Where from here?

First, off, thanks to the staff of Lincoln Heights for hosting a fun happy hour/signing event at The Pike on 747. Never been there before. Think I'll be going back.

Second, coming up this week we have our first public event - Monday night on the sidewalk (we can't be on school grounds but the public sidewalk at the school is fair game) at the PHS Jazz Band Ice Cream Social. To see what the event is like, check out these photos from a couple of years ago. Hopefully it'll give some of our more active/involved parents a chance to get their names on the petition.

Third, Wednesday afternoon we'll be at O'Charley's in Tri-County to see the Glendale folks. It'd be a great chance for any staffers from the other schools - whether they're ones we've already visited or ones we haven't visited yet - to stop by and help us out.

Fourth, turns out that Sharon Woods is all booked for the 21st, but Glendale has a couple of nice parks - Summit and Washington - that would be perfect for our purposes. We'll need a resident of Glendale to get the actual reservation, but I'm thinking that's do-able. PACE had already agreed to foot the bill for the shelter house at Sharon Woods, and the Glendale reservations are even cheaper (free with a deposit) so we should be able to have some food to grill out there. Plus there's space for cornhole and nice playgrounds around. Bring the kids out...have some fun.

What we need from you...

• Talk to everybody in your building to make sure everyone has signed the petitions. If they haven't send 'em our way on Wednesday at O'Charley's.
• If you're at Heritage Hill, Evendale, Stewart, or Woodlawn, we need to know when and where you want us to have the petitions to get your staff signed up. Feel free to make Wednesday's O'Charley's visit a multiple-school event, but if you want one of your own, we need to know soon.
• Start talking up the May 21st event with parents and staffers. We're going to want to get friends, family, EVERYBODY out to sign on that afternoon.

It's been great to get out and see folks from schools that we don't get to visit often. Thanks for everybody at PCMS, PHS, Springdale, and Lincoln Heights especially for getting on board early.

Petitions, finally!

The first petitions for the PACE For Kids circulators are in the district, finally!

Sadly, Hamilton County is not among the 1st priority counties in Ohio, so we're not getting the vast bulk of petitions that we might have hoped for - at least not yet.

For now, we have seven petitions - five for Hamilton County voters, one for Butler County voters, and one for Clermont County voters. Each petition can hold up to seventy-five signatures from those specific counties.

This means we'll have to be a little judicious about spreading the petitions around. Our hope is that if we can fill these petitions quickly, we'll be able to go back to the OEA local and ask for more petitions.

So, we're going to hit the big spots first - PHS, PCMS, and two of our larger elementary schools, Springdale and Heritage Hill. We'll be at those schools on Tuesday and Wednesday, May 3rd and 4th.