When a group of Vail parents came together a year ago with the goal of improving public education, they were met with naysayers.
“We had people who said as parents, we would not be able to make a change,” said Stacy Winstryg, a member of the Vail Parent Network’s steering committee.
Ten months later, the group has had a hand in helping to restore planned cuts to JTED funding and ensuring that district-run charter schools receive funding for 2016.
“They’re very organized and persistent,” said Sen. David Bradley of the group that is made up by 850 members on Facebook and 250 members on an email list.
Over the last year, VPN has traveled to Phoenix to talk with lawmakers face-to-face and networked with parents who they have called on when they’ve gotten wind of bills threatening public education funding.
At one point, those outreach efforts resulted in VPN parents making more than 11,000 phone calls and emails to the legislature within one week, Winstryg said.
“Legislators who are allies have told us, ‘your parents are the ones who stopped funding from being cut,’ ” Winstryg said. “These legislators won’t go back to office if they don’t have the support of voters and that’s us as parents and they know we’re paying attention now.”
Word of the group’s success has spread beyond the legislature.
Earlier this year, VPN was called upon by the superintendent of the Benson School District who wanted to get a similar effort going in his area.
The group traveled to Benson where they shared the keys to successfully organizing, what had worked for them and what hadn’t.
Today, the Benson Parent Network has held community discussions of their own on pressing education issues.
“All it really takes is a small group of parents who are willing to step up and take lead roles and disseminate information,” Winstryg said, adding VPN will meet with parents interested in creating networks anywhere across the state.
“Probably our biggest achievement is the sheer number of parents we have been able to talk to to inform them and educate them on the overall climate of education funding,” she said. “The fact that we’ve got people listening and engaging is our biggest accomplishment.”
“A parent’s voice is powerful,” Sen. Bradley added. “They can speak in a way that a school cannot and I would encourage people to follow this model.”
The group’s overall mission is to get candidates in office in November who will make education a priority, Winstryg said.
“That’s what we’re shooting for longterm so we don’t have to keep fighting these individual battles every time new bills come forward,” she said.
Given that candidates must make it through primaries before they can advance to the general election ballot in November, VPN has launched an initiative dubbed Vail Votes that seeks to encourage parents, community members and businesses to get engaged.
“We’ve looked at the numbers and about 16 percent of eligible voters voted in the last primary two years ago,” Winstryg said. “That’s crazy to have 16 percent of people making the decision about who could possibly be going into office.”
Over the last few months, VPN has reached well over 1,000 people, urging them to make a commitment to get informed and cast a vote later this month in the primary election.
“It’s just as important as the general election to get proper candidates through,” Winstryg said. ”And with such a small percentage of people voting, we have a small group of people whose voices are making decisions for the other 84 percent of us and that’s not OK.”
For more information about Vail Parent Network or the Vail Votes effort, go to vailparentnetwork.org
