Nebraska Family Forum

NFPF Core Supporters, Community Partners, and Friends,

This is a recap of the NFPF (Nebraska Family Policy Forum) Political Action Team Training meetings that took place this week. At our meetings we discussed strategies for our goal to amend Nebraska's invasive “truancy” law in the 2012 legislative session.

We also discussed the need to stop possible legislation to tighten the law further including a proposed laws to "close a loophole" under which students ages 16 and 17 can avoid truancy issues by dropping out of school, to lower the mandatory attendance law from 6 to 5, and to reduce the number of absences at which a report to the county attorney would be required.

The number of passionate supporters who are willing to lend support by volunteering their time is increasing. Each time I have an opportunity to meet more of you I feel blessed and more hopeful for our success. These meetings were attended by some very exceptional people and I went away inspired by the ideas shared at the meetings.

One of the things we discussed was that this "truancy" law, which is a serious affront to the natural rights of all parents, has the potential of bringing together people from communities across our city and state, across racial and socio-economic lines, and across political and ideological lines in order to protect families from the undue scrutiny of the state. 

We hope to create alliances of community organizations, grassroots organizations, and political parties whose interests overlap. We are pooling resources and talents from organizations across the state in our effort to amend Nebraska's "truancy" law. We are creating a coalition that will work for seriously-needed reforms in family, juvenile, and education policy in our state.

Our efforts are an organic grassroots movement, and this takes the dedication of many people working together to be successful. Meeting each of you gives me great hope for what we will accomplish working together. I consider Phase 1 of our efforts fully operational at this point. Let's review our action plan as it stands now:

1. Team leaders will work to make contact with those public officials on their list, bringing in other supporters and friends to attend these meetings with them.
2. Team Leaders will act of their own volition to reach out to other contacts that they feel will be of value to our efforts.
3. All Core Supporters will work to spread the word throughout their area of influence, via social media, the blog (http://nfpf.blogspot.com/), passing out flyers, talking to friends and inviting them to join the Facebook group or check out the blog.
4. Encourage all supporters to write letters and make phone calls to their representatives.
5. Encourage all supporters to write open letters for the blog to discuss their thoughts about this truancy law. Email them to:
6. Encourage families who have been affected or are concerned they might be affected to write their "truancy stories" for publishing at the blog. Email them to:
7. Encourage all supporters to join our core support by registering their basic information with the group so that we can coordinate our efforts by legislative and school districts.
8. Join discussions on social media, post thoughts, helpful website, stories, and other pertinent information to drive the conversation.
9. Submit articles for publication at the blog. Articles could be anything relevant to the discussion, research reports, reactions to media coverage, reactions to meetings with lawmakers, etc.

The blog has a detailed page on how people can help our cause, this is a good link to post and email to friends: http://nfpf.blogspot.com/p/what-can-you-do.html

Let's keep in touch via email. If you have any needs I can assist you with please contact me. If you have any meetings you would like me to attend or would like to meet with me in person, please contact me.

Thanks again,
Stephanie Morgan