Pitt-Greensburg APEX 2024-2025
Political Action
Table of Contents
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PACE Baskets for Activities Fair
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What the 2024 Election Means for Education Workshop
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PACE Raffle Baskets for TLI Conference 2025
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Trick-or-Vote
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What is PACE Mini-Workshop
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Writing Letters to Legislators for Fully Funding Student Teacher Stipend
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Presentations During Meetings for PACE
PACE Raffle Basket for Activities Fair
At our Activities Fair, we raised $49 for the Political Action Committee for Education (PACE) by raffling off a teacher supply basket. We do raffles each year for PACE at the Activities Fair to communicate to new and old students the importance of PACE in our club.
What the 2024 Election Means for Education Workshop
On October 1st, 2024, Pitt-Greensburg SPSEA held a workshop titled "What the 2024 Election Means for Education". This workshop was part of a campus-wide series informing Pitt-Students about the 2024 election. We invited our UNISERV Representative Johnathan Burnett and our Region Advocacy Coordinator Fritz Fekete to present on this topic. It was extremely informational and made sure our members knew the significance of the upcoming election. During this workshop, we also had computers available to register to vote and a raffle basket for PACE. We were able to donate $80 from the raffle basket to PACE!
PACE Raffle Baskets for TLI Conference 2025
To add awareness about politics in education at our Teacher Leadership Institute in February, our SPSEA designed two ways to donate. First, SPSEA members could pay $5 extra as "early birds" and be placed in all their first choice breakout sessions. Second, we created raffle baskets. The money from both the early bird and raffle tickets went to PACE. During TLI, we raised over $500 for PACE.
Trick-or-Vote
Everyone loves candy and Halloween. Not everyone loves politics. Our Trick-or-Vote annual event tries to encourage students -- through candy and Halloween -- to care about voting. Our PACE chair, Tyler Luffy, wrote a note to campus residents about how important it is to vote during this election and how it will impact them as students at a public university. Tyler also included voter registration information and information to find polling places. We loaded bags with candy and these notes and delivered these to each dorm room on campus. Members who live in each residence hall delivered these to all resident Pitt-Greensburg students.
What is PACE ? Mini-Workshop
At one of our very first chapter meetings of the 2024-2025 school year, we held a mini-workshop about PACE. We had both the State PACE chair, Alice Evokidimova, and our Regional PACE director, Tyler Luffy, talk about PACE and its importance in SPSEA.
Writing Letters to Legislators
Immediately after the state budget was proposed by Governor Shapiro, Pitt-Greensburg SPSEA members wrote letters to legislators at a general meeting. These were form letters, allowing SPSEA members an easy way to reach out and advocate for educators. In the letters, we asked legislators f to fully fund the student teacher stipend and to approve the budget that was proposed. We explained how important the stipend is to us as pre-service educators.
Presentations During Meeting for PACE
When the state PACE chair attends your university (Alice Evodikimova) and the Southwestern Region PACE director (Tyler Luffy) is also your chapter chair person, PACE becomes an every-meeting discussion. From the very first meeting in August, Alice and Tyler presented information about PACE and the need to be involved. PACE business was listed as one of the topics on every agenda for the year!