Education: Strengthening Quality Public Education
From the very founding of our state, we have led the nation in providing a quality public education system. Yet the Snyder Administration has raided public education funds and cut spending by millions of dollars. As the State Representative for the 53rd District, I will work to maintain the quality public education that the Ann Arbor area has been proud of for decades. That means fighting for proper funding not just for STEM education, but also for social studies and the arts to provide students with a well-rounded education. It means supporting our teachers who work on the front lines every day to help our kids gain a better understanding of our world. And it means restoring adequate funding to our public universities and colleges so that we can increase affordability and improve access for all young Michiganders.
As State Representative I will work to:
As State Representative I will work to:
Strengthen our Public K-12 Education System:
- Charter Schools: Michigan should strive to support a well-funded and functional public education system that provides for the education of all. Public funds should not be diverted to unaccountable for-profit charter schools that do not serve the students with the highest needs. Public schools are democratically controlled by the community and are accountable to the kids and families they serve. I believe this is a fundamentally better education system.
- Schools of Choice: Local school districts can currently opt to become Schools of Choice. However, this shift can create undue competition among public school districts. Schools should be focusing on education, not advertising and market research to retain students in their district. Every billboard advertising a public school is money taken away from learning. Too often, Schools of Choice has led to struggling school districts losing more funding and compounding their problems, while wealthier schools are able to do even better. It also further exacerbates inequalities, as only some families are able to drive their kids to distant schools. The state should take an active role in resolving these disparities so that all Michigan children can be successful
- Proper Funding: In order to bolster our public education system we need to allocate sufficient and fair funding, truly making our children’s education a budget priority.
Support Teachers:
- Teachers are the experts who work every day with our state’s students. They should be respected and engaged as the knowledgeable educators that they are. We need to make sure teachers are paid fairly, have opportunities for ongoing education, and are justly evaluated and supported.
Support Higher Education:
- Adequate Funding: We should strive to maintain world-class institutions of higher education, but in order to do so funding needs to keep up with the growing cost of maintaining such institutions.
- Tuition and Debt: If we want our state’s young people to succeed, we must ramp up our efforts to reduce the cost of tuition and provide new opportunities for students to avoid accruing debt.
- Diversity: Many of our state universities lack real diversity. Diversity creates better thinkers, facilitates creativity, and contributes to making our world more equitable. The state legislature should support efforts by institutions including the University of Michigan to address these issues. Specifically, the state should provide support for programs such as Wolverine Pathways, which guarantees tuition assistance to a number of students at the top of their class in lower-performing school districts. Efforts like this will broaden the pool of applicants and make attending college a tangible reality for more students.