Dear Families,

While the budget battle in Harrisburg is still continuing I wanted to remind you to keep in touch with your legislators and ask them to keep the funding for cyber schools in place. While they are sure to hear from our critics, they need to hear from families who will be affected if cuts in funding are made to our schools.

If you do not know who your legislator is, you can go to our website www.pacyberfamilies.org and click on “Useful Links”.  Click on “Find Your Legislator”.  On the next page enter your zip code in the upper right corner.  It will bring up a listing of your representative and your senator.

I also wanted to share a few articles with you.  One is a Wall Street Journal Editorial, which discusses President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative.

The other is an Education Week article covering states who are struggling with charter school laws. It is a very interesting article.

We will keep you updated as the budget debate continues.  Thank you all for continuing to help protect our schools.  

Keep moving forward!

Cindy Strausburger
President


Wall Street Journal editorial
 
Obama’s ‘Race to the Top’

Who’ll blink first: the unions, or the White House?

The Obama Administration unveiled its new “Race to the Top” initiative late last week, in which it will use the lure of $4.35 billion in federal cash to induce states to improve their K-12 schools. This is going to be interesting to watch, because if nothing else the public school establishment is no longer going to be able to say that lack of money is its big problem.

To continue to read more click here

Education Week
State Legislatures Wrestle With Charter Laws
By Erik W. Robelen
August 3, 2009

Amid a strong push by the Obama administration to ensure that states don’t constrain the growth of the charter school sector, a number of legislatures this year debated measures on how many charters to allow, or whether to have such schools at all. But even with the extra attention from Washington, the outcomes have proved decidedly mixed.
On the one hand, at least four states took steps to permit more charter schools. Illinois and Tennessee raised their charter caps. Louisiana eliminated its ceiling altogether. And Delaware allowed a moratorium on new charters to lapse.
But some states went in a different direction.

To read the rest of the article click here