Positions on Issues

1. All children, regardless of zip code, deserve access to top quality public education;
2. The public schools should be run by a superintendent who is accountable to an elected school board and eligibility to be serve on that board should be based on an individual’s training, experience and commitment to service as an educator. The board service must not be a stepping stone to higher office;
3. The practice of “teaching to the test” must be ended;
4. A quality education must include a balance of STEM subjects as well as civics and social studies, language skills, and cultural arts, including music, visual arts, cultural arts;
5. Every school and every neighborhood must be connected with broad band access and every student must have his or her own computer;
6. Residents with particular expertise and educational backgrounds should be recruited and encouraged to serve as tutors in their neighborhood schools; and
7. The District should hire more school counselors and social workers to deal with the underlying issues that block children from learning.

1. Let’s strengthen compliance with DC’s First Source law to ensure that developers who get government contracts or tax incentives hire more DC residents and provide training for them if necessary;
2. We must invest in the infrastructure, including broadband, roadways, bike lanes, rapid rail and new technologies that will help the District attract and retain good paying jobs;
3. We must invest in training our young people to be prepared for the jobs of the future; and
4. Let’s enact tax incentives for forward thinking small and midsized “green” companies to relocate to the District if they are willing to commit to hire and, where needed, train DC residents

1. We must invest in making sure that our seniors are not forced out of their homes due to economic pressures;
2. We must root out corruption and mismanagement in the DC Housing Authority and institute oversight to guarantee that taxpayer money is effectively deployed to address the city’s housing crisis;
3. We must draw the line on the elimination of larger rental units, such as three, four and five-bedroom apartments, in favor of smaller more profitable units resulting in the displacement of families.
4. We should consider redevelopment of excess and vacant government buildings to create housing for the thousands of unhoused residents in our city; and
5. We should require developers to provide a greater percentage of affordable housing in their plans for new construction as a condition to getting approval of building permits.

1. We should stop talking about defunding the police and focus on supporting our police with better screening of recruits to weed out potential bad actors before they are given badges and guns, better training and periodic mandatory refresher courses, more modern equipment, and economic incentives to encourage officers to live in the communities they serve;
2. We must increase funding and deployment of violence interrupters;
3. We should reinvest in playgrounds, organized recreational activities, boys and girls clubs and mentoring programs that give our children and teens alternatives to delinquency and criminal activity; and
4. We need to get serious about rehabilitation and once a person has paid his debt, he or she should be given a fresh start by sealing old criminal records, particularly for non-violent offenses.

1. We must eliminate toxic sites from the District of Columbia so that families are not exposed to toxins that have been shown to impact fetal and young child brain development leading to diminished cognitive capabilities, poor academic performance, anti-social and violent behavior in teens and young adults and mass incarceration;
2. We must put safeguards in place to ensure that development doesn’t equate to displacement of long-term residents and persons with fixed or limited incomes;
3. We should think outside of the box in designing our roadways to help the city become more bikeable and walkable without disregarding the needs of those who must rely on motor vehicles for their transportation needs; and
4. We must support “green” infrastructure by investing in electric car charging stations, solar cell banks which can feed the electric grid and make DC less reliant on fossil fuel driven power sources outside of the city, parks and green roof designs for new and renovated office and residential buildings.