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March 12:Springfield Gifted Day Organizers:Thank you for offering to organize a group or bring your family to Springfield on April 18th for Please Don’t Leave Our Children Behind Day! I wanted to take a moment to share plans for the day. Today I will focus on lunch. As you all know, we will convene at the Howlett Building at 11:30 for a picnic lunch. The Howlett Building is located at 501 South Second Street, on the Capitol Complex. Follow this link for a map of Springfield: http://map.mapnetwork.com/destination/springfield/il/. To date we have almost 300 people coming to Springfield on this day! This is terrific! It will certainly show our legislators that this is no small issue! It also means that I am now looking at having people eat lunch in shifts, with one group listening to our speaker first and the second group eating first and then trading places. Before I can commit to this, I will need to arrange for my speaker to speak twice, or arrange for two speakers. I understand that this will effect when you can meet with your legislators, as well. If, for planning purposes, you would prefer one of the shifts, please let me know which one. (First come, first served.) More on this in a future update. I have arranged for us to have both the Hall of Flags and the Auditorium in the Howlett Building through the Secretary of State’s office. The Hall of Flags, which is on the first floor, just to the left as you enter the building, will be set up with long rows of tables with chairs. (Interesting tidbit: Last year there were no flags in the Hall of Flags!) There are several rules we will all need to adhere to: nothing may be taped, glued or otherwise adhered to any part of the building. Additionally, there may be no candles, balloons, confetti or alcoholic beverages. Roller skating and skate boarding is prohibited on the Capitol Complex. Smoking is strictly prohibited in all state buildings. Security is usually not too onerous in the Howlett Building, unless there is something unusual going on. (In order to enter the Capitol itself, though, we will all need to pass through metal detectors, adults will need to show id and all bags will be searched, and backpacks are discouraged, but more on that in my next update.) I recommend that you invite your legislators to meet you in the Hall of Flags, if possible. This is a nice opportunity to speak with them casually and introduce your group. Then they will recognize your group when we are all in the balconies of the chambers and will be able to recognize you formally. The legislators are invited to join us for our large group photo, if they are interested. It is also a good idea to snap a couple of photos of your group with your legislators. We included these photos with our thank you notes last year and our legislators really appreciated them. We are encouraging all groups to wear bright yellow t-shirts, so that we will be identified as a single large group. As I have told many of you, my group last year stenciled the outline of a gecko on inexpensive t-shirts. We then encouraged everyone to use fabric markers or puff paints to decorate their gecko. In this way we all looked the same, but different. And the total cost was under $4. There is free parking available at the Illinois State visitors center at Pasfield and Edwards Street. (This is also where all buses must park.) Paid parking is available at Fourth and Capitol. And now something for the kids: See this web site, which has information about Abe Lincoln, collected by the students at Berwick Academy and presented in both English and Spanish! http://www.berwickacademy.org/lincoln/lincoln.htm. Although much of the information is aimed as Elementary students, there are many links to other useful Lincoln web sites! Now, some information from all of you: 1) Could all of you please tell me who your legislators are, and if you have contacted them yet? I would like to keep track of what percentage of legislators who have heard about Please Don’t Leave Our Children Behind Day. 2) Please send me an estimate of the number of adults and the number of children you are planning on bringing to Springfield. Since we are breaking our lunch time into shifts, we still have plenty of room for people to participate. I will send out another briefing next week. Five weeks to go! Newenka DuMont, IAGC Gifted Day in Springfield Coordinator |
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