Monarch Populations Increase in Mexica, But Not in Western USA

Monarch Populations Increase Dramatically in Mexico…in CA, Another Story 

We are at that point in environmental efforts where we take what we can get.  Any good news should be used to justify the hard work and efforts of those of us who fight the industries hellbent on eradicating the natural environment and those smaller groups of homesteaders who are struggling to breed Monarch (and others) over the summer months in hopes of adding to the populations facing the dangers of a long migration back from the Midwest to Mexico and elsewhere. 

According to several reports and one from The Guardian, “The population of monarch butterflies wintering in central Mexico is up 144% over last year, according to new research.

The data was cheered but scientists quickly warned that it does not mean the butterflies that migrate from Canada and the United States are out of danger.

This winter, researchers found the butterflies occupying 14.95 acres (6.05 hectares) of pine and fir forests in the mountains of Michoacán and Mexico states – an increase from 6.12 acres a year ago.

This year’s is the biggest measurement since the 2006-2007 period, said Andrew Rhodes, Mexico’s national commissioner for protected natural areas.”

Monarch breeders and migration observers were worried about the storms and   cold weather along the routes through Texas into Mexico, but the population’s increase was cautiously welcomed by many.  

Andrew Rhodes, Mexico’s national commissioner for protected natural areas regarded the increase in area of hectares as a positive possibility: “Once in Mexican territory, the butterflies occupied an area that gives us a lot of hope for the future.”

Ryan Norris, an ecology professor from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, said it would be dangerous to think the improved coverage in their wintering grounds meant the butterflies were out of the woods.

“It buys us time, but that’s the best it does,” said Norris.

Norris saw little connection between this year’s increase and the concerted conservation efforts along the butterflies’ migration route, especially in Mexico where the government, with the help of local communities, has nearly eliminated illegal logging inside the butterflies’ protected area west of Mexico City.

“It was a Goldilocks year this year,” he said. “Not too hot, not too cold, it was perfect.”

Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch and an ecology professor at the University of Kansas, echoed that caution.

“It’s not going to be replicated next year, not even close,” Taylor said.

Above average temperatures in Texas next year will cause problems for the monarch production, Taylor said. Last spring, cold temperatures north of Texas kept the butterflies there to lay their eggs, but when it’s warmer they wander farther north too soon and the population does not grow as well, he said.

Sadly, numbers in overwintering areas in California have dropped significantly – likely due to drought or even the late fires in southern California.  While scientists and trackers struggle to make sense of the causal factors, the numbers are disheartening.  There is an 86% drop in population in the years between 2018 and 2017. 

According to an article in The Mercury News, “Typically Monterey County sites support large monarch populations. In 2017, four sites, including Andrew Molera State Park and Pacific Grove, had at least 1,000 butterflies. A private property in Big Sur had almost 20,000, but this number is down to just 800.

“The big trees had fallen with the winds or otherwise. So the butterflies had probably moved to other places,” said Connie Masotti, a docent at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, who has been counting monarchs since 2013.

“It’s a very complicated habitat that they are looking for and it doesn’t take much for it to go wrong,” Masotti said.

In the 1980s, nearly 4.5 million monarchs migrated to coastal California to escape cold winters. “We are now down to less than one percent of this historic population,” Pelton said.

What is more worrying is the drop in butterfly numbers below the 30,000 mark. Scientists studying monarch butterflies have predicted that populations below this threshold may not be able to bounce back and continue to migrate.”

“It is a concerning level to have gone down to in a single year,” said Emma Pelton, a monarch conservation expert with the Xerces Society, a non-profit organization in Portland, Oregon that works on the conservation of invertebrates.

There is a general understanding that expansion of agriculture, use of pesticides, loss of native milkweed, and climate change – affecting both wintering and breeding habitat, have contributed to the decline of Western Monarch populations.

But last year was particularly bad weather for monarchs. Unusual winter storms in March made their return journey to breeding sites, west of the Rocky Mountains, more complicated. “They were probably vulnerable after they had left the protection of trees,” Pelton said.

She also speculates loss of large trees to previous or ongoing droughts as a reason for declining monarch numbers. The butterflies use branches of tall trees to roost and for protection against wind.

