For Community leaders, business leaders, friends, relatives and neighbors:

Background info: Funding for adult basic education classes has been eliminated in Massachusetts. This will shut down almost all publicly funded adult literacy, GED and ESOL classes across the state. There is only enough funding left this year to continue services through January before we have to lock the doors on 25,000 students and over 2,000 staff. This funding cut will dismantle the effective ABE service delivery system we have been struggling to develop for over a decade. In fact, Massachusetts has been providing adult education classes since the late 1800's! Many of our grandparents and great grand parents learned English, became citizens and went on to lead productive and successful lives because of the adult basic education opportunities our state has provided. Tens of thousands of soldiers returning from World War II were able to qualify for their adult high school equivalency diploma (GED). Will we end these opportunities now that they are needed more than ever?

The doors to opportunity will be shut to over 1 million potential future students (a recent report by MassINC cites 1.1 million under-educated and limited English proficient members of the Massachusetts workforce who need adult education services). To stop this from happening, we need you to call and/or write to your elected officials, particularly to your state Senator and state Representatives.

When you call or write to your legislators, remember that they will already be prepared to respond to many constituencies that don't like the budget cuts. They will tell you that they support adult education, but that they had no choice but to cut the funding. They will give reasons that sound reasonable and inevitable. You will need to be firm and tell them why the levels of cuts to literacy, GED and English language classes go too far -- and that this is NOT OK with you. We need every legislator to make a firm commitment to restore the funding for your classes -- don't accept anything less! You might want to make some of the following points:

Tell the legislator or the staff member your name and what community you live in. Tell them why the opportunity for adults who are under-educated or with limited English to learn is important to you, to your community, to families, to businesses, etc.

Tell them they MUST restore the $13 million they took from all adult education programs so that tens of thousands of under-educated and limited English proficient adults can continue to learn. If you know someone who has benefited from these services, tell their story. Tell them the $13 million must go back into the Department of Education line item: 7035-0002.

Be tenacious. If they give you reasons why they had to cut the adult education budget and many other parts of the budget, make the following points. If they say everything is OK, that the money will be restored, skip to the last paragraph.

Tell them that you know the state budget was cut by 3%. Tell them that cutting the adult education budget by 50% is unacceptable -- that it destroys the whole program and eliminates the opportunity for hundreds of thousands of adults to learn and accomplish more with their own future, their families, their work and their communities. That because of these state cuts, Massachusetts will lose another $10,500,000 in federal funding.

Tell them you want their PROMISE to restore the $13 million. If you get the promise, thank them. If there is no promise, tell them you will be calling again until they do make this promise.

| Tips'n'Scripts for Program Staff | Tips'n'Scripts for Adult Students |

Source: Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education (MCAE), 800-339-2498.