Keep McKinney's ACT Intact

On February 27, 2002,The McKinney Independent School District Administration unexpectedly sent home a letter with the ACT kids proposing to phase out both Middle and High school curriculum from McKinney's ACT Academy, an innovative K-12 public school with an exemplary rating by the Texas Educational Agency in 1999, 2000, and 2001.

This action upset the children, parents and staff. The Keep McKinney's ACT Intact group was formed in response to this proposal. We believe these changes dramatically conflict with the ACT Academy mission statement and will destroy a valuable educational asset. In a recent meeting, ACT parents overwhelmingly voted to keep the school K-12.

Our goal is to preserve the ACT Academy, intact, by enlightening the board regarding the many positive aspects of educational choices, results based decision making and quality customer service and communication in the MISD.

Many of you are asking "How I can help?"

We are currently working on many fronts to Keep McKinney's ACT Intact.

• Attend this event:
  1. ACT Family NIGHT at Storybook Village will be Thursday, May 2nd from 5:30 to 8:30! Enjoy a full course meal, wagon rides and tours of the famous Victorian Village, a petting farm, D. J. dancing, and lots of fun and games. A prize will go to the person with the Best Hat. A great fun and casual family event! Tickets will be $20.00 for adults and $8.00 for children and will be available next week. Flyers and more information will go home Monday!

     Storybook farm is located on Custer road South of Stonebridge Ranch.

• You can help by voting in the May 4th school board election! Two ACT parents are running -- Chellie Sheff in Place 4 and Mark Crenwelge in Place 5, and both are supportive of educational choices available at ACT. Historically, voter turn out for school board elections has been extremely low -- every vote counts! Your vote counts! Please vote on May 4th (early voting starts April 17th)

• We need financial support! The newspaper ads we've been running, printed materials we have been distributing, and the web site hosting service all cost money (over $2000, to date). The burden has been falling on a few individuals. If you would like to donate any amount of money to help defray our costs, please mail a check made out to "Keep ACT" to Nina Dowell Ringley, c/o Ringley and Associates, 410 N. Tennessee, McKinney TX 75069. If it is more convenient, you can deposit your contribution directly into the "Keep ACT" account at Guaranty Bank (located across from Dairy Queen on Virginia/Louisiana). If you have already contributed, Thank You for your support!

• The ACT Academy PFLA has voted to donate all proceeds from the Spring Plant Sale to help offset our costs. Order forms are available at ACT or here online. Please order some plants for yourself and take orders from your friends, relatives and colleagues.

• All ACT Parents were mailed petitions. Please go out and get your petitions signed as soon as possible -- they are critical to our success! If you need more petitions, you can get them at Ringley and Associates, 410 N. Tennessee, Academics Plus, 1831 W. Louisiana or Tate Planning Group, 2111 Eldorado Pkwy. Turn in your signed petitions to any of those places as soon as possible.

  Signature count so far: 1400+. Keep 'em coming!

  For your convenience, an Online version of the Petition is now available. Please don't sign the online petition if you have already signed the paper version!

• Display signs! Yard signs are available for pick-up at Ringley & Associates, 410 N. Tennessee, on front porch of Ringley's at 313 N. Benge. We need everyone's help to get all 250 signs out with our message--Keep McKinney's ACT Intact!! A Big Thank You to McKinney Lumber for donating the wooden stakes for the signs!

  You can also print out the posters from our Promotional Materials page and display them in your car, your home, or anywhere they will get positive attention.

• Voice Your Opinion! Contact the member of the MISD Board of Trustees for your zone and tell them you want to keep ACT intact! Writing a letter is most effective. If you are not sure which district you are in or who your representative is, Click Here

  M.I.S.D. BOARD OF TRUSTEES (e-mail addresses are not published!?!)
  Geralyn Kever, President 2409 Club Lake Trail McKinney, Texas 75070 562-1186 (h) Wade Cramer, Vice Pres. 1123 Brook Hill Road McKinney, Texas 75070 529-5933 (h) Robb Temple, Member 301 Creekside Drive McKinney, Texas 75070 529-3682 390-3565 (o) Leonard Evans, Member 345C Industrial McKinney, Texas 75069 562-0123 (h) 562-9681 (o)	Wade Johnson, Member 3413 Highgate Drive McKinney, Texas 75070 529-2886 (h) 562-9263 (o) Betty Petkovsek, Member 311 N. College Street McKinney, Texas 75069 542-2787 (h) 542-4481 (o) Lynn Sperry, Secretary 3757 County Road 325 McKinney, Texas 75069 542-1025 (h) 562-5050 (o) lynn@lynnsperry.com

• A powerful way for you to help is to attend planned meetings and events:

  If you attended any of the Keep McKinney's ACT Intact Meetings, Thank you for your support!

  Watch your email for future meeting anouncements and then Come help us "KEEP MCKINNEY'S ACT INTACT!!"

• One way to help Keep McKinney's ACT Intact is through positive publicity for the school. We need your help contacting the local TV channels. Please go to the websites for Ch. 8, 11, 5 and 4 and click on their investigators buttons. Then send an email to each of them asking them to PLEASE come help save our school! Be sure to mention our website and long history of academic excellence -- and that we need their help to preserve this MISD treasure. The number of e-mails they receive helps determine which stories they will cover. SO, Please email each and every one and pass this on to as many people as you know. We need volumes!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Channel 4: Send an e-mail to iteam@foxinc.com
  • Channel 5: Fill out their story submission form, and indicate that the story type is "Investigative".
  • Channel 8: Send an e-mail to investigates@wfaa.com -- They ask that you please include description, daytime phone number, e-mail and name.
  • Channel 11: Send an e-mail to news@cbs11tv.com -- They ask that you be sure to include a brief description of what it is you would like them to investigate, your day and evening phones and a name.

• We have organized several committees that are listed under the Committee Contact List. Please contact those individuals for further instructions on how to help.

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  This web site was built by Tracy Hooper with help from Al Perez and Cindy Taylor. Hosted by WWTS with help from Joe Farris. Thanks to all!