Monarchs like evergreen trees; the fine leaves give them wind-protection, but also some dappled sunlight. The temperatures must be just right for them – not too cold, otherwise their muscles don’t activate, and if it’s too hot, their stored fat burns too quickly. And they need nectar plants to feed on.

Meanwhile, eastern populations of Monarchs have also demonstrated a significant increase in populations in their overwintering areas in Florida, etc.  According to Monarch Butterfly Garden, blogger Tony records more than 200 million Monarchs in the lower east populations.

There’s much to be hopeful for, but there’s still much more to do.  

For example, Illinois could follow the lead of Minnesota, which passed legislation to prevent Monsanto and others from using GMO and pesticides which destroy milkweed and other plants beneficial to Monarch.  By the way, this does not include the overspray of herbicides and pesticides that are cancer agents for humans.  

This article for the Star Tribune in 2017 indicates just how far ahead of Illinois Minnesota was, and how Monsanto and others are likely never to stop creating poisons. “Minnesota is clamping down on a troublesome pesticide developed by Monsanto that brought a cascade of complaints and damaged an estimated 265,000 acres of soybeans in the state this year. Monsanto is pushing back, questioning how the state came up with the tougher standards and warning that they could be counterproductive.

At stake are millions of dollars in potential sales for the new product, both in Minnesota and nationally. Minnesota ranks third in the nation for soybean production after Illinois and Iowa, and the state's crop was valued at $3.6 billion in 2016.

Monsanto developed a new formulation of an old pesticide, called dicamba, to solve a vexing problem: Many weeds have become resistant to Roundup and other popular weed killers, and growers and crop protection businesses are eager to have a replacement.

Call Governor Pritzker’s Office at 217-782-6830 or 217-782-6831.

Tell the new Governor that you respectfully want him to consider making changes like Minnesota and other states to protect not only the unique lives of Monarch butterflies but also the lives of all of us and or progeny.

“Hello, and thank you for taking this call.  I am a constituent of Governor Pritzker and reside in this (zip code).  I am pleased Governor Pritzker is now leading us toward a more fiscal, economical, and environmentally safe state in our union.  I would ask our Governor to strongly consider the efforts of states like Minnesota to ban the use of dangerous pesticides, GMO herbicides, and chemicals that pose an endangerment to all of us as well as the creatures in our environment.  Please help us to make this state a place to raise a family with a healthy and environmentally safe future.”  

The Miracle of Compounding

February Means 3% Increased COLA for Tier One -  Thanks to IRTA

Simple interest is a percentage of money (a.k.a. interest) earned on an original (or principle) amount of money.  For example, if you invest $100 at 10% simple interest per year, you will receive $10 at the end of the year on your original $100 investment.  And, with simple interest, you would receive the $10 each next year, and on and on.  In short, you would earn $10 per year for every year you maintained your original investment.  

Compound interest, on the other hand, provides you the percentage on the original amount (principle) plus any earlier earned interest.  In other words, you would earn a return (in this case, 10%) on the original investment plus the interest earned in the year previously.  This difference is as significant as  E = MC²!   

See the chart below for an example:

Original $100 After	Simple Interest	Compound Interest
1 YEAR	$110	$110
2 YEARS	$120	$121
3 YEARS	$130	$133
4 YEARS	$140	$146
5 YEARS	$150	$161
10 YEARS	$200	$259
20 YEARS	$300	$672
30 YEARS	$400	$1,744
40 YEARS	$500	$4,526
50 YEARS	$600	$11,739

(Source: www.financeprofessor.com/introcorpfinnotes/simplevscompound.html)

A Message from IRTA Today, February 1^st.

“Hi, I’m Mike Schmidt chair of the state IRTA membership committee. I’m here to remind you that today is February 1^ST and we all know what the means. Yes, it is just 24 days until my next birthday… oh, no, no, no. 

I mean that today is the day that TRS deposits to us our next pension payment. More importantly, this February pension payment is the first one of 2019 to include our annual 3% raise, if you’re over the age of 60, of course.

