The Action Plan

Policy makers are an important part of creating and implementing community-to-school programs. Legislation must be first created, then introduced to a representative who has the ability to present it in the House. In New Jersey, the Office of Civic and Social Engagement is responsible for developing and maintaining a rapport with community members in order to provide students with high quality education and to achieve academic excellence. This branch of the Department of Education of New Jersey is responsible for creating potential solutions which unify the schools and their respective communities across the state. The Office of State Board of Education can hear legislation proposed by the Office of Civic and Social Engagement, and vote on it. The Board then reports to the Commissioner of Education, who ensures that local districts adhere to all legal and state board requirements relating to school district operation.

This process is essential to ensure that schools statewide follow the same policy which will unite the communities to the schools. However, to create policy that could potentially be implemented at a federal level, it is important to include the policy makers of New Jersey that have created policy to improve education. Cecilia Zalkind, Mike Lilley, Adam Kaufman, Trish Zita, Lamont Repollet, Gordon Maccines, and Kevin Kelleher, who was recognized by the New Jersey Education Association for his public policy contributions, are all policy makers in New Jersey who write education policy.

Although there is no direct policy that is against uniting schools and their respective communities, there are certain policies in several states against teachers. Policies such as the Senate Bill 1014, which was introduced by senator Dennis Baxley, would put certain restrictions in unions which represent educators in the state of Florida. There are many other anti-teacher legislation across different states including Wisconsin, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, which push educators away from schools.

In order to persuade policy makers to come up with possible policies that could be implemented across the state or even the nation, there are certain factors to be considered. For example, it is important to recognize the costs of the programs, how possible they are to happen, and what benefits they will bring to the school. It is the duty of policy makers to focus on getting students safe to school, and allowing them to feel comfortable in their community. Hence why there is a lot of consideration to be made before coming up with the solution to education equity. However, small solutions can certainly impact certain communities across the country, but it is up to the policy makers and the board of education to properly implement such solutions.

Our problem has been identified, yet how do we make society care? First of all, the problem affects future generations of children. Children are seen by society as innocent, therefore any problems that involve children will instantly gain support from individuals who wish to help children. In order to change public policy on this critical issue, it is essential that we gain widespread public support for our policy initiative. This can be achieved through efforts such as campaigning and advertising in our local community and our state by utilizing the media and related interest groups to magnify the power of our message. Catchy slogans and catchphrases to back the movement such as “Help the Kids” will draw in multiple people and hopefully even media attention. Once a slogan is made, this can be used on an even larger scale: social media. By utilizing social media platforms we will be able to spread our message even farther than simply using more traditional media outlets. We will include a link to a petition for interested citizens to sign, which we can then send to our state legislators to prove that there is broad support for our idea to foster school-community relationships in order to reduce educational inequality.

Now that we have educated and informed the public so they care about our issue, we will share our petition with policy makers. Petitions are great ways of showing policy makers that the issue you present is worthwhile. If enough people sign it, depending on how large the scale is(local, state, national), it may influence a policy maker to take action. Also writing letters to policy makers would also help because every individual that is involved is directly contacting the policy maker. Finally, hiring lobbyists to help lobby for the cause could greatly improve the chances of our proposed policy being implemented. A specific policy that our group would like for policy makers to implement is a policy that would mandate every school to host programs that connect the community to the school. Policy makers would be persuaded to go through with a policy like this one because it is cost efficient and there would be a good enough number of people to support it. Also, there are not many negatives that could come from a policy like this one, leaving the policy maker with little to no reason to refute it.

Children in lower income school districts will be direct beneficiaries of a cause like ours. With this action plan, we aim to reduce educational inequity between different school districts, thus aiding students at these low income schools. The indirect beneficiaries would be postsecondary educational institutions such as colleges, because when more students are educated there will be a wider pool of well educated individuals to be accepted into these universities, which would help the student and the university thrive. The profiteers of this proposed policy would be those who assist with the community programs such as the YMCA, for example, who runs an after school program that could potentially be partnered with low income schools. The only opponents to this policy would be people who do not have children in low income schools. They would be opponents to our policy because their tax dollars would be going towards a cause that does not benefit them.