EDUCATION
Every student deserves a quality education, regardless of where they live. We understand the arbitrary circumstances in which people are born—such as their race, ethnicity, ZIP code, and socioeconomic status — that unfairly determine their opportunities in life rather than offering the chance to achieve the best of their potential. Universal access to high-quality public education is essential to producing both an engaged citizenry and a skilled workforce. We must expand the neighborhood school’s role as the community center in K-8 public education to truly provide for our students.
OUR VISION
Expanding Educational Opportunities – Provide our students with access to educational paths that include more Career and Technical Education options, so that young people in our community are given every opportunity to succeed.
Remove Damaging Exams – Eliminate the high stakes testing of annual Regents exams and the limited Specialized High Schools Admission Test, and replace it with comprehensive reviews of students’ academic, emotional, and social progress.
Invest in Public Education – We must support wraparound services and implement more holistic approaches to what a “community school” means. Amanda recognizes that if schools are to be centers of the community, they need to address the whole child’s needs, including primary health, mental health, dental care, family engagement, and expanded enrichment programming.
Recombination of Public Schools - Our students need a holistic approach to their public school educational system. Amanda believes we should re-combine smaller, underperforming schools into larger schools to ensure we are creating school environments with enough teachers, resources, arts, and cultural programming to give our students the mindful and enriched education they deserve. We understand that breaking up existing large institutions does not address the simple fact that many school buildings are dangerously overcrowded. Moving towards the recombination of small schools to large schools can redistribute resources to the student body and the Bronx’s growing population. Recombination is a fight for equity in our communities.
Fight for Resources Beyond the School Day - Work to expand after school programs to improve education and, in turn, opportunity. Amanda will fight to keep school buildings open way beyond the school day, during summers, and on weekends for recreation and educational programs for children and adults.
Expand Accessibility of Higher Education – Establish free CUNY for all New York City residents, so that everyone in our community can pursue higher education without assuming crippling debt and establish a debt forgiveness program for student loans to provide relief to overburdened families and individuals
Increase the number of mental health counselors and academic advisors to ensure students succeed and have resources on campuses.
Work to hire more staff to decrease the student to faculty ratio for a better, higher quality experience
Expand #FairFares to include free or subsidized metrocards for CUNY students
Expand NYC DoE free meal programming to CUNY Students on campuses.