Speaking on behalf of the IRTA, I’d like to remind you that it was the leadership of this organization that saved your yearly 3% cola when the state legislature voted to restrict it several years ago. It was the IRTA lawsuit in the case, Heaton vs. Quinn that ultimately guaranteed our retirement benefits. 

Without the efforts of the IRTA we would be poorer and our futures less assured. So, as a reminder, if you haven’t yet paid your 2019 IRTA annual dues, now is a great time to do so. 

With that in mind, remember that you can save $10.00 a year by switching over to dues deduct by going to the new and improved IRTA website.   

And when you run into retired school colleagues, ask them to join with you in the IRTA if they haven’t done so already. After all, we belong to the only state-wide organization solely dedicated to protecting the retirement benefits promised to us by the state. With those guaranteed benefits I know that your next birthday will be a happy as mine will be. 

Thank you for your membership.”

Mike Schmidt,

IRTA Membership Committee, Chair

WYSIWYG and Armageddon

You’ll recall that once we had all jumped a step beyond our Radio Shack TRS-80’s and into a world of IBM’s or Mac’s, we were able to print exactly what was “on screen.”  Millennials will not comprehend this or several other facts in this post, but it’s true.

“WYSIWYG,” said an IBM IT guy to me back in 1978 or ‘79.  “That means ‘What you See Is What You Get,’ and that printer over there with the continuous roll of tissue-thin printing paper running on sprocket wheels will print exactly what you see on your screen.”  Remarkable! And I.T.?  That wasn’t even a term yet. 

Transition: a group of amateur science sleuths in Denmark decided to embark on a rather creative experiment to see if their worst suspicions were confirmed by the very concept of what one sees on the screen is what one has now.  The plan?  To drive through various habitats – “urban areas, forests, agricultural tracts, uncultivated open land and wetlands” with a band of volunteers to see if “something from the past (was) missing in the present.”

Any of us remembering the summer Sunday drives with the family or the long-distance road trips along venerable highways to “see the USA in a Chevrolet” will attest to the carnage of insects – beetles, butterflies, grasshoppers, gnats, etc. - covering the windshield and grill of the metal wagon like a bizarre Jackson Pollock painting.  But, today?  Make that drive and the need to pull over to the station and use the rough edge of the window squeegee is not nearly as necessary, if necessary at all. They’re gone, or going quickly. The insects.  In fact, entomologists have coined “the windshield phenomenon” to simplify the growing comprehension of the realization of change/loss.   

In a recent New York Times Magazine article entitled “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here,” writer Brooke Jarvis provides a pandemic warning of what is likely to come and how we all got to this point without noticing.  Especially loved insects like the Monarch butterfly are carefully watched, monitored and raised by thousands of people as a result of their declines. But the fondness for an orange and black wing is not simply an aesthetic; Monarchs provide needed pollination of untold numbers of plants upon we and other creatures depend. “In the United States, scientists recently found the population of monarchs fell 90 percent in the last 20 years, a loss of 900 million individuals; the rusty-patched bumblebee, which once lived in 28 states, dropped by 87% over the same period.”    

“Biologists suspect we’re living through the sixth major mass extinction. Earth has witnessed five, when more than 75% of species disappeared. Palaeontologists spot them when species go missing from the global fossil record, including the iconic specimens shown here. “We don’t always know what caused them but most had something to do with rapid climate change”, says Melbourne Museum palaeontologist Rolf Schmidt.”

The fifth (or last) great extinction took place 66 million years ago with a loss of species figured by fossil record at 76%.  Volcanic activity, climate alterations, and a final asteroid impact destroyed the dinosaurs and killed off most ammonites (think of one surviving species: chambered nautilus).  

Jarvis writes, “We’ve named and described a million species of insects, a stupefying array of thrips and firebrats and antlions and caddis flies and froghoppers and other enormous families of bugs that most of us can’t even name. (Technically, the word “bug” applies only to the order Hemiptera, also known as true bugs, species that have tubelike mouths for piercing and sucking — and there are as many as 80,000 named varieties of those.) The ones we think we do know well, we don’t: There are 12,000 types of ants, nearly 20,000 varieties of bees, almost 400,000 species of beetles, so many that the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane reportedly quipped that God must have an inordinate fondness for them. A bit of healthy soil a foot square and two inches deep might easily be home to 200 unique species of mites, each, presumably, with a subtly different job to do. And yet entomologists estimate that all this amazing, absurd and understudied variety represents perhaps only 20 percent of the actual diversity of insects on our planet — that there are millions and millions of species that are entirely unknown to science.”

