Thank you for taking the time to spread the word about Our Education's petition campaign for an American right to high quality education! Here are instructions for how to send a message to your friends to tell them about this petition.
1.) Open your e-mail program in a different window and send a new message
2.) In the "To:" field, enter all of the e-mail addresses for the people that you want to send this message to, separated by commas. Perhaps your address book has a "write to everyone in my address book option" that you could click. Basically, the goal is to send it to your friends, classmates, any yahoo or google groups you belong to, and any adults who you think might care!
3.) Copy the text below and paste it into the body of your email message
4.) Be sure to replace the <YOUR NAME> signature holder in your e-mail with your actual name.
5.) Click "Send" and come back to www.OurEd.org to watch the petition counter go up!
Highlight and copy the text of the message below:
Dear Friends:
Have you ever thought that our nation’s public education system could be and should be a lot better? If so, you are not alone. Here are a few SHOCKING and DEPRESSING stories from students across the country about just how desperately their schools are in need of improvement:
Cindy from TX:
…Whole parts of our buildings had to be shut down and cornered off because of sewage leaks, nearly half of our bathrooms aren't even unlocked, and the ones that are, are in very poor condition (no toilet paper, stalls don't lock, toilets don't flush). Our nurse is never in her office (especially at crucial times, such as during athletic blocks) Our P.E. program is a joke (students don't work out) and we are located in one of the richest districts in Texas!
Nate from MD:
On Friday, a sewage pipe on the second floor started leaking in the freshman hallway and the administrators didn’t even come down to check until three hours after it was reported...This morning I went to school, and there was a trash bag covering the leaking pipe.
Lindsay from UT:
They cut all the AP classes except three (physics, psych, and calculus, the latter being taught by a dyslexic guy who didn't know anything and couldn't teach so we didn't learn anything all year and only one kid even bothered attempting the AP test). They would always hire brand-new teachers fresh out of school because they could pay them less, and then after a year or two instead of giving them a raise they would just fire them so they could hire more brand-new fresh-out-of-school teachers and pay them less.
The WORST part about these stories is this: over eleven million students in America go to schools just like the ones described above, which the government has found to be in “inadequate condition”… yet which it still hasn’t fixed. With stories like these all over the country, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that where America used to be #1 in education forty years ago, we are now ranked only 18th.
It’s time for students like us to stand up and make a difference. PLEASE take a moment to go to http://www.OurEd.org/forms/petition.php and sign Our Education’s national youth petition for an American right to high quality education. It will only take a minute to help send a powerful message to our country’s leaders: make our education a national priority.
Sincerely,
<YOUR NAME>
p.s. The goal of the petition is to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures from youth ages 13-24, and then to deliver them to our nation’s leaders in Washington DC at the end of 2007. So forward this message to your friends and then visit http://www.OurEd.org to watch the petition counter go up!
