Final days of the campaign

Visibility work

*Holding signs at key locations:
– Triangle and Pleasant
– Bank of America/Main & Pleasant
– Route 9 and College St
– North Amherst (Pine St and No. Pleasant)
– Route 9 and Pleasant St (by Amherst College)
– East St and Pelhan Rd (near Fort River school)

*Lawn signs: All 100 or so signs have been placed out on lawns.

Phonebanking

Door-to-door canvassing 

All our supporters are invited to a postelection party after polls close at 8pm

In the Butternut Farm Apartments Community Room at 12 Longmeadow Drive off West Street/Rte 116. Hosted by Vira and Edward Cage

In the Media

Amherst Media has provided the school committee candidates several excellent opportunities to introduce ourselves to the community and to discuss our ideas about the schools. See the following videos:

2012 LWVAmherst Candidates Night on March 27th can be seen online at http://amherstmedia.org/node/22995

Conversations: Dr. Amilcar Shabazz interviewed by Isaac Ben-Ezra

Dr. Amilcar Shabazz — brief infomercial by Shabazz with his son.

* * * * * *

In the news…   Amherst School Committee candidates focus on spending, achievement gap.The candidates are: # Amilcar Shabazz, 52, of 29 Chapel Road, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts; …

On the radio…

Went to WMUA to do the FOCUS show with Frank Gatti. The town school committee race was featured on Focus Sunday, March 4, 2012. I and the other three candidates for the two open seats were guests on March 4th,  at noon Sunday, on WMUA FM 91.1, with special FOCUS host Town Meeting member Frank Gatti.  Gatti is a practicing physician in Amherst

………….

Here’s what the ballot looks like:

http://www.amherstma.gov/DocumentView.aspx?DID=63

VOTE AMILCAR SHABAZZ

ARE YOU IN?

Dear Friends,

I could use your help right about now! WIll you publicly endorse my candidacy for Amherst school committee and ask other key people you know here in Amherst to do the same? To support the campaign please return via email to shabazz4schoolcmte@gmail.com the statement below along with the requested identifying/contact information.

I hereby authorize the affixing of my name/our names to the shabazz4asc.wordpress.com website, and a political advertisement in the Amherst Bulletin on behalf of AMILCAR SHABAZZ, a candidate for Amherst School Committee in the election to be held on April 3, 2012. 

Name_____________________________________________________Date_______________

Address______________________________________________________________________

Phone________________________________________________________________________

We are trying to raise the necessary funds to purchase an ad in the Daily Hampshire Gazette/Amherst Bulletin weekend paper that will appear just before the election on April 3rd. If you can give anything toward the cost of the ad and other promotional material, in any amount from a buck to $50, that would be most appreciated!

Make a donation to “Amilcar Shabazz for School Committee” and mail to:

29 Chapel Road  Amherst, MA 01002

Contact: Michael Burkart, Treasurer

maburk47@comcast.net

THANK YOU!

It’s Action Time!

Election day in Amherst is April 3rd. Let’s get out the vote. Let’s make a difference in the education of our children. Get involved in electing to the Amherst School Committee individuals who will represent your interests and concerns. There are two seats open and four candidates. Amilcar Shabazz is one of those candidates and if you want to know more about him and where he stands read the pages and posts on this site. This is where his campaign will post news and views, information and opinions that matters in this election. Dr. Trevor Baptiste is Shabazz’s campaign manager and he can be reached at trevorbaptiste578@gmail.com. Here is a message from him about an upcoming meeting:

Good evening all:
I am reaching out to each of you to invite you to a planning meeting set for 6:30 Monday Feb. 20, 2012.  The agenda will be  strategies for community activism including getting  Amilcar Shabazz on the school committee and  of equal importance, the proposed language of a warrant article for after-school program funding to be put up for vote at the next Amherst town meeting. Current school committee chair Irv Rhodes will be in attendance to outline the procedure for bringing proposals to town meeting. The community room we are meeting in is located inside Butternut Farm Apartments, 12 Longmeadow Drive, Amherst, MA 01002.  Go all the way down driveway, and the room is by the play structure.  Refreshments will be provided and the space is wheelchair accessible. Please come and participate in the spirit of having our collective effort used for serving the underrepresented in our own community.
Foward Ever Backwards never!

____________________________________________________________________

Here is the letter I submitted for appointment to the School Committee. I received one vote on two ballots, but a decision had been made by a majority of the two voting groups to appoint someone who would not be a candidate for a regular term in the April election.

February 1, 2012

Dear members of the Amherst School Committee & Select Board,

Through this letter let me express my interest in filling the vacant position on the Amherst School Committee. Briefly I will explain my motivation in seeking this appointment as well as say a little about the experience that I would bring to the Committee if selected. Since 2007, I have been directly involved in the Amherst Regional Schools. I moved to Amherst with a son who entered the high school and graduated this past June. I have another son who is a first grader at Crocker Farm Elementary after attending preschool and kindergarten there.

My central motivation for offering to serve on the school committee is in wanting the nearly 4,000 students in our schools, including my seven-year old, to receive the very best education possible. My foremost goal is that we continue to “extend to all children the opportunity to reach their full potential & to lead lives as participants in the political & social life of the commonwealth & as contributors to its economy” [archives.lib.state.ma.us/actsResolves/1993/1993acts0071.pdf]. I am willing to put shoulder to the wheel to help our schools make improvements toward that end.

I am the son of a woman who was a public school teacher from 1958 until her retirement almost four decades later. In the late 1980s, when I studied for my master’s degree in history, I also took classes, exams, and teacher training work to earn from the State of Texas a permanent Texas Educator Certificate in Secondary Social Studies in 1991. As a substitute teacher, I taught in grades from the first to the 12^th. I have taught at the college level for more than three decades and the emphasis of my research has been in the area of educational policy and history.

My priorities for serving on the Amherst School Committee reflect those that have shaped my career as a scholar and teacher: advocating for equity and social justice within the academy and the larger society; advancing historical knowledge both within and outside academia; and expanding students’ access to and appreciation of high levels of intellectual engagement. In addition to my lifelong commitment to teaching, my experiences as the chair of an academic unit at UMass Amherst have made me keenly aware of the importance of the school committee’s role in the budget process. If appointed to the Committee, I hope to make use of these professional experiences to help improve our schools. My background gives me the essential ingredients needed to act as a representative of the entire community and to help establish “educational goals & policies for the operation of the school system” [arps.org/node/280].

Regardless of your decision, let me thank you all for your service as Select Board members and School Committee members. I look forward to answering any questions you might have for me and of working for the best education possible for our children.

Amilcar Shabazz, Ph.D.