Not surprising, that is also part of the problem: the profusion of insects makes their decline over a longer period of time seem unlikely or worse, unnoticed.  Add to that the nature of scientific inquiry with long-term tracking studies of five years or less, then so much can occur unseen.  Likewise, we humans occupy such a ephemeral niche along the timeline of our earth, we notice little if any changes around us.  Jarvis also cites an experiment of consequence: 

“A 1995 study, by Peter H. Kahn and Batya Friedman, of the way some children in Houston experienced pollution summed up our blindness this way: ‘With each generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation takes that amount as the norm.” In decades of photos of fishermen holding up their catch in the Florida Keys, the marine biologist Loren McClenachan found a perfect illustration of this phenomenon, which is often called “shifting baseline syndrome.’ The fish got smaller and smaller, to the point where the prize catches were dwarfed by fish that in years past were piled up and ignored. But the smiles on the fishermen’s faces stayed the same size. The world never feels fallen, because we grow accustomed to the fall.’”

If climate change is culpable as one source for the increasing decline in insect populations, another factor is certainly the use of powerful insecticides and herbicides developed by three major companies: Bayer, Syngenta, and Monsanto.  “Neonicotinoids (aka neonics) are one of the most common pesticides used in agriculture and are also used extensively by home and garden centers. Unbeknownst to consumers, many “bee-friendly” garden plants have been pre-treated with these bee-killing pesticides. Exposure to neonics can kill bees directly and also makes them more susceptible to other impacts like pests, diseases, loss of habitat and a changing climate.”

“Glyphosate (a.k.a. Monsanto’s Roundup®) is the most widely used herbicide in the world. In the United States, glyphosate is wiping out milkweed, which monarch butterflies rely on as the only food for their young. Use of glyphosate has increased dramatically in the past two decades since Monsanto has launched corn, soy, canola and cotton products genetically infused with Roundup.

“Organophosphates are a class of toxic nerve agent pesticides that threaten human health and the environment. The EPA was set to ban all uses of chlorpyrifos (an organophosphate) nationwide until the Trump administration reversed that decision. This class of pesticides is so toxic that even the smallest doses lower children’s IQs, increase risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and learning disabilities, and structurally change the parts of the brain that control language and memory. Organophosphates are toxic to wildlife, including pollinators, birds and aquatic organisms — and chlorpyrifos poses a risk to about 1,800 critically threatened or endangered species.” Maryland, Connecticut and Minnesota have all passed laws to protect pollinators from these chemical killers. Has Illinois?

And yet, the more horrifying outcomes of Jarvis’ article is not so much that millions of the multi-millions of six or eight-legged creatures are going, gone; but, instead, the obvious cascading effect of this loss.  The likely omega of this willful human ignorance?

“When asked to imagine what would happen if insects were to disappear completely, scientists find words like chaos, collapse, Armageddon. Wagner, the University of Connecticut entomologist, describes a flowerless world with silent forests, a world of dung and old leaves and rotting carcasses accumulating in cities and roadsides, a world of “collapse or decay and erosion and loss that would spread through ecosystems” — spiraling from predators to plants. E.O. Wilson has written of an insect-free world, a place where most plants and land animals become extinct; where fungi explodes, for a while, thriving on death and rot; and where ‘the human species survives, able to fall back on wind-pollinated grains and marine fishing’ despite mass starvation and resource wars. ‘Clinging to survival in a devastated world, and trapped in an ecological dark age,’ he adds, ‘the survivors would offer prayers for the return of weeds and bugs.’” 

