Dear Faculty Colleagues,
As you are inundated with student requests to add your classes, you may want to consider sending the message below to all of your students, or using this text as a permanent out of office reply on your email. (Thanks to Lyn Neylon at Cuyamaca College for sharing!)
Best of luck to you all as the semester gets underway!
Jim
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Greetings,
STUDENTS: Due to state budget cuts, there are fewer classes being offered in every section this semester at all campuses. Here is what you can do:
1) Add yourself to the waitlist and attend the first session of class. Instructors will be pulling from the waitlists to fill empty seats and dropping students who miss the first day to make room for students who come to class.
2) Check out course content and materials by going to my website – cut and paste this web address into your browser: <put your instructor website URL here>
3) Write to your state legislators and let them know how you are being affected by the state budget cuts and that you want to see education fully funded in the future.
Cut and paste this website into your browser and find your local legislators: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/?lvl=L
Below is a sample letter you could send. Hard copy letters written in your own hand and sent via US mail are most effective. Email is least effective.
All the best,
<your instructor name here>
Dear Assembly Member / Senator:
As a college student in the San Diego Community College District and concerned voter in your legislative district, I am urging you to reject all legislative proposals that call for ANY cuts to our public schools. Public education and other vital social services have been cut by many billions of dollars, totaling 20%, over the past two years. And these cuts occurred when it was already clear that public education was underfunded. California out of 50 states is currently 47th in K-12 per student spending and 45th in community college per student spending.
This is simply unacceptable. How can the state of California possibly maintain its workforce if it cuts the possibility of students [the future workforce] from getting the training they need to be successful?
Not only are these proposals disastrous to schools in your legislative district and throughout the state, they are fundamentally inconsistent with the state’s goal of improving student achievement and once again making California the star of public education.
While it is clear that there are extraordinary challenges in balancing the state’s budget, our students and schools did not create this budget problem, and fixing the problem should not come at the expense of their educational progress and success.
Accordingly, I respectfully urge you to vote “NO” on any budget that fails to honor the state’s commitment to public education. I also urge you to consider all options to solve this crisis, including supporting an Oil Severance Tax to fund higher education and increasing taxes on the top 1% of wealthy Californian’s to the Regan era of 11% to support education and public services.
Thank you for your consideration of this request, and I look forward to being in touch with your office soon.
Sincerely,
Signature:_____________________________
Name:______________________________
Address:___________________________
City:__________________ Zip:________