Are you familiar with the New Jersey Alliance of Catholic School Families?
You can make your voice heard as a parent and taxpayer regarding these important issues in education and funding. Contact your representatives to let them know how important these issues are to you as a voter. Let them know that of the nearly 10,000 students qualified to receive nonpublic school transportation during this school year, only 58,000 received service. The others were given payments by their districts instead, which in no way are sufficient to cover the cost of alternative transportation. Stress to them how hard we as parents at Immaculata High School have worked to keep pace with the dizzying trends in technology, raising thousands and thousands of dollars so that our children can become effective employees and contributors to society.

State Senators Buono, Kavanaugh and Lance are legislators on the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee whose districts are in the Diocese of Metuchen.  If you only have time to contact a few legislators, please put your efforts into contacting them.

If you do not know who your legislators are, you may call the NJ Office of Legislative Services at 1-800-792-8630 or www.njleg.state.nj.us and click on "find your legislator" which is listed under "Members" on the home page.

Remember this is an election year for all seats in the State Legislature and legislators will be trying to find ways to offer some consideration to their constituents.

Susan Odenthal is the Immaculata High School coordinator for the Alliance of Catholic School Families. You can reach her by phone at 908 788-1818 or e-mail at odenthalm@yahoo.com.
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Mission Statement
The ALLIANCE exists to educate and mobilize individuals and organizations to be advocates of public policies that support the families whose children attend the Catholic schools of New Jersey.

Since its establishment in 1996, the ALLIANCE has been hard at work for you under the authority of the New Jersey Catholic Bishops, conferring on public policy issues with the New Jersey Catholic Conference's Associate Director for Education, George V. Corwell, Ed.D. While pursuing its primary focus of promoting parental choice in education legislation in our state, the goals of the ALLIANCE have expanded to include numerous public policy issues involving nonpublic school parents.
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A Few of Our recent achievements on the State level alone include:

• Having two education tax credit bills introduced into the New Jersey Assembly. If successful, they will provide much-needed tax relief for parents of all school children in the state. Having a major role in the passage of three transportation bills.
• Having a major role in the passage of three transportation bills.
• Being instrumental in retaining the current budget language for increasing the mileage for nonpublic school transportation to thirty miles for students in the six counties of Cumberland, Gloucester, Hunterdon, Salem, Sussex and Warren.
• Victory in promoting and passing legislation that protects the Chapter 193 state funding for handicapped aid services from counting against the federal share of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) money for nonpublic school students.
• Secured a funding increase of $2.950 million in various nonpublic school accounts.
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Organization
Diocesan Level
Each diocese has an ALLIANCE Coordinator at work for you year-round, whose responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Familiarizing state and federal legislators with the rights and needs of the nonpublic school community and keeping the lines of communication open with them.
• Facilitating the selection and training of parent representatives in each Catholic school.
• Establishing an effective network for communicating with parents. Distributing action alerts and legislative updates on pertinent Federal and State public policy issues.
• Promoting legislation that will benefit Catholic school families.
• Organizing a rapid public response that promotes Catholic education whenever relevant educational public policy issues are discussed or debated in a public forum.

Each school is assessed an annual fee of $2.00 per pupil by the diocese to cover the expenses of the ALLIANCE.
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Diocesan Level
The ALLIANCE Representative is the liaison between the school's parent community and the ALLIANCE Coordinator. Ideally, each school should have a parent serving as the ALLIANCE Rep. In the case of a school that does not have a parent ALLIANCE Rep, a faculty member should be designated to fulfill the duties until a parent is found.

The ALLIANCE Rep is responsible for:

• Forwarding Legislative Alerts to either an organized Core Group of parents/supporters who are willing to respond to Legislative Alerts as needed; or, when necessary, to all parents in the school.
• Distributing copies of the quarterly newsletter, The N.J. ALLIANCE.
• Keeping parents informed about legislative issues that affect Catholic school students by delivering brief updates at parent meetings.
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The ALLIANCE Coordinator for our diocese:
Judith Krilla, Coordinator
New Jersey ALLIANCE of Catholic School Families
280 White Oak Ridge Road, Bridgewater, NJ 08807
Phone: 908 526-3898 Fax: 908 526-1870
Email: jkrilla@diometuchen.org
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Our School's ALLIANCE Rep:
Susan Odenthal
4 Flory's Mill Road
Flemington, NJ 08822
Phone: 908 788 1717
Email: odenthalm@yahoo.com
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