EDUCATION

 

 

Funding our schools has to start with paying our educators. No teacher should have to worry about making ends meet when their work is the foundation of our society. Educators' salaries should begin at an established federal floor of $60,000, a raise of nearly $20,000 for first-year CCSD teachers, in order to attract new talent, retain excellent teachers, and ensure that both can afford to live without side jobs or painfully tight budgets. 

 

Our schools need to be built to set both students and teachers up for success. That means allowing educators—trained professionals in childhood development, pedagogy, and unique subject areas—to tailor their lessons to the needs of their class and their communities, not coaching kids to pass an arbitrary test, written by for-profit educational companies, that fails to account for the lived experiences, interests, learning styles, and needs of each individual student. Teachers today face huge class sizes, underfunded classrooms, and weak representation within their unions, as well as for-profit charter schools vulturing resources from our public schools. It’s time for this to change. 

 

2020 showed both Las Vegas and the country just how important it is to provide year-round, free school lunches to students so that no child goes to bed hungry. Meals at school should be federally-funded, free for all children, and provided year-round via a meals-to-go program.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic proved that providing high speed internet access to every home in the country is vital for our children’s education. We need to invest in and build our infrastructure to provide cheap or free high speed home internet to families of school aged children.

 

Now more than ever, higher education is necessary to build a fruitful life. We must guarantee tuition and debt-free public colleges, universities, and trade-schools to all. We can jump start a generation of Americans’ lives by cancelling all student debt for some 45 million Americans. 

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