Standing with public schools.

Education is the best investment a society can make in itself. Teachers serve as being one of the first and most formative role models in the life of a child. Their passion for education leads them to pick up the slack of an underfunded school system when they use their own money on supplies to help the learning experience.

It’s time to repay our gratitude and stand by teachers as they fight for higher wages and create incentives to attract more passionate people into the profession in order to achieve smaller class sizes. But neither of those two things can happen unless we recognize that education is a human right and prioritize equity in how we fund our public school systems.

Over-reliance on property taxes has led to the underfunding of the schools that may need it most. This creates a lopsided opportunity curve where potential is predetermined by zip code. Brian will be on the front line on the fight of equity in education funding.

This goes for higher education as well. In our rapidly-evolving economy, we need to make necessary investments in making public colleges and trade schools tuition-free.

Brian knows the importance of this first-hand. After dropping out of the Rochester Institute of Technology during his first go at higher education, it took 12 years to be in a position to re-enroll and finish his degree. Today, Brian is a recent college graduate with a Bachelors of Science from RIT, but as proud as he is of that accomplishment, he knows others are not as lucky. This is part of why he is committed to removing the roadblocks that stand in the way of a student’s ability to finish or even able to start college in the first place.

The last few years have shown us the importance of learning the right lessons of history and how a more informed, educated society can combat whatever challenges we face. It’s unacceptable that we can always find a trillion dollars for wasteful tax cuts for the wealthy but can never figure out a way to properly invest in our students. Instead of increased military spending that our armed forces never asked for, Brian knows that funding education is the key to ending war around the world.