To:                               Local Presidents and Organizing Staff

From:                           Linda Bridges, Texas AFT President

Date:                           June 1, 2010

Subject:           State Legislative Advocacy Toolkit, First Installment

 

Attached you will find an initial set of tools you can begin using over the summer to get a head start on the 2011 legislative session.

 

This session looms as one of the most difficult we have faced since 1995. A budget crisis is being used as the all-purpose excuse for (1) deep, destructive cuts in funding for public education, (2) the elimination of educational quality safeguards such as class-size limits, and (3) even more obsessive emphasis on test scores to trigger punitive sanctions and privatization instead of giving our students and schools the resources they need.

 

To blunt these threats and build momentum for our positive agenda of stable, sufficient education funding and real school-improvement alternatives to the testing obsession, Texas AFT offers the following tools attached (with more to come by July 1):

 

–Texas AFT Legislative Agenda brochure (printed copies to be ready for shipment to you by June 15)

–Checklist of the types of groups you should consider reaching out to as potential allies in the fight for increased revenue and testing reform

–One–pagers on each of the top two issues, revenue and testing reform

–Templates for letters to potential allies

–New Web letters for members to send to state legislators this summer

–Pledge forms for members (and other school employees and friends of public education) to commit to lobby state officials and legislators for revenue and testing reform

 

This first installment of the toolkit will be followed by another, no later than July 1, which will include short PowerPoint presentations on revenue and testing reform that you can use as is or adapt.

 

(Also later this month be on the lookout for an action alert on the education commissioner’s review of his administrative rules. This rule review presents both hazards–such as potential weakening of class-size waiver rules and duty-free lunch requirements–and opportunities–such as a chance to press the commissioner for more sensible, less punitive accountability policies.)