RTL Sample PA Announcements

Getting something about Right To Learn on your morning announcements is a great way to spread the word and get others to participate in your Day of Action on April 18.

Step 1: First, figure out who is in charge of what gets on the announcements. If you just have the loud squawk-box announcements*, it's usually someone in the main office. If you watch announcements on Channel One or a school TV system, it's often a video production class or journalism teacher that is in charge.

Step 2: A single announcement isn't good enough. It takes multiple times before students and teachers will start to remember what you said, so plan to repeat your announcement for at least a week. If you look in the samples below, you could try to pitch a "Startling budget fact of the day" or something similar so that people don't get bored of the same script day after day!

Step 3: Similar to step two, try to support your announcements by hanging up flyers around campus. There's nothing like someone pointing at a flyer on the wall and saying "I heard about RTL this morning!" If you need some sample flyers, you can download one of our customizable PDFs.

Step 4: If you can, run announcements for everything you do, from club meetings to fundraisers to your actual day of action on April 18. Again, repeated exposure is critical to get your message across.

Sample Announcement Scripts
Here are some example scripts you can use -- feel free to copy-and-paste and edit them in any way you please.

Be sure to fill in the with whatever you want people to do, such as:

• Come out to the Right To Learn Club meeting today after school
• Rally against budget cuts tomorrow in the courtyard during lunch
• Join our Facebook group called ___________
• Talk to _________________ about how to get involved in the rally

Week of Announcements:

• Monday: Did you know that the Governor has proposed cutting nearly $5 billion from public schools next year? That's the same as adding 12 more students into our already overcrowded classes. Want to do something about it? Then .
• Tuesday: More than 107,000 teachers would have to be laid off if school budgets are cut by almost $5 billion next year. Help let politicians in Sacramento know that schools are too important to cut by .
• Wednesday: Our school will get $24,000 less per classroom for books, supplies and computers if school budgets are cut by nearly $5 billion next year. Speak up against these cuts by .
• Thursday: Art, music, electives and sports are likely to disappear if school budgets are cut by more than $5 billion next year. Help save important these important programs by .
• Friday: More than 10,000 students will rally together on April 18 against cutting the budgets of California schools. Get involved by visiting www.RightToLearnCA.org or .

Single Announcement:
Join the Right To Learn Club and more than 10,000 students across California to protest against close to $5 billion in budget cuts proposed for public schools. We don't have to have bigger classes and fewer electives -- we can make a difference by .

* Note on Speaker-Only Announcements
If your school doesn't have a visual announcements element like television (and why would it, with so many education cuts?!) you're going to have to make it visual for everyone. A good way to do this is to start the announcement with a really startling fact or different tone of voice. The best thing to do would be to do a small skit, either alone or with a partner, to get everyone's attention. You could "be" a not-so-sharp celebrity commenting on how great schools are with obvious irony, a jail warden telling students what their days will be like with budget cuts (as if they are all incarcerated), or even impersonate a famous political comedian with a different name ("Margaret Chi," "John Stewbart") and run one of their skits or one similar to theirs, replacing things they comment on with facts about education. The sky is the limit!