ALICE GREEN’S PROGRAM FOR
EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN ALBANY

The Alice Green for Mayor campaign is based on six building blocks for strong families and strong communities.  One of these building blocks is that all our children are entitled to an excellent education that will prepare them to be constructive members of a rapidly changing world.   Alice Green is a former educator with a consistent and positive record of more than forty years of dedicated involvement on a professional and personal level with young people.

Alice Green believes:                                  

1. Public schools deserve and need our support

Our system of public education represents the wonderful collective commitment of our communities to the responsibility for providing caring, innovative, effective, multi-cultural, high quality educational experiences for all of our children.  Cities thrive when the public schools are well funded and actively involve families and the community at large as partners in the education of our children.   It is essential that the Mayor of the City of Albany demonstrate support for the positive work of the dedicated educators and staff in the Albany public schools and that the Mayor utilize her position as leader of the City to celebrate the talents and accomplishments of its students.

As Mayor, Alice Green will fight for a fair share of state and federal aid for the Albany public schools - which has consistently received  proportionally less state funding than many other school districts in the Capital region - and will also actively collaborate with the School District to implement new opportunities for meaningful engagement by our families and our communities in the education of our children in the public schools.

Alice Green will fight for reductions in the wasteful military budget, which diverts resources from human needs such as education to counter-productive and immoral military adventures on behalf of, for example, big oil companies.  Our precious national resources must be used for human needs, not for war.

Alice Green will be an active and visible cheerleader for the positive accomplishments of the teachers and other staff in the Albany School District and for the many wonderful achievements of it students. 

As Mayor, Alice Green will also support a “cap” on the establishment of any additional charter schools in the City of Albany - which take public resources without having any appropriate public accountability - and will advocate for additional funding from the State of New York to compensate the Albany School District for the extraordinary and unique loss of funding due to the over-concentration of charter schools in Albany.
 
2. Our public schools must be independent of political interference and control

The administration of our public schools and the provision of high quality education for our children must be independent of partisan politics and free from interference by other elected officials.

As Mayor, Alice Green will not see the School District as a source of patronage positions for her political cronies or supporters as has historically been the viewpoint of the elected representatives of the Albany “machine”.   While Alice Green will offer input and assistance to the school district, she will not try to control or micro-manage the School District.  She will oppose any legislation to provide Mayors with oversight, control or appointment authority for school districts or Boards of Education.

3. School and community based violence prevention programs are more effective than punitive disciplinary measures or the implementation of a heavy-handed law enforcement presence in the schools. 

The recent decision of the Albany City School District to implement a policy of random student searches with hand-held metal detectors is the wrong response to the problem of violence in our schools.   Alice Green does not believe that our schools are unsafe, however, she recognizes that any level of violence in or around our schools is too high.  Violence must be addressed with a multi-faceted approach involving the coordination of school-based and community-based efforts and programs, not by measures resulting in increased alienation or hostility among young people.

As Mayor, Alice Green will seek to implement and expand a broad range of anti-violence programs for young people including arts programs, after-school activities, restorative justice programs, and job opportunities.  Alice Green also supports increased training for adults who work with youth, including in our schools, in regard to violence reduction and early detection of substance abuse and emotional or mental health issues with the goal of providing appropriate early intervention to help young people effectively address these concerns. She will cooperate with County and State agencies, non-profit community-based  organizations and the business sector to make sure no child in need of after-school care, health or mental health services, or other assistance is permitted to fall between the cracks.

4. Our schools can and must do better to increase achievement for all students and to close the “achievement gap” between students from more affluent backgrounds as compared with those from poorer families and between white students and students of color.

As expressed above, Alice Green believes in providing strong support for the positive work and accomplishments of our public schools.  However, there is no question that our schools - as is the case in many urban school districts throughout the country - have not succeeded at reaching all of our students and families.  Far too many of our students are failing.  Far too many drop out.  Far too many families feel disconnected and alienated from our schools.  In too many ways, our school district is a tale of two cities, one predominantly white and middle-class and the other predominantly students of color from poor families.  A crisis exists, calling for innovative solutions.

As Mayor, Alice Green will work collaboratively with the Albany City School District to seek out and implement new and innovative approaches to addressing the conditions in our schools, communities and families that can lead to lack of success in school.  Among the initiatives Alice Green will support will be efforts to expand and improve in-service training for teachers and staff, increased diversity in hiring by the School District, increased efforts to integrate the schools both in regard to race and family income, strengthening and expanding the existing pre-K programs and after-school programs, renewed steps towards reducing class size and school size and increased community-based initiatives to provide support for the education of our children, such as tutoring programs and other after-school programs.

5.   The re-building program of the Albany School District must be completed.

With strong support from every neighborhood in the City, the School District has embarked on a significant re-building program designed to ensure that all students in Albany will attend smaller schools in facilities that are healthy, safe, up-to-date, and equitable.  This program has already resulted in three new, beautiful, smaller elementary schools, one smaller new middle school and one new and renovated K-8 school.  Our children, families and communities will all benefit from these facilities.  The completion of this process must be supported, including the work already approved and the still to be approved renovations to Albany High School.  At the same time, there have been concerns expressed as to the future of the two public schools in Arbor Hill, Livingston and Arbor Hill Elementary School, which may not be included in the final re-building plan.  

As Mayor, Alice Green will provide the full support of the City of Albany to the completion of the school re-building plan, a process all of the residents of Albany can and will reap benefits from.  Alice Green knows that a new or renovated building does not magically solve all problems, but also understands that old, over-crowded school buildings in poor condition make it more difficult to achieve success for all of our children.  In particular, Alice Green will collaborate with the School District as the plans for a new vision and structure for the High School to provide smaller learning communities continue to develop.  Alice Green will also work to ensure - as the re-building plan moves towards completion - that no section of the City will be left out of the benefits of new and renovated schools.                                                                        

6. Stop the militarization of our schools.

Our children deserve to be prepared for college, not recruited or pressured into military service.  

As Mayor, Alice Green will work to enact protections for students and families from heavy-handed, misleading and discriminatory military recruiting efforts.  Other employers who openly discriminate against gays and lesbians would not be tolerated in our schools and the military should not either. She will also work to ban military recruiters from our public schools, to change District policy so that parents who wish their child’s name to be forwarded to the military will have to “opt-in” rather than requiring parents to “opt-out” and  - until such a policy change is implemented - to encourage families to “opt-out” of disclosing personal information about High School students to the military.

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