(SACRAMENTO, CA) Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) honored Cathy Meyer of San Francisco's Outer Mission, Merced Heights, Ingleside (OMI) neighborhood during the State Assembly's Woman of the Year celebration conducted each year to celebrate Women's History Month.
Meyer serves as President of the 2nd District PTA, which includes all of the City and County of San Francisco - one of 29 regional PTA districts statewide. She also serves on the Community Oversight Committee for the Proposition A Quality Teacher and Education Act, which generates local parcel tax revenue to support teacher salaries, professional development, and technology improvement in San Francisco public schools.
"Education
is the most important gift that we can give to our children," said Ting. "By ensuring that parents
are better positioned to fight for the needs of their kids at local schools, Cathy is providing an
invaluable service to our community."
"I believe access to quality public education is our promise, our sacred trust to all children and families. Lost in the static created by curriculum redesign and standardized test scores is the number one predictor of student success, family engagement," said Meyer. "Parents and guardians, aunts, uncles, and grandparents are their first teachers; we may not know the latest pedagogy or testing acronym but we know our kids. Family engagement in education shows our youth how much we care, reinforces the importance of learning, and the necessity of advocating for themselves."
Meyer trains parents active in 64 local PTA organizations how to be effective advocates for their children. She also serves as a liaison between local PTAs and San Francisco Unified School District, provides a voice for San Francisco schools in the State Legislature, and provides counsel to parents seeking to establish a PTA at their child's school so that they can be more involved in shaping their child's education.
"Recent education reforms make the work of PTAs more important than ever," added Ting. "The state needs more individuals like Meyer, fighting like a force of nature to ensure that our kids have better opportunities to learn."
California is now spending more on education than ever. In addition, education reforms adopted through the state's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) give parents or guardians of high needs children more power to shape their child's education because school districts have new flexibility to pursue local solutions for student needs. Under the LCFF, the state directs more funding to schools with concentrations of these students to confront persistent achievement gaps. The law also requires school districts to reach out to parents each year when creating goals and measurements for student achievement. This is the mechanism for parents to hold local schools accountable.
During the Woman of the Year celebration, a woman from each Assembly District is honored in the State Capitol. Each honoree was introduced on the Assembly Floor, received a resolution honoring her accomplishments, and attended receptions with the other honorees and elected officials. The event has been a Capitol tradition since 1987.