EDUCATION
"Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world."
- South African President, Nelson Mandela
Vittoria believes that every child and young adult deserves an education that will help them reach their potential and become healthy, productive members of our society. In order to do this, we must fully fund our public schools, increase teacher pay, and have smaller class sizes.
Vittoria understands the need for adequate resources to address the significant social emotional and trauma needs of students and educators during this pandemic, including at least one social worker for every 100 students.
Vittoria believes in prioritizing for the four most common pillars of the community schools model: integrated student support for health and home-life circumstances; expanded learning time and opportunities; family and community engagement, and; collaborative leadership and practices. Together, these approaches have proven to work effectively to reduce absenteeism and suspension rates, and increase the quality of student learning.
Vittoria also supports fully funding after school programs. After school programs provide a great opportunity to supplement the school day and to allow our children to explore subjects in a different way. We need to fully fund these programs and work with community based organizations (CBOs) to provide these services to our children. Every school should be able to offer after school programs. If currently a school does/can not offer after school programs, we need allow families that need this resource to send their children to a school that provides them.
Vittoria supports limiting Mayoral control. Mayoral control simply gives one person far too much power. A mayor has many political pressures that may bring her focus away from actual the needs of our school system. This is why our parents', teachers', and communities' influence is crucial.
Parents must be an integral part of the educational choices made for their children in our public schools. Parents know intimately our children’s strengths, struggles and personal challenges and therefore have a critical role in helping our children receive the best education for them. It is by working as a team with our educators that we can best serve our children. We also need to recognize the struggles some families face due to personal hardships. We need to work with these parents to ensure their children are receiving the education and support they need to succeed.