Parent activists come together
Posted in Advocacy organizations, Revenue and taxes
The huge, time-consuming effort also taught a lesson to Cupertino parents, which they are happy to share: Once is plenty; don’t count on doing this every year to bail out your budgets.
The outgrowth of the Cupertino experience is a new, as yet unnamed Silicon Valley organization of parents with a two-prong goal: grass-roots organizing to save local schools and regional and state activism to reform education funding.
“Ours was a band-aid solution so the next logical step is long-term solutions,” said Hoi-Yung Poon, one of the parent organizers in Cupertino. “We need to look at the larger revenue and funding structure.”
Last month, a forum to discuss Cupertino’s fund-raising tactics drew 50 parent leaders from the Bay Area. Since then, parent leaders from 10 districts have met to lay out steps to create their organization over the summer. They have created a Yahoo group, parentsforaction, and plan to hold candidates’ forums on education and on Proposition 13 in the fall. Some of the organizers are interested in Close the Loophole, a campaign organized by San Francisco assessor Phil Ting to fix tax loopholes benefiting owners of commercial real estates.
The statewide PTA does advocacy and has joined the state school boards and administrators associations in Robles-Wong v. California, challenging the state’s level of school funding. But on a local level, most PTAs are focused on raising