W6PSPO Meets Tuesday, Feb 16 @ 7pm

W6PSPO will meet virtually on Tuesday, February 16, at 7 pm. 

If you registered for a previous W6PSPO meeting, the link you received for that meeting will work for this and future W6PSPO meetings.  If you don’t already have the meeting link, you can register at: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAudOqsqDorHdOqNZKiWVfvLL0TPp_az3Wp.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

The following items are on our agenda:

1. Discussion with EmpowerEd about their campaign to restore community voice in public education in DC.  We will be joined by Patricia Stamper, an EmpowerEd Teacher Fellow, and Scott Goldstein, the founder of EmpowerEd.
   
2. DC Council process in developing DCPS budget.  We will be joined by Laura Marks, chief of staff to Councilmember Charles Allen, and Anne Phelps, Counsel and Senior Advisor, and Jonathan Antista, Deputy Director for Budget, in the DC Council Office of the Budget Director.

We also wanted to call your attention to two petitions circulating now:

• Petition to cancel PARCC testing for SY2020/2021.  After a year of on-line learning, many are questioning the wisdom of administering the PARCC standardized test.  Concerns about the time that will be diverted from instruction to test preparation and test taking, the added stress to teachers and students, and the reliability of test results when the test is administered remotely are some of the reasons many feel the PARCC test should be cancelled this year.  Please circulate this petition to your school communities. https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/for-the-sake-of-students-cancel-testing-por-el-bien-de-los-estudiantes-dc-debe-de-cancelar-el-examen-parcc?source=direct_link&
• Petition to take down the fence surrounding the Capitol.  Prior to January 6, 2021, we all had the ability to freely enjoy the grounds surrounding the Capitol.  If you would like to see more creative solutions to protecting the U.S. Capitol than a 7 foot fence topped by razor wire, please circulate this petition to your school communities.  Over 14,000 people from across our city have signed this petition. https://www.change.org/p/united-states-citizens-don-t-allow-a-permanent-security-fence-to-be-built-around-the-u-s-capitol?recruited_by_id=8c9223f0-a177-0130-bcb5-3c764e044e9e&utm_medium=custom_url&utm_source=share_petition