Resources from Building Blocks

We had a great time together at Building Blocks in Springfield. The Political Action presentation touched on many sources that are listed below. These are great resources to educate yourself and take back to your chapter to use in regular meetings.

Look up voting registration status: https://ova.elections.il.gov/RegistrationLookup.aspx

NEA Student ProgramVideo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rq0hxcZSSc

Degrees not Debt PDF: https://www.nea.org/assets/docs/Degrees_Student_Debt__Guide_FINAL.pdf

Degrees not Debt Video: http://www.elections.state.il.us/downloads/votinginformation/pdf/r-19.pdf

Compare Presidential Candidates: http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/president-candidates-trump-clinton-education.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-FB

Illinois Voter Registration Application: http://www.elections.state.il.us/downloads/votinginformation/pdf/r-19.pdf

More information about ESSA: http://neatoday.org/2015/12/09/every-student-succeeds-act/

Degrees Not Debt Flyer: https://www.nea.org/assets/docs/DND_5_Steps_Handout.pdf

Presidential Candidate Record: http://www.strongpublicschools.org/candidate-education-records

Video clip of Hillary Clinton's DNC Speech: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl3vtwAQNos

Video clip of Donald Trump's RNC Speech: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/highlights-from-trump-s-rnc-speech-730126404000

Spring Conference Political Action

This weekend is the IEASP Spring Conference, Jump, Jive, and Teach! Along with amazing professional development and opportunities for community outreach, attendees will have another chance to let our lawmakers know that education needs to be a priority. More and more schools are being affected by the continued absence of a state budget and some are in dire circumstances. Come find the political action table at the Spring Conference to have your political voice be heard by our legislators!

More information on the budget crisis can be found here: http://www.pantagraph.com/news/state-and-regional/illinois/government-and-politics/lawmakers-return-to-capitol-as-budget-impasse-drags-on/article_faca3357-4218-56a7-94d5-c624bd19ac15.html

SB 2043 - Map Grant

Hey everyone! Your State Executive Team hopes you had a great holiday season and your semester is starting off well! We had a great time this weekend with Advisory Board and we hoped you learned a lot about our upcoming primary elections. Don't forget to tell your chapters about February 16th, the last day to register to vote, or March 15th, the day to get out and vote.

For this blog post, we'd like to shift gears and tell you all about an important piece of legislation that is trying to get through our state government concerning MAP grants. At our Fall Conference, we had you all sign postcards to Governor Rauner asking him to please allow funding for MAP grants to be passed through Congress so that our students can stay in higher education. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to be listening to us.

image from http://www.chicagonow.com/

Although Congress has pushed through a bill that would provide for $373 million, $24 million less than what was already proposed and vetoed by Rauner, Rauner still insists he will veto SB 2043.

As College Democrats of Illinois President Kevin Cheng notes, "Tens of thousands of students across Illinois rely on MAP grants to pursue their dreams and better their communities through education. Students have enough stress with classes starting up and exams on the horizon. MAP grant funding should not and does not have to be another source of worry."

IEA will keep an eye out for SB 2043 and make sure we can let our voices be heard to President Rauner if he continues to threaten its veto.