Authors secured for the Instructional School Garden Program bill

Bill Authors Secured for the Instructional School Garden Program Bill

Announcement

We are delighted to announce that we have secured authors for our bill!:

1. Principal Author: Senator Sasha Renee Perez (D-Alhambra), Chair, Senate Education Committee and Member, Senate Budget Subcommittee on Education
2. Co-Author: Senator Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa), Vice Chair, Education Committee and Member, Senate Budget Subcommittee on Education
3. Co-Author: Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura), Chair, Assembly Budget Committee and Member, Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife

Thank you to the broader coalition! We could not have secured bipartisan, bicameral support from key committees without your support! Our urgent requests are listed below, and look for a more comprehensive update as well as responses to your input at the January 29th broader coalition meeting in the coming few weeks.

We expect to have others authors to come forward. We will share more details soon when the bill is formally introduced (and assigned a bill number).

New Requests

Existing Garden Programs

We need an understanding of the existing school garden programs and gaps (school districts that could significantly benefit from a school garden program) in the following Representative Districts (links take you to District boundary maps). Please reply to share about programs you know of, including contact information, if you haven’t already:

1. Senator Sasha Renee Perez (D-Alhambra)
2. Senator Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa, District 19)
3. Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura)
4. Assemblymember Josh Hoover, Vice Chair (R-Folsom)
5. Assemblymember Leticia Castillo (R-Corona)
6. Senator Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger)
7. Susan Rubio, Health Committee (D-Covina)

Staff Time

We have a lot of work ahead to ensure passage of the bill. Please let us know if you are able to lend at least 4 hours of staff time to do outreach to legislative offices and organizations on behalf of the coalition to garden support. We’ll provide an overview and templates.

Financial Contribution

In addition to staff time, we are requesting financial contributions to allow our work to continue through the bill cycle, ending in September. The contribution does not necessarily need to come from your organization, but instead could be requested to one of your funders. For example, a coalition member asked a funder of her nonprofit to make a contribution to the Coalition and emphasized the influence this bill could have on the longevity and growth of school garden programs and sustainable funding for those programs. This outreach was successful and strengthened the relationship between the organization and the funder.

We will need $60,000 between March and September to ensure bill passage, including keeping Linda Livers, our project and campaign manager, working through the conclusion of the campaign, and to cover other expenses. We are seeking to cover at least half of this need from a few garden education or environmental literacy organizations. If you know of other potential funders, please let us know.

Whether you can give $500 or $5,000, please help to keep us going! Checks should be made out to Living Classroom with CA School Garden Coalition in the memo line, and sent to Living Classroom, P.O. Box 4121, Los Altos, CA 94024. Living Classroom has a separate account for these contributions and uses the account to pay Linda per her very detailed invoices. Contributions are tax deductible. Questions: Contact Vicki Moore, Founder and Board President, Living Classroom.

Updates

1. We are reviewing our bill language from Legislative Counsel. We will be discussing the language with the principal author and relevant state agencies in the near future.
2. We are encouraging legislators to put in a District request for an Instructional School Garden Program pilot. This gives us a chance to operationalize the program on a small scale in various regions during phase 1, which can then inform our phase 2 of implementation. Local pilots are beneficial to legislators because they can directly positively impact kids and teachers in their Districts, and funds do not have to come from a state budget request. Senator Dave Cortese’s office put in a district request to run a pilot, and we’ll hear more about the guidelines for these requests in the coming months.
3. Thank you for those of you who were able to join the January 29 Broader Coalition meeting. We had 54 attendees. Here are the slides and meeting chat summary and notes.
4. Secure your spot for advocacy day! More details to come about the time commitment, but we will develop talking points and coordinate geographic cohorts and leads to schedule meetings with legislators for April 9 at the Capitol.

Please let us know if you have any questions. We will be in touch with more information and requests for letters of support once the bill is introduced.

Thank you,

Linda Livers

On behalf of the CA School Garden Coalition Leadership Team