Education

Joint City and School District Programs

A city can only be as good as its schools. The primary role of educating our youth in Sacramento rightfully falls on the locally elected School Boards. However the City can also play a vital role in partnering with the City’s School District. For example, as the Chair of the Sacramento City School District’s Facilities Committee, I helped secure a lease by the City for the School District’s unused office space at the district’s Serna Center. This put City employees working with preschool programs that are housed at District schools in the same building as District staff, increasing efficiencies and improving communication, while generating revenue for the School District.

Moreover, the City and School District have to do a better job of working together to seek funding and grant opportunities and coordinate before and after school programs. We have to give our youth productive and supervised activities. Every dime we spend on these programs ends up as dollars we save in the future.

Joint use of facilities serves both the City, the district and our youth well. The City and the School District recently completed a joint project placing a new high school and a public library on the same property in the Pocket area. Similar relationships and projects in the future will increase efficiencies, save money and better provide services for our youth.

Career Technical Education for Adults

With school budgets diminishing due to state cuts, adult education programs are under constant threat of elimination. It is in the City’s best interest to help its residents acquire job skills and training. For our City to move forward in the 21st century, we need a trained workforce.

I will work with partners like Los Rios Community Colleges and specifically City College, which resides in District 5, to develop career training opportunities for City residents. I will work with Congresswoman Doris Matsui to seek federal funds for career technical training programs in District 5. The United States Department of Labor has identified the following job sectors for growing demand:

-Green Technology
-Health Care Workers - Nurses, Physicians’ Assistants and Pharmacy Technicians
-Construction

The demand for these jobs is here, but we are turning students away because of a lack of room in current programs. That is not acceptable.