An education-themed week continued to unfold in the Chicago mayor's contest today, as former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun offered her ideas on the city's public school system.
Moseley Braun said she would focus on improving neighborhood schools so that students don't have to test in to magnet and selective enrollment schools to receive a good education.
"The opportunity for a quality education is not something we should have to compete for," Moseley Braun said. "We can provide children with quality education in the neighborhoods where they live."
The candidate also said she supports full-day kindergarten and more early childhood education and believes both can be accomplished within Chicago Public Schools' current budget.
She declined to give a checklist of what is required to improve the system because "every community is different."
She announced her education plan at the South Side's Amelia Earhart Elementary School, flanked by Democratic state legislators who are endorsing her mayoral candidacy, including: state Reps. Marlow Colvin, Ken Dunkin, and Esther Golar and state Sens. Mattie Hunter and Martin Sandoval.
CPS' next leader should be an educator, Moseley Braun said. And teachers should not be scapegoats or "blamed for so much of what is wrong that's not your fault," she told a round table of educators in the school's library before her press conference.
"This pitch battle between the administration and the union has been a distraction," she said, just hours before she and several other major candidates were scheduled to appear at a mayoral forum hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union.
Mayoral candidates state Sen. James Meeks and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel talked about their thoughts on Chicago education earlier this week.
Source: Washington Post
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