PUBLIC AFFAIRS We conducted an exclusive telephone interview with United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a Democrat from New York, and campaigning as a 2020 Presidential Candidate. The Interview took place on April 11, 2019. Celeste: Good Afternoon, Senator Gillibrand. You’ve been credited as stating that, “Investing in education is the most important investment we can make.” Would you please describe the kind of investment in education that you would pursue as President of the United States? In addition, how would that investment provide relief to minority populations who have historically been adversely impacted during their education? Senator Gillibrand: Thanks, Celeste. I believe that the block a child grows up on should not determine their chance of success in life. I believe that every child in this country deserves the opportunity to live up to their full God-given potential. I think there is a lot you can do to close the education gap by investing in early childhood education, universal pre-K (prekindergarten), and quality affordable daycare. First, we have to ensure that all of our three and fouryear-olds have access to the best and highest quality early childhood education. For me, that means at least four or five day existing programs, such as Head Start, which very much helps lower income families. We should actually try to pass universal pre-k across the country for all kids. Second, I think you really have to make childcare more affordable. I’ve had two kids in daycare and I know how expensive it is. I know most families can’t afford it, because daycare is too expensive and prices out a lot of lower-income and middle-income families. So, one of the ways you can do it is to expand the Childcare Independent Tax Credit and we make sure that the actual credit amount is available to more families. They have a bipartisan bill to actually do that, to double the childcare tax credit and another bipartisan bill to actually make it a business expense. So, if you are in the workplace, you get to take a business deduction for the cost of making sure that your child’s early childhood education is at a quality daycare. Next, I think we should also do far more to invest in K-12 public schools. There are a couple of things that you do on the federal level, because obviously K-12 is a state issue, a local education issue, but the federal government could do one thing, it could make sure we actually provide funding for infrastructure for the schools, to fix public schools, to make sure that schools in wealthy areas have the same abilities as schools in lower-income areas and make sure that those lower-income areas are brought up to have the same kinds of high-quality facilities for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education, for music, for art, for civics, for ethics and for all things (needed by) public schools that aren’t well-resourced, they would have access (to more resources). So, I think that is something that I would want to work on as a national education platform. I’d also work at getting more money into our schools for technology and STEM curriculums making sure that teachers who teach in those areas have access to the proper support so they can access higher training, so they can inspire more kids. We also need to make sure that we don’t support unfunded mandates. If it’s unfunded, you either fund it, or you stop mandating it. One mandate that I do support is the mandate for special education. Right now, unfortunately, that’s a mandate that’s unfunded and it really hurts low-income schools. Right now, you’re supposed to pay 40% (that is) the federal government is supposed to pay 40% towards Special Ed(ucation) it hasn’t met that number and I don’t know if it ever has but certainly not lately and doesn’t even meet half of it. I would actually prefer that the federal government pay for 50% of Special Ed and fully fund it. I think that would go a long way to making it possible. May 2019 The URBAN EXPERIENCE 37
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