While I was a high school Social Studies teacher, I recall being in many meetings where we discussed new and growing challenges -- larger class sizes, programs cut, staff turnover, student behavioral issues, and on and on. As an educator, I saw and felt the impacts of these challenges day in and day out. And yet, everyday students arrived and I was tasked with meeting their needs with fewer and fewer resources. In the early years, I knew that state elected officials played a part in the difficulties we experienced on the frontlines with our students, but once I understood the depth of the issues at hand, I knew I could not stay silent.

Since then, I've left the classroom and worn many hats in public education advocacy spaces. It is among the most trying and fulfilling work. I feel I have a responsibility to my own small children to stand up for their education, to fight for my students who have since graduated high school and gone on to college and careers and their own families, and for the future of Arizona.

Your donation goes to help our team train more volunteers to make calls to keep voters on the rolls, knock doors to talk to disaffected voters, and to get the message out that we have much to hope for if only we supported public education, the cornerstone of our democracy, in the ways that we know it can be.

"People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go."