebook.com/LoveYourSchools

Thanks for you time and hope you’ll join us!

Dr. Rick Timbs in Action. (Photo Courtesy of Finger Lakes Times)

Photo courtesy of Finger Lakes Times

First let me say a BIG Thank you to all those that helped make the EduACTION Rally happen.

Special thanks go to the amazing Love Your Schools team, The Canandaigua School District for hosting us as well as Four County School Boards Association for co-sponsoring the event. And a big thank you goes of course to our keynote speaker – Dr. Rick Timbs and our Advocacy speaker: Bob McKeveny, Superintendent in Seneca Falls.

Although we did gather about  200 people – many from neighboring school districts —  to hear Dr. Rick Timbs share some amazing facts about how our region is getting short changed when it comes to Educational Funding  – it was sad there were were only a hand full of parents and community members.  A good portion of the audience was made up of  school, superintendents, administration and school board members from over 16 school districts.

Bob McKeveny of Seneca Falls (photo courtesy of Finger Lakes Times)

Bob McKeveny of Seneca Falls (photo courtesy of Finger Lakes Times)

For the many of you not able to join us for this amazing night – I hope to post some excerpts from his presentation with some data points explained  soon — so check back for that.  In the meantime, feel free to download a PDF of his presentation in our eduACTION section of this website.

Thank you to the Finger Lakes Times and Canandaigua Messenger Post for publishing great articles on the Rally both pre- and post.   Just today  the Messenger posted a great opinion op ed on the subject:

http://www.mpnnow.com/article/20131201/OPINION/131209985/2011/OPINION

Here is other coverage:

http://www.fltimes.com/news/article_9bd075aa-52c3-11e3-bf6f-0019bb2963f4.html

http://www.fltimes.com/news/article_d85b8088-55e7-11e3-8586-001a4bcf887a.html

http://www.mpnnow.com/article/20131119/NEWS/131119635/1994/NEWS

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/PittsfordBlog/2013/11/20/love-your-school/3646365/

http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/rochester/urban-action-1120/Content?oid=2299220