In the amateur driving experiments through the woods and lands of northern Europe, the results were a sixty times loss of arthropods collected by net (instead of windshields). “It’s easy to read that number as 60 percent less, but it’s sixtyfold less: Where once he caught 473 milligrams of bugs, Lister was now catching just eight milligrams.” ‘It was, you know, devastating,’ Lister told me. But even scarier were the ways the losses were already moving through the ecosystem, with serious declines in the numbers of lizards, birds and frogs. The paper reported “a bottom-up trophic cascade and consequent collapse of the forest food web.’” 

I look out at my small chickadees, feisty wrens, acrobatic nuthatches, crimson cardinals, and so many, many others.  All of them dependent on insects at one time or another.  And then, to contemplate the great web of being to which we all belong, I feel greatly concerned. 

“By eating and being eaten, insects turn plants into protein and power the growth of all the uncountable species — including freshwater fish and a majority of birds — that rely on them for food, not to mention all the creatures that eat those creatures. We worry about saving the grizzly bear, says the insect ecologist Scott Hoffman Black, but where is the grizzly without the bee that pollinates the berries it eats or the flies that sustain baby salmon? Where, for that matter, are we?”

Take a look at what Minnesota has done.  Give a call to your Illinois senator, representative, and Governor Pritzker to follow their lead.  Thank you.

Or...Go to Friends of the Environment to get involved. 

The Art of the Deal?

The Art of The Deal – Rauner and Trump?

If you’re an Illinoisan, you should be well aware of what happens when an executive in the leader’s office decides not to allow spending for the state to proceed by blocking a budget.

Ex-governor Rauner’s position, combined with his inability to find consensus and refusals to seek collaboration, left the state’s finances in greater shambles than the desperate balance sheet used by the ersatz Carhart office-seeker to lure a concerned citizenry into considering him for Governor.

His money and blanketing commercials did the rest.  (After Quinn’s using the public sector workers as chum, there was no way he would regain his seat.) 

Back to Rauner:

1.    736 days without a budget.

2.    $14.71 billion in the backlog of bills owed to vendors (with interest).

3.    Services for multitudes of medically needy and other services were unpaid, and unlikely to re-open after being left dry.

4.    People and families in need of state services based upon budgetary amount were left without.

5.    “…some Medicaid providers, human services grant recipients, the Community Care Program and other programs administered by the Illinois Department on Aging.For example, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless found that 90 percent of homeless service providers were forced to limit their intake of new clients, reduce services for current clients, lay off staff, eliminate programs, and/or close work sites due to the impasse.” 

6.    Many non-profits and medical/health service centers closed without funding.

Back to now:

The current occupant of the White House (45) is cut from the same cloth that gave Illinois Rauner, although even Rauner was awkwardly fearful of complimenting Trump.  Rauner tried desperately to appear as “one of the many” in his motorcycle gear and folksy speakin’.   

As of this writing, the shutdown has become a record-breaker.  Day 24. 

As for the ultimate costs? Those too could become a record-breaker.

According to Fortune Magazine, keeping the government running will be cheaper than shutting it down.  “The partial government shutdown comes with a high price: in the billions, maybe tens of billions of dollars so far, and increasing in scale daily. It costs more to shutter the government than to keep it open, so long as accumulated bills and deferred salaries are eventually paid as they have following all previous temporary closures. And the lack of spending drags down the country’s economy, especially in communities with government workers or those near national parks.”

“In 2017, a government shutdown cost the U.S. economy about $6.5 billion per week.  The Office of Management and Budget estimated a 16 day shutdown in 2013 cost the government $2 billion in lost productivity or about 6.6 million workdays lost.”  

In fact, analysts expect that in another ten days, the cost to the economy will have exceeded the $5.7 billion Trump wanted for his border wall/fence, sleeping policeman, moat, etc. 

And, my friends, watch the markets as the shutdown “could shave off approximately $1.2 billion of real GDP in the quarter for each week that part of the government is closed.

If there is a commonality between Trump and Rauner, it is their uncanny resistance to compassion and unwillingness to use victimization as a part of deal-making.  They thrive on it.  It’s never about the art of a deal; it’s only about making you submit.

According to Indivisible Chicago, switchboards in the offices if the senators of the US Senate are being flooded with calls to support Trump's vanity project of a wall.  We can depend upon our Senators in Illinois, but they might appreciate a call in support of their refusal to submit.

