In City Council, how will you promote a true citywide campaign
to keep students in school, ensure access to high-quality learning
opportunities for struggling students and out-of-school youth, and
support our most vulnerable young people – i.e., those who are involved
with the foster care, juvenile justice, and abuse and neglect systems,
and those who are pregnant and/or parenting?
As a member of City Council:
1. I will insist on having the time to continue doing what I am doing now, volunteering in a school or schools. For the past four years, I have been a volunteer reading tutor with kindergarteners and first graders at the J.S. Jenks Elementary School. I enjoy it very much, and these youngsters are the same students who, if not given sufficient supports early on, are vulnerable to becoming dropouts later on.
2. I will support and encourage the foster care system because so many at-risk students are involved with it. I am the proud foster parent of a Central High grad who happily graduated college and is now looking at grad schools. I can take little credit for her academic success and still campaign for her to recognize what love and hopes her biological parents have for her despite their inability to care for her.
3. I will: a) listen to school dropouts, to parents, teachers, advocacy groups b) read and digest testimony and reports; act on the recommendations of experts among whom I count foremost – students, parents and teachers.
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