Issues – Investing in Education for a Better Future
Education is the foundation on which everything else in our society is built. It provides people the skills and knowledge to lead successful lives and participate fully in civic life. It is the starting point for a workforce that can create and fill good family-wage jobs. It’s the prerequisite for finding creative answers to the issues and problems we face as a city and a society, now and in the future.
That means it’s our job and our responsibility as citizens of Seattle to ensure that we can provide each and every one of our children with access to great education opportunities, no matter which neighborhood they live in. To do that, we have to have a great public school system.
The fact is that the Seattle City Council has limited influence on how we invest city money to improve schools in Seattle. But there are things we can do right up to the edge of the school to support education so that Seattle Public School resources are focused where they should be — on learning in the classroom.
I believe that if we make smart investments, we can ensure that every child in Seattle can get a great education at the school in their neighborhood. These are some of the approaches I would start with:
- Greater investment in early education. There’s plenty of research demonstrating that early education has a huge positive impact on achievement and that it is one of the smartest investments we can make; it means less money spent later on things like crime and crime prevention later. Early education is exactly the kind of smart investment that we need to prioritize. We should also look for ways to secure additional funding through federal and state sources and private matching grants.
- Summer programs for kids entering ninth grade. Research shows that kids who fail a single class in ninth grade are four times as likely to drop out. Research also shows that many students lose ground during the summer between the eighth and ninth grades. The city should help support the success of our kids as they make the transition to high school by expanding funding for summer programs that provide academic instruction to fill in gaps, introduce students to their new high schools, and even provide work opportunities so students can earn some money. These programs should be available to every incoming high school student in the city.
- A stronger focus on public safety in and around our schools. Students, teachers, administrators, and parents shouldn’t have to worry about safety; they should be able to focus their attention on education. Crime near schools is the city’s responsibility and the city should coordinate closely with the school district to make our children safe at school.
- Improve reading skills. We need a partnership between the Seattle Public Library and Seattle Public Schools to support efforts to help all kids read at grade level. This is a great way for the city to support the work of teachers and the school system.
- Offer greater access to playfields and gymnasiums. The city has a lot of unmet need for indoor and outdoor recreation space and the Seattle Public Schools have facilities that aren’t always in use. We should explore the possibility of renting underutilized facilities from the schools, an approach that could create revenue for schools and provide more access to much-needed gyms and playfields.
Education is a classic example of the failure of our current political leaders to focus on the right priorities. We know, for example, that the percentage of children who are not reading at grade level in third grade is strongly correlated with the number of jail beds we will need in the future. We can make smarter, smaller investments now to provide our children with an education that prepares them for success as adults. Or we can turn our back on our children and plan on spending millions more to build jails later.
My priority is our children, and my goal as a member of Seattle City Council is to make the right investments for their future, and for ours.
