A Public Education Advocacy Forum:

Stronger Together for Parents, Educators, and the Community

Hosted by: Support Our Schools

Co-Sponsored by:

Families for Strong Public Schools

Florida PTA

SEE Alliance

SRQ Parents United

UU of Sarasota Social Justice Committee

Last April, Support Our Schools held a forum titled "Stop the Attack on Public Education." There, the speakers laid out the impending budget crisis facing Sarasota and other Florida districts.  

Now, one year later, the defunding of education has worsened significantly. Across Florida, public schools are closing, and teachers and support staff are being laid off due to funding cuts, population declines, and a surge in vouchers for private schools and homeschooling.

Simultaneously, there has been an explosion of grassroots organizing by parents, students, and educators, particularly driven by Schools of Hope’s threatened hostile takeover of public schools through co-location at the district’s expense.  This woke people up.  There is now a real sense that we are all in this together and that, as the title of this forum connotes, we will be Stronger Together.

The April 18th full-day forum will bring the community together to strategize and address this growing crisis in public education.

We are thrilled to have two featured speakers returning from last year’s forum: Jennifer Berkshire, podcast host and nationally acclaimed speaker, and Sue Woltanski, Monroe School Board member and blogger of Accountabaloney.  These featured speakers will provide national and statewide perspectives, respectively.  The forum will particularly focus on two critically important populations within public education: parents and educators.  

To this end, a Parent Panel on Effective Organizing, facilitated by a statewide parent leader of Families for Strong Public Schools, Damaris Allen, including Sarasota parent leaders Jody Osceola, Leanndra Yates, and Holly Bullard, will discuss the lessons learned as parent leaders this past year.

In the afternoon, these same parents will lead a breakout session entitled Empowering Parents. A separate breakout session, Support Our Educators, will be led by retired Sarasota County educator Christy Karwatt.

Student and Youth organizer, Zander Moricz, executive director of the SEE Alliance, will be a featured speaker during lunch on “Midterms On Our Terms.”