Senator Dick Durbin: 202-244-2152
Senator Tammy Duckworth: 202-224-2854

Please remember to thank the staff who take calls all day long.

General Mattis' Resignation Letter

General Jim Mattis’ Resignation Letter to a Man Without Military, Political, or Strategic Understanding

“I have been privileged to serve as our country’s 26th Secretary of Defense which has allowed me to serve alongside our men and women of the Department in defense of our citizens and our ideals .

“I am proud of the progress that has been made over the past two years on some of the key goals articulated in our National Defense Strategy: putting the Department on a more sound budgetary footing, improving readiness and lethality in our forces, and reforming the Department’s business practices for greater performance. Our troops continue to provide the capabilities needed to prevail in conflict and sustain strong U.S. global influence.

“One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliance and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies. Like you, I have said from the beginning that the armed forces of the United States should not be the policeman of the world. Instead, we must use all tools of American power to provide for the common defense, including proving effective leadership to our alliances. NATO’s 29 democracies demonstrated that strength in their commitment to fighting alongside us following the 9-11 attack on America. The Defeat-ISIS coalition of 74 nations is further proof.

“Similarly, I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours: It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions — to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.

“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my positions. The end date for my tenure is February 28, 2019, a date that should allow sufficient time for a successor to be nominated and confirmed as well as to make sure the Department’s interests are properly articulated and protected at upcoming events to include Congressional posture hearings and the NATO Defense Ministerial meeting in February. Further, that a full transition to a new Secretary of Defense occurs well in advance of the transition of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September in order to ensure stability within the Department.

“I pledge my full effort to a smooth transition that ensure the needs and interests of the 2.15 million Service Members and 732.079 DoD civilians receive undistracted attention of the Department at all times so that they can fulfill their critical, round-the-clock missions to protect the American people.

“I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform.”

RESCIND THE 3% CAP ON LOCAL DISTRICT CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS.

From IEA/NEA:

Sign the petition! The Illinois General Assembly: Protect our Profession

Friend,

I signed a petition on Action Network telling The Illinois General Assembly to protect our profession.

IEA members and all supporters of public education are asked to sign this petition to reverse a harmful piece of legislation that was inserted in the budget passed by the Illinois General Assembly last week. Without warning or discussion of the damage it would do to students and schools, Illinois lawmakers imposed a 3 percent threshold on final average earnings salary increases for any education employees participating in the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) or State Universities Retirement System (SURS). 
Please sign this petition to encourage lawmakers to reverse this terrible piece of legislation and show educators that their work is valued and that teachers and professors deserve respect. Tell them to rescind the 3 percent threshold. 

Background: 

In the final 48 hours of the 2018 legislative session, Illinois’s four legislative leaders sneaked into the budget implementation bill a measure making school districts or universities financially liable for any contribution to those employees’ larger than a 3 percent increase in the final 10 years of their careers. Because educators qualify for a pension after five years and can leave at any time, districts and higher ed institutions would likely institute a 3 percent threshold across the entire contract. 

Impact:

 
As a result of this legislation, teachers would likely be denied extra compensation for after-school work that benefits students, such as coaching, directing plays, tutoring in the evenings, taking classes toward master’s degrees and, therefore, devaluing the continuing education of our educators and ultimately harming students. In addition: 

Reducing benefits to educators will make the already serious Illinois teacher shortage even worse. At a time when committees are being formed to try to figure out how to keep graduating seniors from fleeing the state and choosing instead to stay at Illinois higher education institutions, this action will drive professors away from the profession. This would financially harm the teachers of this state who devote their careers to teaching the next generation of students, impacting their salaries now and in the future, by limiting salary growth to no more than 3 percent, when rates of inflation hover around 2.5 to 3 percent each year. Please sign this petition to encourage lawmakers to reverse this terrible piece of legislation and show educators that their work is valued and that teachers and professors deserve respect. 

Tell them to rescind the 3 percent threshold.

Can you join me and take action? Click here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/demand-lawmakers-protect-our-profession?source=email&

Thanks!

JD