The Senate and Assembly both added money in their one-house budgets released earlier this week for Adult Literacy Education. The Senate essentially restored the $1.5 million added last year and the Assembly added $3 million.

​In order to keep pressure on the Senate and Assembly to continue to fight for this funding, we are asking programs to tweet a thank you to the Senate and Assembly as well as to our Senate and Assembly champions for their support. In the Senate, the champion is Jessica Ramos and in the Assembly, the champions are Yuh-Line Niou, Ron Kim and Pat Fahy. Following are sample tweets and twitter handles of the targets. Also tweet @NYSA_Majority and don't forget to mention NYCCAL @NYCCAL, and use our state hashtag #LiteracyLiftsNY.
 
Thank you @NYSenate for supporting Adult Literacy Education (ALE) in your one-house. We still need your support to help the 3.5 million New Yorkers (1/4 of our state's adult population) that need adult education. #LiteracyLiftsNY @NYCCAL
 
Thank you <@insertmembername> for championing Adult Literacy Education (ALE) in your one-house budget and fighting for the 3.5 million New Yorkers (1/4 of our state's adult population) that need adult education. #LiteracyLiftsNY @NYCCAL
 
Fill in with below names:
@jessicaramos
@rontkim
@Patriciafahy109
@yuhline
 
Feel free to come up with your own tweets as well. 

It's that time of year again to join together for a #LiteracyLiftsNY Day in Albany on Monday, March 4th!   We know the beginning of the year is hectic but our decision makers need to hear from YOU and your students!  Each year we talk to many elected officials who understand that Adult Literacy is underfunded and the difficulties this causes our community and we need to keep making sure they hear our message! Assembly-member Ron Kim is co-hosting the day with us and will join us and other invited elected officials for a Rally so join us to make sure the other legislators hear our message!  Throughout the day we will also meet with legislators about the NYCCAL priorities and make sure they see our faces and understand #LiteracyLifts! 
   
We will be sending out more information in the coming weeks but we wanted to make sure everyone put the date on the calendar so we can maximize participation from programs.  It may be too early to let us know the exact number of students and staff that may be able to attend from your program but if you can ballpark, that would be great.  If you plan to attend with students please contact Ariel Savransky savranskya@UJAFEDNY.ORG and she will tell you the next steps.

​If you cannot travel to Albany you can still join in our social media campaign on March 4.  Here is a link to how to join:  bit.ly/NYCCALSoMeState

We anticipate that we will have a bus as we did last year but we are exploring alternative options (smaller vans leaving from different areas of the city) depending on which programs participate. We will update you all as the timing gets closer. 
​ 
Thank you and here’s to getting the $15.3 million this year!