As this issue reaches you, SepCon '95 is just around the corner, on November 10-12. You might have seen our conference ad in several publications (eg, Reason, Growing Without Schooling). Call for reservations if you haven't already!

This month The Education Liberator highlights two of the prominent School Sakharovs that will be speaking at SepCon '95 with an essay from John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year for 1991, and a profile of Candace Allen, Colorado Enterprising Teacher of the Year for 1989.

Several SepCon '95 speakers received kudos in online discussion groups this month as well. The Unschooling emailing list recommended Lewis Perelman and his book School's Out, while Sheldon Richman (Separating School & State) and Cathy Duffy (Government Nannies) came in for praise on the Home-ed-politics list. And on Christlib, an emailing list for Christian Libertarians, people requested more information about appearances by nationally syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran.

The Separation Alliance also garnered publicity in the online world. You'll find us listed on pages from the Atlas Foundation, Cascade Policy Institute, Liberty Library, Libertarian Web, Advocates for Self Government, and Organizations for Educational Reform among others. Our web pages are generating a steady stream of new people signing the Proclamation electronically, including our latest School Sakharov, Joe Burton, 1995 Teacher of the Year at his high school in Silver City, New Mexico.

Perhaps even more important than our online publicity efforts is the launch of our direct mail campaign. The Separation Alliance kicked off the campaign by sending an information package to the 900 members of the Education Writers Association. We followed that mailing on a much broader scale with 22,000 copies of the SepCon '95 brochure targeted at potential attendees on the East Coast.

And, within the next month, we expect to launch our fundraising drive to 12,000 prospects initially. It will be scaled up to 25,000 and 60,000 additional prospects over the course of the next few months as we continue to spread the word about the Separation Alliance. You can expect our organization to grow dramatically as a result of these efforts ? and remember, you were here when it all started!

Chris Cardiff
Editor

This article is copyrighted by the Alliance for the Separation of School & State. Permission is granted to freely distribute this article as long as this copyright notice is included in its entirety.

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