Angie Sullivan teaches first grade children in Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas). Most of her students are low-income and Hispanic. She regularly writes letters to her legislators.
She writes:
Close it down we need to walk out. We all need to fight for money together. We can only dance if everyone is wearing shoes.
No more lectures about teachers improving. You do not have many teachers left. For good reason. Lecturing us – does not work – hasn’t for two decades.
Try something new. Follow the law.
Clean up the central office money.
Clean up the central office financial quagmire.
It is the law.
85-15
You just purchased the $17 million financial software? What has been the issue for two years? Who is going to answer for that mismanagement?
No numbers for the legislative session?
You will soon ask School Building SOTS to cut $50 million?
It’s your turn Central Office.
Cut that $50 million from that marble area.
Time to dismantle everything downtown except the skeleton and central office folks find a home in a vacant classroom. Meets the law and cleans up the corruption. Kids need a teacher not a marble office building.
No more downtown kingdoms.
How are you going to ask the legislature for the $500 million you need to meet contracts?
No one will give it to you. No one throws good money after bad.
Cannot see anything that is not in schools. Even those numbers are questionable since the central office “charges” schools for things schools do not have – like teachers.
The whole state will fight for $300 million this session. This is heavy lift and nothing real has happened in the central office yet.
The listening tour is nice.
Get ready for the session please.
Hard to dance with a partner who doesn’t have sense enough to wear shoes.
Clean up your money mess.
Newsflash: Folks love their teachers. They do NOT like the central office or the Trustees. For good reason.
Next time you address your army – make sure your financial house is clean.
Put your shoes on.
Keep the lecture. And give it to your friends. It is offensive to the team working for kids.
We are fully dressed and ready to march.
You are barefoot.
I am mad.
All I can do is weep.
We are ready for leadership. Leadership is not a lecture about data – that is not going to raise money.
Make moves to get money.
Do what you can to get money.
We need $2 Billion. Telling us to get data is not going to get money.
The heavy lift is money.
Rally your team.
It is about money.
Get your shoes on.
Close it down. We need to walk out. You need to come with us. Clean it up. Shut it down.
The Teacher
Angie
CCSD Central Office needs to be dismantled and reorganized to meet the law.
We need new educational leadership at the highest levels who will improve neighborhood public schools instead of promote charters.
No more business deals and/or tax credits that rob the DSA (Dedicated School Account).
No more cuts at the school level.
Pay your own bills. Raise the funds to cover the bills.
We want adequate total funding for CCSD programs to open equitably – like preschools
Attrition money needs to be returned to the individual schools. If a vacancy is not filled – the school needs the money saved to support kids.
We want the reorganization law to be followed and all of the 85 to be pushed to school level.
We want the pot money.
We want the room tax money
We want our fair share of the education money 80%.
We want ability to raise money locally.
We want money to get to kids
We want weighted funding.
We want our fair share of mining proceeds.
We want the southern caucus to fight for our kids. Quit allowing everyone else in the state to grab our student money.
We need additional money for each and every “great idea”.
We have significant needs.
Teachers being silenced has not worked.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The administrator of a private religious school sponsored a bill that will let students use public dollars to pay to attend private religious schools.
The Senate Education Committee chairwoman, who has home-schooled her five children, sponsored the bill as well, which critics say will taper funds away from cash-strapped public schools.
At least seven of the 18 Republicans who voted to send a comprehensive education overhaul to the Senate floor didn’t send some of their children through the public education system in West Virginia or other states.
Sen. Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh, has served as the administrator for Victory Baptist Academy, in Beaver, for 31 years now, where his children attended.
The bill, set for a vote on Monday, would allow students who opt out of public school to receive about $3,200 of public money per year to attend non-public schools, including religious ones like VBA.”
West Virginia PUBLIC school teachers go on strike and in response to that ed reform lawmakers in West Virginia don’t address PUBLIC school issues.
No, instead they use the public school strike to promote private schools, and offer absolutely nothing to public school students or families.
I think the public school teachers have to go out again. You cannot pay these people in state government to actually pay attention to PUBLIC schools. Even when the ISSUE at hand is public schools they hijack the debate and turn it into a promotion of private schools.
They’re irrelevant to public school families. They simply offer nothing of value to students and parents in public schools. They perform about 5% of their job.
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I can feel this teacher’s justified frustration with a system that has ignored public education for so long. Teaching is challenging enough without feeling as though your state representatives are working against you. Lots of women won their elections in the state. While the Republicans are still in charge, the number of Democrats is increasing. Angie needs a village of parents, concerned citizens and teachers to work with her to get more funding for public schools.
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“Close it down we need to walk out.” Yes! Walk out! It works.
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and very importantly, it inspires other crucially necessary teacher actions across the nation
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What Angie points out is truly a national problem, just as virtually every issue that public school enemies try to characterize as “state” or “local” is. Equitable funding for public schools has long been a neglected and misunderstood issue in Ohio. Yesterday I found the same issue in Texas eloquently explained, as Angie does here for Nevada, in an Austin newspaper:
https://www.statesman.com/opinion/20190201/eckhardt-property-tax-relief-begins-when-state-pays-its-share-for-schools
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