NSBA President: NSBA has a message for the new Congress

NSBA has come up with a plan to help our constituents -- local school board members and the state associations of school boards that make up the NSBA Federation -- reach out to members of Congress in a proactive way to urge them to support the needs of the nation’s schoolchildren.

We are asking the newly elected lawmakers and the incumbents, as they prepare for the opening of the 110th Congress, to sign the “Pledge to America’s Schoolchildren,” a nationwide, grassroots campaign, and I am asking every school board member in the nation to take part in this effort.

The pledge is a simple document that spells out NSBA’s priorities for the next Congress.

It calls upon lawmakers to pledge their support for public education and vote to improve the No Child Left Behind Act; to support the funding goals of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; to support school readiness programs; to help districts attract effective teachers; and to ensure that students attain 21st century skills.

Since NSBA’s pledge campaign was launched Oct. 11 at the annual joint meeting of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, more than 40 members of the House and Senate have signed it.

More recently, the pledge campaign was featured at the annual conferences of the North Carolina and Michigan school boards associations.

The Florida, Oregon, and New Mexico associations also have become strong partners with NSBA in eliciting pledge signatures, and we anticipate all the other states will join us in this campaign.

We’ll continue to make the pledge campaign a key part of our advocacy efforts as we build momentum in the weeks leading up to NSBA’s Federal Relations Network (FRN) Conference, Jan. 28-30 in Washington, D.C. By then we hope to have cards signed by representatives and senators from both sides of the aisle committing them to support public education.

During the Day on the Hill, when school board members attending the FRN Conference fan out across the Capitol to meet with their lawmakers, they will make the Pledge to America’s Schoolchildren a priority, as they also talk about specific legislative goals.

The pledge campaign provides an excellent opportunity to open up a dialogue with the newly elected and returning lawmakers about how Congress can support public schools in their communities, as well as the nation as a whole. And it gives local school board members a framework to talk about the legislation needed to make the pledge a reality.

Who could be against supporting school readiness programs for incoming kindergartners? Who would not want to fund programs for disabled children or allow local school districts to more accurately measure the effectiveness of their programs?

Who would not want to sign a pledge to support programs that they have already voted to create? That is what the Pledge to America’s Schoolchildren is all about.