Hi All,

1. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat published a letter to the editor I wrote about Schools for Climate Action (full text is below). This, along with Rep. Mike Thompson's Op-Ed, would be worth sharing with your local and county school boards and students councils to help make the case that it's worth their minimal investment of time to consider and pass their own climate action resolutions.

2.The California School Boards Association hosts their delegate assembly and conference next week in San Francisco. I have been emailing and tweeting some of the 280 delegates from across the state encouraging them to consider a climate action resolution. It would help considerably if they also received encouragement from local stakeholders. Please skim this list of CSBA delegates and reach out to the ones from your county. Here is a copy of the email I have been sending which you could copy and edit. Please cc empower@schoolsforclimateaction.org so we can track outreach efforts. Please be sure to be respectful and appreciative of school board members. It should not fall to them to speak up for national climate action---if Congress was doing it's job (and if powerful subgroups within Congress did not actively undermine trust in mainstream science), we would not need school board members to speak up so assertively. Unfortunately, past precedent and current signals from national leaders suggest that without significant and novel pressure, Congress will not act quickly enough or boldy enough to prevent terrible climate consequences for our young people.

Thanks for your continued support of this campaign. The education sector could become a powerful non-partisan voice insisting on a sane and humane national climate policy which protects our precious young people and our important shared values. If we, as a sector, stay on the sidelines of this debate, it seems likely that both our young people and our values will continue to be put at serious and increasing risk.

Best,

Park

A children’s issue

EDITOR: Thanks for Rep. Mike Thompson’s important Close to Home column (“A political war over climate change,” Saturday). In 2015, the California PTA declared “climate change is a children’s issue.” Since then, hundreds of thousands of California students have been exposed to potentially traumatic climate-related disasters; more than 5,800 kids in Northern California have lost their homes in climate change-related fires. During the same time period, the federal government rolled back commonsense measures to preserve the climate. Congress shows no serious signs of taking action on climate change.

Education leaders are mandated reporters, bound by law and duty, to speak up in cases of neglect or abuse. Congressional inaction on climate is clearly generational neglect. No educational institution should be a silent witness to this neglect.

At the urging of parents, students and teachers with the nonpartisan Schools for Climate Action campaign, 12 Sonoma County school boards and one student council have passed climate action resolutions clarifying the nonpartisan will of the education sector for national climate action.

Nearly 14,000 more school boards and tens of thousands more student councils across the country could join them. To protect our students, school communities can speak with one nonpartisan voice to help break the logjam on common-sense climate action in Congress. Please learn more at schoolsforclimateaction.org.

PARK GUTHRIE

Co-founder, Schools for Climate Action