Sample Email - School Staff Announcement

Sample Email - School Staff Announcement

We envision this email being sent from the Principal to the School Staff

Dear [SCHOOL NAME] Staff,

I'm excited to announce that we are going to be implementing a novel, project-based learning approach to promoting financial literacy, school, and civic engagement. z

The purpose of this email is to provide an overview of the course and how you can help all participating students succeed.

We will be using Participatory Budgeting (PB) to empower students to collaborate and choose how to spend a budget of [$X.XX] to improve the school. Students will apply skills from design-thinking, financial literacy, and civics. The PB cycle will culminate in implementing the winning projects selected and funded by the students.

This project is receiving financial support from Advisors Excel, a local company with a rich history of supporting our schools.

We will be using software from FirstRoot Inc., a public benefit corporation that has created a PB app specifically designed for schools.

The PB cycle has five main phases:
  1. Discover: Students discover opportunities in which to improve the school. 
  2. Dream: Student leaders create high-level proposals aligned with opportunities.
  3. Design: Students use design thinking to create specific proposals.  
  4. Decide: Proposals that fit the budget and are sufficiently detailed for an implementation are placed on a voting ballot. Students then vote for their favorite proposals. We’ll ratify the results to reinforce the voting process. 
  5. Do: The winning proposals are funded and moved into an implementation stage. The details of implementation depend on the proposal. For example, if a proposal consists of simply getting supplies for the school, we'll just buy the supplies. More complex proposals will involve other people. 
You can help in the following ways:
  1. Encourage your students to participate by submitting proposal ideas. 
  2. Remind students that proposals that benefit the greatest number of students and fit within the budget are most likely to be submitted for voting. 
  3. Encourage students to use design thinking to create proposal ideas. 
  4. Encourage students to keep track of ways they think the FirstRoot app can be improved.
  5. We think this project will be a lot of fun precisely because it puts the students in control of a real budget. 
Let me know if you have any questions.

[SIGNATURE]


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