Here’s what gifted education advocates in Montgomery County, heck in Maryland, need. We need a Kevin Bacon. Philly.com posted a story yesterday titled, “Actor Kevin Bacon: Save Pa. gifted teen program.”
Movie star and Philadelphia native Kevin Bacon is appealing to Gov. Rendell to retain an educational program for gifted teens that has fallen victim to the state’s budget crisis.
The Governor’s School for Excellence of the Arts, founded in 1973, has trained 19,000 Pennsylvania teenagers in realms as diverse as medicine and entertainment. The program cost the state $3.2 million last year.
A spokesman for Rendell has said that the program needs to be eliminated in order to fund vital human services. The spokesman sais the governor would try to reinstate it if the economy improved.
Bacon, an alumnus of the school’s arts program, is pleading to keep the program up and running.
“We urge Gov. Rendell to reconsider his decision,” Bacon and Hester Kamin, a 1992 graduate, write in a letter to the Inquirer published this morning. “The Governor’s School of Excellence for the Arts is not a summer camp; it is an intensive training program that builds leaders, managers, and advocates for the arts, education and young people.”
Bacon and Kamin said they wrote the letter on the behalf of 32 professional artists and educators from around the country.
In Maryland the brochure for the 2009 Maryland Summer Centers for the Gifted is now available at
www.marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/programs/giftedtalented/centers.
However, as of right now, money to continue the Summer Centers past this year has been stripped from the state budget. If this concerns you and you live in Maryland, contact your state legislators to restore money to the budget for the Summer Centers. And contact Maryland’s equivalent of Kevin Bacon.
[** Update: Check out the Facebook group "Save the Govies!"]
Looks like we need a Kevin Bacon down here in Florida as well! Next year our county is looking at knocking millions and millions out of the budget. Over 10,000 parents and educators showed up at a county town hall meeting last week to express their concerns and worries about these cuts. My son is a 2e child and as an ex-teacher I was very concerned about him falling between the cracks. We could not find a good placement this year that we were comfortable with, so I am homeschooling. As an ex-teacher I am alarmed at what they are cutting – gifted programs, arts, music, sports programs. If this year looked bleak to us for Kindergarten for him, I don’t want to know what next year will look like!
[...] reach out to the Eastern magnet and Communication Arts Program alumni in similar fashion? (Hello Kevin Bacon!) Should they be building bridges to natural allies in the community? I think the answer is yes, [...]
[...] 3, 2009 by SwitchedOnMom Remember how a few months ago I wrote about the fight in Pennsylvania to save their Governor’s School of Excellence for the Arts, summer program for gifted students? How actor Kevin Bacon had even weighed in? Well the same [...]