Fellow Oregonians,
You have some untapped assets that can power the campaign School Choice and Open Enrollment!
I’m talking about your personal or professional network! Let me give you some examples…
Do you own or run a business? Your customers like and trust your voice, and you can have influence by sharing the causes you care about! Here is how you might support these measures through your business.
- Email information to those on your list! Write an email letting them know why you care about bringing education options to students (and they should too!) and linking to all the information they need to know (found on our website in the FAQ’s and Amendments pages!) Ask your audience to sign our two petitions and donate. You can include our two single signer petition forms to your email. Folks can just print out the petition forms on normal, white 20-pound copy paper (the stuff you can buy at Costco), sign and mail back to us.
- Place our palm cards in your store or office. It’s a great conversation starter and way to spread the word. You never know who might pick one up. (Reach out to us to request printed materials!)
Do you attend church or a religious establishment? The faith community can be a powerful voice for supporting School Choice and Open Enrollment! Here are some ways you could engage your church community.
- Download or print this document and give it to your priest, pastor, or study leader.
- Ask your Bible study or small group leader for an opportunity to share materials with the group or make a short presentation about School Choice and Open Enrollment and how it can help low income and minority families, and make private education – including faith-based education – more accessible.
- Send an email to a list of church friends letting them know that you are supporting School Choice and Open Enrollment and encouraging them to sign the petitions or learn more!
Are you a member of a professional association? Associations often allow their members to promote causes of personal importance to them and broad appeal to the community. Here are some ideas to consider.
- Include a blurb about School Choice and Open Enrollment in your association’s regular newsletter. You’ll obviously need permission from leadership, but we can arm you with any information you need. If you’re lucky enough to be the leader of this association…what are you waiting for?! The blurb can be positive, informative, and totally nonpartisan! We can give you a short blurb to use.
- Ask to make a presentation to your group about School Choice and Open Enrollment! We can provide you with information to make a short presentation.
Do you belong to a formal or informal group of parents? Parents are the ideal audience to hear about these amendments! Whether you belong to a MOPS group, PTA, parent support group, co-op, Little League sports team, Girl Scouts, or just have a great close circle of parent friends, they need to hear from you! Make sure they know why School Choice and Open Enrollment are critically important for their childrens’ future, and make sure they sign both petitions.
Do your children attend a private school? The parents and families in your school need to hear about these amendments! They obviously already value school choice based on the decision they’ve made – possibly at great personal sacrifice – to move their child to a school outside their local public school! Consider…
- Organizing a petition signing event on campus! We’ll provide everything you need for a successful event!
- Talk to your school administration about these amendments and ask them to consider notifying the parents in a school-wide email.
Do you homeschool your children? You can spread the word to the other homeschool families that you know! They already use school choice to customize the education that best suits their children. Consider…
- Organizing a petition signing event among homeschool families! You can share with them this graphic that explains the benefits and protections for homeschool families!
We hope this has sparked some ideas of how you might get involved beyond signing, volunteering, and donating (still critical!). If this has given you some ideas we haven’t listed, bring them on! We want to hear from you.
We are on the brink of changing the face of education in Oregon for the better (and you know we need some positive headlines!). We are closer now to bringing education options to students than we have been in the last 30 years. We need to accomplish this for Oregon’s students NOW! Let’s go all in and provide our students the opportunity to learn without limits, empowering parents and families to give their children the best possible education!
Thank you for engaging with us. As always, stay tuned…
For Oregon,
Donna Kreitzberg