Good morning and happy Friday! I have kind of complicated instructions for you all to follow to help us oppose AB 1316. If you need any help or have any questions, please do not hesitate to call or text me. - Windi 714-310-2213
As many of you know while AB 1316 was being heard in the Assembly Education Committee, Leon Schorr, the Deputy District Attorney from the San Diego DA’s office was on hand to speak “in support” of the bill. The San Diego DA’s office was also listed in the bill analysis as one of only five organizations in support of the bill. As you can see in the image above, three of the others listed in support are teacher unions. Not much support, right?
The support list was then followed by about 5 pages of organizations who were in opposition of AB 1316 and then what was listed as “numerous individuals” no actual number was given in the bill analysis.
I did research to find out how many individuals sent in opposition letters. As of last week, the ASM Ed Committee had received 2,885 individual opposition letters and around 800-1,000 at the time of the committee’s letter deadline.
Way more opposition than support, right?
(Side note: we need to be sending in more letters than that. We have 200,000 students in our charter schools, please do not rely on the idea that others are opposing the bill and so you do not have to, we need everyone to oppose it please. Here is an editable SAMPLE LETTER that you can copy and paste or customize in any way or a PDF VERSION that you can simply attach to your email.)
During and after the ASM Ed Committee session Mr. Schorr made a few comments that lead me to believe that the DA’s office was not actually in full support of AB 1316. I contacted his office to discuss and it turns out that the DA’s office had in fact sent in a letter withdrawing their full support of the bill.
I obtained a copy of the San Diego DA's letter, pictured below. As you can see, this letter is probably why O'Donnell was stopping Mr. Schorr from answering Assemblymember Kiley's questions during the Assembly Education Committee Hearing. If you need to watch the session again you can view it on this post.
What we need to do now is to make sure that our own Assemblymembers know that the opposition to this bill far outweighs the support and that the San Diego DA’s office took time to write a letter clarifying that they were not in full support of AB 1316 and that they are in fact in full support of school choice and quality charter schools.
Please call your Assemblymember’s Capitol Office (during regular business hours), as soon as possible, ask whoever answers the phone how you can please get this information to your Assemblymember or their education staffer. Ask whoever answers the phone for an email address that you can use to send this info to their office for them to review. Then ask them to please let your Assemblymember know that you want them to vote no on AB 1316 or at the very least abstain from voting when it is heard on the Assembly floor.
Actual letter from the DA and images from the Assembly Ed Committee bill analysis for you to attach to your email for your Assemblymember can be found in our shared Google drive here.
To find your Assembly Member's Capitol Office phone number please use this form. It will take you to a link to their website.
Please do this as soon as possible and if you need any help at all, I am here to help you.
- Windi 714-310-2213
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