ADVISORY FOR
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2016
CONTACT: Jane Doe, xxx-xxx-xxxx; email address
[Modify headlines to give prominence to local demand(s)]
Parents, Students and Teachers Plan “Walk-Ins”
at [name of city] Public Schools to Demand the Kind of Education that All Children Deserve
Call for Adequate Funding Too Long Denied to Public Schools Serving African American & Latino
Communities
Decry Role of Wall St. & Corporate Billionaires
in Attacks on Public Education
[Number you think likely] of parents, teachers and students will stage “Walk-Ins” at [number of city
public schools, if multiple schools, say number and indicate that list of schools and their addresses is
below] public elementary and high schools on the morning of Wednesday, February 17, as classes
begin. They will gather, placards in hand, thirty minutes before the start of the school day, then walk
into their public school buildings to show support for [enter local issues here—tax revenue fight, end
over-testing, stop takeover, etc. or use the national language that follows if you prefer] an
adequately funded approach to public education that they call “community schools,” now
implemented in systems serving five million students. The largely African American and Latino group of
parents and students want the benefits afforded by community schools for their children.
The [city] Walk-In is the opening salvo in a major battle--a national campaign--to ensure that the
country that invented public education as an essential feature of a democratic society continues to
offer it.
[In ____, we demand:
WHO:
WHAT:
WHEN:
WHERE:
Name of local group
WALK-IN at [city] public schools (see list below
8:30AM (or whenever), WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2016
List of schools and their addresses and gathering place if different
The national campaign of which we are a part includes the following demands:]

We demand a world class public education for all children—the kind of education that all
children deserve and the very kind that has often been denied to black, brown and poor
children. Our country has the resources to fully fund our schools and the obligation to our
children to do so.

We demand accountability and transparency for Charter Schools and operators. Every school
that receives public funds is held to the same high standards of transparency and student
success, including schools serving students of color, students with special needs and lowincome students. And we want to stop the growing involvement of billionaires, like the Walton
Family, in public education.

We demand revenue to fully fund our schools. We want those Wall Street and corporate titans
who claim to be education reformers to contribute their fair share of the tax dollars needed to
ensure adequate public school funding for the low-income African American and Latino
communities that need it most.
Public schools and public education are under attack and most aggressively by Wall Street and hedge
fund billionaires—many of whom nearly brought down the entire U.S. economy in 2008—and
companies like Walmart, infamous for the mistreatment of its employees and low wages that harm
communities that need the most help. Wall Street and Walmart lobbyists continue to press for
unaccountable charter schools and other dubious approaches that promise much but so often fall
short in practice, while siphoning off taxpayer dollars that our public schools need to succeed. These
are the people who have received the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth over the past several decades
but who continue to resist paying their fair share of the taxes needed to fund our public schools
adequately.
We know that our public schools can provide tools, time and support that students need whatever
their zip code to inspire their natural curiosity, imagination and desire to learn. But only if they are
funded to offer relevant and challenging curriculums, emphasize high quality teaching rather than
constant high-stakes testing, more one-on-one instruction time, positive discipline, needed support
services like vision testing and food banks as well as parent involvement in planning and decisionmaking.
Schools that incorporate these features produce better results than other approaches and do so
without closing schools – a problem that now plagues so many neighborhoods where insufficient or
misallocated resources have failed our students. This effective approach to educating our children,
embodied in community schools, is much needed in low-income African American and Latino
communities.
It is a bitter irony that so many of those Wall Street billionaires and corporate CEOs who have acquired
almost all of the new wealth created over the past several decades continue to deny and deflect
attention from what African American and Latino communities know only too well, that our public
schools have been sabotaged by consistent, long-term underfunding. These moguls foist upon us
failed, undemocratic alternatives including school takeovers and for-profit control of our schools rather
than pay their fair share of the tax revenues needed to provide the education that all our children
deserve. Over the coming months, and however long it takes, we will fight to reverse this state of
affairs and ensure that public schools in low-income communities of color survive and flourish.
####