Bring Your Legislator to School Day
Welcomes Winnie Brinks
Michigan State Respresentative
November was Bring Your Legislator to School Day and we were fortunate to have State Representative Winnie Brinks come for the afternoon. The afternoon started with a delicious lunch catered by Gooder Catering. During lunch we listened to two 8th grade students Antony and Quatasia who are part of the media club share their experience with the Elevating Our Voices project and We are Union. Gwen Heatley shared about our Challenge Scholar Program at Harrison and Jullianie Mackey talked about the incredible benefits of being a "Community School".
It was so nice having Representative Brinks take an interest in what we are doing at our school as she always does. She has supported Harrison Park in the past and continues to do so. We discussed different laws that have just been passed and are on the docket. It was interesting to hear how many hours were spent adding language to the 3rd Grade reading policy to improve what was going to pass. They made sure it would not be straight retention, students with IEP's will be exempt and services will need to be provided to support our students who have difficulty reading. We also discussed conversations that have been taking place in Lansing regarding technology equity. Things that have been done is looking at how technology can be financed and looking at how we can work around different funding and make it available. So in the long run, it will become easier to use funding to support technology. Another area that has been and continues to be worked on is teacher evaluation. We look forward to having her return again and maybe include other legislators from the area.