[BHS etree] Berkeley Public Educ Foundation: Forum, June 1

[bhs at idiom.com]

contact: Berkeley Public Education Foundation at bpef at berkeley.k12.ca.us or
644-6244.

Dear Berkeley Public School Parents:
The Berkeley Public Education Foundation is pleased to sponsor a
community forum to discuss a new approach to financing public schools
based on “equity, adequacy, and stability” on Tuesday, June 1, 2004, 7:30 p.
m., Longfellow Middle School Theater.


This forum is being presented at the request of Superintendent Michele
Lawrence, Superintendent of the Berkeley Unified School District. I am
writing to urge you to attend this important forum, and to help us
spread the word.

A growing movement seeks to design public schools by first developing a
blueprint for excellence—defining the elements our schools must have in
order to provide adequate, equitable education—from which we assemble
the necessary funding base. In such a master planning process, the
essential questions become:

1. What should our schools provide as enduring components of an
excellent education?
2. What does that cost?
3. What do we currently have?
4. What, then, must we resolve to provide, or agree to do without?

Superintendent Lawrence has invited Dr. Lawrence O. Picus to help
launch a discussion of the potential we have in Berkeley to design a
blueprint for excellence, and use it to develop the schools we want—and
to spark a movement to bring all California schools back to where they
should be.

This forum is co-sponsored by our local League of Women Voters, Mayor
Tom Bates, the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools, the Berkeley
Alliance, Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Berkeley Schools Now!, and the
PTA Council. It promises to be an interesting and, we hope,
groundbreaking evening. We hope to see you there!

Any help you can give in forwarding this information to your email
contacts or on appropriate websites would be much appreciated. We will
have hard copies of the flyer available in the Foundation office (1835
Allston at MLK--the BUSD "annex"), and have publicized the forum in
today's Daily Planet. Contact the Berkeley Public Education Foundation
at bpef at berkeley.k12.ca.us or 644-6244.

Trina Ostrander
Executive Director, Berkeley Public Education Foundation

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