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New PA State Director

Submitted by Marsha Levell on Mon, 06/15/2009 - 4:27pm

Obama leaders:
I am thrilled to announce that we have a new state director, Elizabeth Lucas. We are lucky to have Elizabeth here as our leader. She has lived in PA, helped run John Edwards’ campaign in Iowa, the gubernatorial campaign in Delaware and President Obama’s campaign in Florida. She will be going on a listening tour of the state over the next few months but I couldn’t be happier.

We had great success hosting Healthcare kickoffs here in Pennsylvania with about 100 events across the state which were really well attended. Thank you for all that you did. We have ran into a bit of trouble getting the data info into us so if you have questions with that please call me. If you didn’t send your data into DC, please send it in with this link. LINK

As good a job as we did with the healthcare kickoffs, we need to show how good Pennsylvania is with the National Healthcare Day of Service on June 27. If you hosted a kickoff, you should have scheduled a day of service. As I told many of you, these events are unbelievable recruiting opportunities to get people involved that haven’t been yet. Although your groups have been doing great, there are many people who are interested in healthcare enough to participate now and then they can stay with your groups long-term. I have some lists that can really be useful to build for these Healthcare Days of Service. I have attached the host guide for the days of service. Here is the link to create a Healthcare Day of Service. http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hcservice/

Once you create the events, the best thing to do is set up three recruiting events for your service events where you can use the calling tool to recruit. I can help you a lot with recruiting.
President Obama really believes these events are extremely important to the healthcare fight. A Healthcare Action Center has been created with many of the tools we will need for this fight including:

1)      A Letter to the Editor Tool which makes it easy to send letters to your local papers
2)      A calling tool which provides you a list of neighbors who will be likely to participate in the day of service and support the Healthcare plan
3)      Submit your healthcare stories
4)      Create the service events and the other events as well
5)      Print posters identifying you as a healthcare reform supporter.
6)      Links to facebook, twitter, etc.
7)      A tool to call your Congressman!!!!

The Healthcare Action Center can be found at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/HCKsignin

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/health-care-action-center

This fight for healthcare reform is the most important legislative fight in a generation. President Obama views the grassroots as an integral weapon in his arsenal to insure this necessary legislation is passed.

If you have any questions, feel free to call me at 215-380-9558 or email me mshapiro3@gmail.com

Thanks for everything you do.
Mike
--
Mike Shapiro
Barack Obama's Campaign for Change
Pittsburgh, PA
215-380-9558

Education: Impending changes to school districts

Submitted by Marsha Levell on Mon, 06/15/2009 - 3:23pm

This past week our State Representative (for Jenkintown, Cheltenham, and Springfield) Larry Curry met with members of BTCB to inform us about impending legislation concerning education in Pennsylvania. Governor Rendell has presented a plan to consolidate our school districts from 501 statewide to just 100, in an effort to save costs. Pennsylvania has done this before (we used to have over 2000 districts), but this change seems unnecessarily drastic. The plan could even make the entire BTCB area into one school district, which could theoretically cover Abington, Cheltenham, Jenkintown, Upper Moreland, Lower Moreland, Bryn Athyn, and Rockledge. Most presume that Jenkintown High School would be one of the first to the chopping block.

While the details of how this would progress are still sketchy, consolidation would certainly result in some loss of local control, and would likely result in school closings and bussing, at least for some students. Whether or not wholesale closings of schools is really on the table, or just a more cosmetic shuffling of administrators and titles, remains to be seen.

The basic idea is to cut administrative jobs and therefore save money. Frighteningly, the plan is being met with little scepticism by our elected officials in Harrisburg (with the obvious exception of Representative Curry, who put this on our radar). With the promise that large school districts in Philadelphia and Allegheny will be spared any further consolidation, the Governor seems to have assured support for his plan from most of of the legislators who represent urban districts. Without citizen outcry and action, this plan could pass over the next few weeks with little discussion and not so much as a cost-benefit analysis.

The bill (put forward by Representative Dwight Evans) would create a commission tasked with drawing the lines for the new districts, which will likely then be submitted again to the legislature for final approval. We are aware of no commissioned studies to consider either the savings to the taxpayer this plan would generate or the potential effects on student life, classroom size, or our local communities. The purpose of Representative Curry's visit was to inform us of this plan with ample time to spread the word, and to take action by getting in touch with our elected state officials to let them know how we feel about this seemingly misguided approach.

It is crucial for us to let our representatives and senators (and others) know how we feel about this plan. There is a strong possibility that this may become law. Make sure all of your friends in PA know that this is happening.

Below are links to online contact forms of some of our local state elected officials (all are Democrats unless otherwise noted... the first two listed are probably most important to contact, as they represent mostly Philadelphia, with only parts of Montco, and are presumed to support the Governor's plan).

It's not too late to make a difference.

Meg

State Senator LeAnna Washington - http://www.senatorwashington.com/contact.htm

State Senator Vincent Hughes - http://www.senatorhughes.com/contact.htm

State Senator Steward Greenleaf (R) - http://www.senatorgreenleaf.com/contact1.htm

State Rep Josh Shaprio - http://www.pahouse.com/contact/viaLDPC.asp?district=153

State Rep Larry Curry - http://www.pahouse.com/contact/viaLDPC.asp?district=154 (it can't help to contact his office too... gives him more ammo to use with his colleagues...)

State Rep Rick Taylor - http://www.pahouse.com/contact/viaLDPC.asp?district=151

State Rep Dwight Evans (the bill's author) - http://www.pahouse.com/contact/viaLDPC.asp?district=203

State Rep Brendan Boyle - http://www.pahouse.com/Boyle/contact.asp

State Rep Tom Murt (R) - http://www.repmurt.com/?sectionid=9&sectiontree=9

If you're not sure in whose district you live, check out this MCDC map: http://mcdems.org/counties.asp , but feel free to contact any or all of the above names, especially the Rs, and the Senators, who are most likely to be deciding factors in the end.