The education reform debate is heating up and time is running out—with just one week left for the Education Committee to fix Governor Malloy’s Education Reform Bill # 24.
We thank all of you who have been writing letters, sending emails, calling legislators, and getting teachers’ voices into the conversation—and we are asking you to step up your efforts going into this next week. Now, more than ever, we, as teachers, need to be persistent and unwavering in our commitment to ensure education reform gets done right, for Connecticut’s students and our profession.
Your continued activism, combined with the attention from a new CEA TV ad launched today, will ensure that legislators are hearing our concerns and will make the changes to the bill that so many are calling for—and that we know will improve education in Connecticut.
The new ad says Governor Malloy’s Education Reform Bill #24 does not get reform right. It takes control away from school districts and gives it to the state education commissioner, allows principals to decide which teachers are certified, and siphons tax dollars away from neighborhood schools.
You can view the TV ad at www.cea.org<http://www.cea.org/issues/media/#tv>
Contact your legislators, especially if they are on the Education Committee, and tell them a better way to improve education starts by listening to teachers.
Ask them to eliminate proposals in the Governor’s Education Reform Bill #24 that would weaken high-quality education for our students. Please tell them to fix the governor’s bill to:
· Restore collective bargaining rights.
· Separate evaluation from certification and salary schedules.
· Maintain the Master’s Degree for Professional Certificates.
· Restore local control rather than enabling decisions about local schools to be made by the state education commissioner.
· Preserve scarce resources for neighborhood schools instead of diverting local tax dollars to charter schools that don’t have the same standards.
If your legislators are not members of the Education Committee<http://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/MemberList.asp?comm_code=ED>, urge them to discuss your concerns with Education Committee members. Contact your state senator and state representative using the link and phone numbers below.
Senate Democrats 1-800-842-1420 Senate Republicans 1-800-842-1421
House Democrats 1-800-842-1902 House Republicans 1-800-842-1423
With only seven and a half weeks left in the legislative session, we all need to do our part and remind legislators that teachers lead classrooms every day and our voice is necessary to ensure meaningful education reform in Connecticut.
Thank you for all your efforts.
Phil Apruzzese Mary Loftus Levine
CEA President CEA Executive Director
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