ND4PS UPDATE: It’s August 1 - Can you feel the shift?
ND4PS Coalition Update - August 1, 2025
Well, it’s August 1. Can you feel that — that shift that comes when the calendar turns from the heart of summer in July to that immediate sense of school being right around the corner? I’m not sure the feeling every really escapes us, whether we remember it as a kid, recognize it right now as a parent of a current student, or see it coming way too fast (and probably with a healthy mix of angst and anticipation) as a classroom teacher, we can already hear the bells ringing and busses coming!
1 - THANK YOU to our ND4PS members who have contributed to our “little” statewide plan to celebrate our kids, educators, and public schools as they had back to school this fall. Our goal is to organize and launch a "WE LOVE OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS" movement across the state with positive ads, messages, and yard signs (yours to keep and use again and again!) to show our commitment to and appreciation for public education! We’re already making plans to get these signs spread out across the state by Labor Day, but we could still use more support to ensure every ND4PS coalition member (and then some) gets one in their hands! It’s not too late to donate $10, $25, or $50 to the effort!
2 - We’re also putting together a video featuring North Dakotans of all kinds - parents, grandparents, business owners, service providers, and caring neighbors and friends - who want to wish our kids and educators a great school year. We’ve had some great volunteers so far, and it’s an easy ask (in part because we’ve prepared a script (of sorts) to follow). We really want it to be genuine, authentic, and reflective of our state’s communities and our diverse coalition’s members, so if you have any interest in helping, reply to this message, and I’ll be in touch to share more!
3 - We’d also like to thank the more than 100 members of our coalition who took action, spoke up, and contacted our congressional delegation about applying pressure and using their authority to unfreeze federal education funding that our communities and families were counting on. Although we’re pleased with the outcome of the dollars FINALLY being released by the feds and directed where they needed to be, it never should have happened, and it was important for us to engage when our schools needed us to.
We’ve got an important role to play for public education and public schools in North Dakota, and we’re glad you’re committed to the work with us. Thanks for all you do. We look forward to staying in touch!
-From the ND4PS Coalition