Investing in Public Education

As a special education teacher, I know the power that schools have. I see it every day in the strength of the relationships I have with my students and their families: the shared understanding of what we can accomplish when we work together. This mutual vision is encouraging when we consider the promise of education. A well-functioning public education system could be the foundation of society’s efforts to dismantle systems of racial and economic inequality. Instead, due to inequitable funding, school re-segregation, punitive discipline models, and a lack of curricular inclusivity and teacher diversity, our education system currently reproduces the same inequality we hope to end.

Education is vital to shaping our future, so it’s necessary to center the voices of those who have been fighting for our students and our schools in any education solution.

As a teacher, I know that fixing our education system goes well beyond funding; it necessitates us honestly looking at how schools have become contested political spaces, privatized by non-educators to erode labor rights and push a pedagogy of acquiescence to the detriment of teachers and low-income students of color.

We unequivocally support fully-funding our public schools; integrating our schools and classrooms by removing admissions screens and tracking; implementing culturally-responsive sustaining education; ending draconian disciplinary policies that disproportionately target students of color and students with disabilities, fanning the school-to-prison pipeline; and respecting our educators by paying them salaries that reflects the worth society places on their labor and love.

We also recognize that higher education is a public good, just like K-12 education. Currently, Americans have $1.6 trillion in student debt. This debt not only severely burdens American families, especially lower-income households, but it slows the economy overall. Cancelling student loan debt is necessary to improving the financial security of American households and tackling extreme wealth inequality. Taking this step, while also guaranteeing free higher education, will liberate Americans from being forced into life-altering decisions about their educational future while also boosting the economy overall.

 Our Education Plan:

• Eliminate all existing student debt

• Guarantee free, high-quality public education from pre-K through college

  • Free higher education at public colleges, universities and trade schools

• Equalize school funding by federally financing all public education, reducing reliance on local property taxes

• Establish a moratorium on the creation and expansion of charter schools (as the NAACP recommended)

• Fully fund city and state programs for integrating all public schools

• Guarantee access to #CounselorsNotCops in schools, ensuring that students have mental health resources, counselors, and social workers

• Support programs that end punitive discipline models in schools (like long-term, out-of-school suspensions) in favor of restorative justice models

• Support the establishment of mandatory maximum class sizes

• End federal incentives for high-stakes testing

• Implement culturally responsive-sustaining education and provide ongoing professional development

• Incentivize recruiting and retaining more teachers and administrators of color

• Increase teacher salaries to $60,000, with further incentives for working and staying in low-performing schools

• Incentivize participatory budgeting for schools