I represent Soundview and Hunts Point in the state Assembly. This Bronx district is a diverse, caring community of people who are striving (often struggling), with many immigrants and children and grandchildren of immigrants. Yet amid this diversity, we all seem to agree on one thing: Education is the path forward to a better life.
That’s why last week I was proud and honored to stand with Cardinal Dolan, leaders of many of our state’s labor unions, my colleagues in the Legislature and our state’s Catholic bishops to advocate for a bill that will help the striving parents and children in my community achieve their dreams.
The legislation is the Education Investment Tax Credit, which will drive hundreds of millions of dollars in charitable contributions to our children’s educations through needs-based scholarships to parochial or private schools and through donations to public schools.
I support it for three simple reasons:
• It will help parents make the educational decisions they feel are best for their children.
• It has diverse beneficiaries and diverse supporters. Indeed, the diversity of the bill’s list of sponsors speaks to the diversity of those who will benefit.
• It will help all institutions — students not just in parochial schools, but in our public schools as well. It will help our communities, strengthen families, support growth of our economy and improve our city and state.
I don’t believe in picking sides when it comes to children. I am for all of them. I believe options should be available to all children, and not just those with resources.
That’s why I was totally comfortable attending and speaking at both Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pre-K rally in Albany two weeks ago as well as the charter-school rally later that day.
There must be room for all of these initiatives in a discussion about providing parents the best opportunities when it comes to the education of their children.
New York state provides billions of dollars in tax credits for all kinds of things — to for-profit businesses that create jobs, to Hollywood companies that film movies or TV shows, to sports teams, even to beer makers. But not for education? Not for the one cause that matters to all of us?
That makes no sense to me as a matter of public policy, as a statement of our priorities and as a matter of equity.
I come from a family with strong faith-based convictions. Whether you are religious or not, the reality is that many of our black and Latino families in our communities — including an increasing number of non-Catholics — look to the parochial schools or private schools or other alternatives for their children.
But we are losing those options.
Just last year, in Soundview, we lost Blessed Sacrament, whose most famous graduate is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Think of her example. She credits Blessed Sacrament with providing the kind of quality education that put her on the path to historic achievements. When Justice Sotomayor heard about her school closing, she told a journalist she was “heartbroken.”
She said: “You know how important those eight years were? It’s symbolic of what it means for all our families, like my mother, who were dirt-poor. She watched what happened to my cousins in public school and worried if we went there, we might not get out. So she scrimped and saved. It was a road of opportunity for kids with no other alternative.”
How many little girls in The Bronx, or Harlem, or central Brooklyn, or Buffalo, or Rochester or anywhere in our state, with scrimping and saving mothers, could follow in Sonia Sotomayor’s footsteps? Will they even get that opportunity?
Two-thirds of my Assembly colleagues support this bill, including some 90 percent of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus. But some of my colleagues still don’t support it. I ask them to reconsider. Here’s why.
On the heels of Blessed Sacrament’s closing, another Catholic school in my district is struggling. It serves almost entirely black and Hispanic students, whose families make great sacrifices to help their children. This school may close — as may many others throughout the state — without the help the Education Investment Tax Credit can stimulate.
I don’t have the heart to tell them that supporting their choice and their sacrifice is not a politically convenient thing to do.
This bill must get done.