All School Districts are WELCOME at eduACTION Tomorrow!
Help us get the word out! Please encourage your friends no matter which local school district their kids or grand kids attend – to please join us for our eduACTION event tomorrow night.
In celebration of National Education Week, Love Your Schools, The Canandaigua City School District and Four Country School Boards Association are hosting eduACTION, a regional community Educational Advocacy rally on November, 20, 2013 from 7 – 9 pm at Canandaigua City School District’s Canandaigua Academy auditorium. All residents of the Finger Lakes region are encouraged to attend as this event is really about issues affecting all NY state school districts.
“It’s absolutely critical that we take advocacy action now to try to create change in Albany this budget year”, says Laurie Riedman, organizer of Canandaigua Love Your Schools. “We hope to fill the auditorium with people who care about providing quality education for our kids at a reasonable cost, then get them to flood our representatives with the message that we want them to fight for our kids and our families!”
The purpose of EduACTION Night is to give attendees the knowledge and tools to advocate effectively to our New York State legislative representatives and to educate the media on the realities of how school funding is unfair for the majority of upstate taxpayers.
“In the 4 county region (of Ontario, Seneca, Wayne, Yates) the school districts currently receive over $22 million less state aid collectively than they did in 2008-09,” said keynote speaker and statewide funding expert Dr. Richard Timbs. “Further state aid cuts have totaled collectively more than $166 million since just 2010-11 to present. This has caused serious damage to the educational mission, local economies in the Finger Lakes region and shifted the state burden of the cost of public schools on to the backs of local taxpayers. Any loss of state support is unacceptable and must be stopped.”
“I believe attending this rally will be two hours well spent,” said Kathy Guenther, president of Four County School Board Association. “New York State residents – and thus their school board members — are having to deal with the impact of many diverse and complex issues. We hope to provide facts and data that are key to understanding these complex issues and hopefully making necessary changes to educational funding legislation.”
Featured speaker for EduACTION, Dr. Richard Timbs is a dynamic personality and expert on state aid funding and other important education issues. Dr. Timbs will reveal updated data and explain how state aid formulas are skewed to favor wealthy districts to the detriment of taxpayers and students in less wealthy school districts. He will address and explain complex issues that affect school funding including:
- Funding formulas that favor wealthy districts and disadvantage many districts in the Finger Lakes region
- What the Gap Elimination Adjustment is and why it needs to be eradicated so that funding can be restored to needy districts
- What the Tax Cap Formula is and why its unpredictability is really hurting tax payers
- What unfunded mandates are and how they increase the cost of our child’s education
View a video of Dr. Timbs for a quick overview of what he’ll be addressing and why residents should make time to attend this event.
“Unfortunately, this is a political problem,” says Mrs. Riedman. “Thus, it has a political solution – the answer is our participation! If we speak smartly and loudly –and often – our legislators will listen. And things will get better. That’s EduACTION!”
We need all of us to ACT NOW.
