Education
Education is the key to a lifetime of success and is essential to our nation’s future. Joe supports a comprehensive approach to education that begins with strong early childhood programs, continues through a robust K-12 education, and makes college more affordable and accessible for all Americans.
Joe believes investing in education has never been more important. Investment today will lay the cornerstone of tomorrow’s economy and enable the next generation of Americans to compete on a global scale, maintain America’s standing as the world’s top economy and ensure U.S. workers are at the forefront of developing new and emerging industries. Only with a renewed focus on education at the national, state and community level can we ensure a prosperous future for our children and our country.
Since being elected to the Congress, Joe has worked on several initiatives to strengthen education on both the national and local level, including:
- Preserving pre-kindergarten programs for underprivileged kids, such as Head Start
- Fighting to ensure that children in the Bronx and Queens receive their fair share of education funding by spearheading an effort to undo a law that allows federal funds to be inequitably distributed among the City’s boroughs
- Making college more affordable through increased access to financial aid, such as Pell Grants and other federal initiatives
- Championing legislation to modernize and improve our nation’s classrooms, such as authoring the Safe Schools, Healthy Kids Act (H.R. 6551, 110th Congress) to help schools with the cost of cleaning up polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
- Keeping our kids healthy and prepared to learn by creating the Physical Education for Progress Program at the Department of Education, the only federal program that helps school districts initiate, expand, and improve school-based physical activity