Creating a 2004 School Plan – A Manual

Each school’s “Pledge Counter” reports results online every day

The Leadership Team (or the School Coordinator) needs to take two steps at the outset to make sure that the school’s participation will be fully recognized (and the students fully inspired to participate).

First, a specific person needs to be identified as the “Pledge Counter” who will (on a daily basis) receive and then report online the total number of pledges collected by the school. The School Coordinator meeds to enter the Pledge Counter’s name on the Web Site, so that he/she will be the one person allowed to report the school’s numbers.

Second, a specific and simple system must be established to collect those totals reliably so that the web reporter can report them. The system must to some degree be based upon the honor system because names of pledgers will never be reported on the web site, just the numbers. Each student gives a copy of his/her Take Ten form(s) to the Pledge Counter but keeps the originals in his/her own possession so that he/she can send Election Eve reminders to all who pledged to vote. Here are some systems that different schools are using to collect the data:

• In relatively small schools, it might be possible simply for all students to be aware of who the Pledge Counter is and give him/her a copy of the Take Ten form(s) during the course of the day, the reporter keeps running totals and reports them that night online.
  
• Some large Freedom’s Answer schools have chosen to have a homeroom reporter collect the copies each day during homeroom and then give them to the school’s Pledge Counter who increases the online total each night.
  
• And in some highly organized schools, each member of the Leadership Team is personally assigned 50 students to track. They are the ones who give those 50 students their Take Ten Forms and they are the ones to whom those fifty students give back copies as they collect pledges. Then all members of the Leadership Team report to the Pledge Counter each day so that the online total can go up further that night.

(This last system is the one that may be the hardest to create but it is also the one that may produce the biggest results, because there is accountability. Each student knows that a record is being kept and there is someone to urge them on if they fall short. It can provide both encouragement and a reminder when either is necessary.)

In reporting results nightly, the official Pledge Counter of the School (who will be given an exclusive password, not to be shared with others) enters the name of the school and the password and every evening updates the total number of students in the school collecting pledges and the total number of pledges they have reported so far.

That way every student in America can see his/her school is doing every day – and how the national total is mounting day-by-day.

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