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NASP's Inaugural SPAW Virtual Hill Day
This Wednesday, November 14th, is NASP's first ever SPAW Virtual Hill Day! Across the country, school psychologists and allies will be writing to their congressional leaders asking them to support some of the issues that are most important to school psychologists: creating safe and supportive learning environments, increasing access to school-employed mental health services, and ensuring a high quality, well-rounded, and rigorous curricula. NASP's goal on this Virtual Hill Day is for every single member of Congress to hear about the policy issues facing children and youth through the lens of a school psychologist.
Participating in NASP's SPAW Virtual Hill Day is simple and won't take more than 5 minutes of your time. On the day of the event, simply visit www.nasponline.org/VHD. On the page, there will be a form for you to fill out with your name, address, and other information. After you submit the form, the page will redirect to a template letter for you to send to your congressional representatives,which the site determines based on the address that you enter. You are able to edit the template letter as you wish, and once you finish, hit submit - and your letter is sent!
Once you send your letter, share your message on social media! Don't forget to tag the representatives that you sent a letter to, and use the hashtag #NASPAdvocates and your state's political hashtag. Remember, the goal of the day is to get your congressional representatives to pay attention to these issues, so this step is really important, especially since many congressional representatives run their own social media.
In addition, 18 states have planned their own virtual hill days to advocate state association priorities to their legislatures. If you are in Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia or Wisconsin, be sure to check with your state association to participate in their efforts as well.
And that's it! Participating is so simple - but it can make a huge difference. We've seen time and time again that collective voices getting behind issues can instigate change. This is no different! Happy advocacy and Happy SPAW!