#ssth

Virtual Legislative Day is your opportunity to interact with your legislators during the February 20th Students Storm the Hill Day! Help us amplify our voice while the students are at the State Capitol. How can you support or participate?

1. View, like, and/or share Facebook Live videos from SSTH 2. Call or Email your legislators either the day of or in the days before SSTH to let them know about Tennessee PTA Students Storm the Hill and to share our legislative priorities. If you don't know your reps, this interactive map can help you find them. 3. We’ll be tweeting from Twitter too. 4. Don’t know our Legislative Priorities? They are listed below:

Tennessee PTA Legislative Priorities 2018-2019

1. Excellent education is not possible without adequate resources and time for implementation • Fund education first! We support full funding of the Basic Education Plan 2.0 (BEP 2.0) • Tennessee PTA is in agreement with the Tennessee School Board Association's (TSBA) position that "Prior to any state or federal intervention based on a School’s or district’s failure to meet performance or accountability standards, governments’ should ensure that local schools and districts receive the necessary resources, support and time to improve."

2. Parents should be empowered with real choices, as long as the integrity of public schools remains intact. • We acknowledge high-quality public charter schools can improve student achievement, but our support is restricted to design principles outlined by National PTA’s position statements. • We oppose diverting public funds or tax dollars to private and parochial schools through vouchers or similar efforts. • We recommend that all schools receiving public funds be held accountable to the same standards and requirements.

3. Strong public support for higher standards helps raise the bar for education. • We will continue to support and educate parents about Tennessee’s higher academic standards and their implementation. • We support the establishment of a timely deadline for reporting assessment results. • We support a study into TNReady testing to ensure that reliability and accuracy is maintained in the administering of the test platform across the state. • We believe school districts should have the flexibility to choose high school standardized assessments that align with the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks and meet the criteria for determining students to be college and career-ready.

4. Children can achieve more when they and their families are healthy and they are safe. • The health and well-being of our students must be a top priority to continue to rise academically and be ready for colleges and careers. • We will continue to work at the local, and state levels to enhance the nutritional health of our children and families. • We will request that every school in Tennessee establish student mentoring programs involving parents, school personnel, law enforcement and the community.

5. Early education development should be effective and available. • We believe that early education for children from birth to age five should be adequately funded and developmentally appropriate. • We support state incentives for quality child care and preschool programs that are affordable and accessible, coordinated at all levels (federal, state and local) and ensure quality in teacher training, health and safety standards. • We believe that early education for young children must include the social/emotional skills, physical skills, as well as academics to ensure that education and life skills include the whole child. • We support empowering parents as advocates for implementation of an age-appropriate well-rounded educational program for all students.